An Area of Darkness
The text is entitled An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul, taken from Scraps of Wool by Bill Colegrave. The first thing I noticed after reading the text is the great amount of descriptive word choice. Naipaul does this by saying things like ‘drama of clouds’. It could be implied that by saying this, the author is feeling as if there are a lot of clouds around him and the clouds are having drama in the sky. Another example of the author using a very wide variety of describing words can be shown with ‘milky blue sky’. This can show that the author is taking in all of his surroundings and putting them into his writing. By doing this, the author is making the readers feel as if they are with him, looking at the ‘mud-packed roofs’ and feeling the ‘wet rocky slopes’.
Naipaul is making me feel as if I am with him in Kashmir and Qazigund, seeing and feeling and smelling all that is described in his text. Even though the author has not included emotion about himself or what he is feeling, we are still able to feel connected with him. This is all because we are put in place of his eyes and ears. The text is also written in the first person; therefore we are put even closer with the author. The overall feeling of the text to me is reality. We are being shown the land and the way that people are living and it puts you back into how different parts of the world are. This can be shown by the quotes, ‘months-old dirt,’ and ‘red-dyed beards.’
An Area of Darkness by V.S. Naipaul is a very effective piece of text. It is effective in showing the writers skills and knowledge about what he is writing about, as well as his overall writing. It is also effective in making the readers feel as though they are with the author in the places he is describing. It may even make the readers feel detached from the real world. This could be due to the different kinds of scenery and people written about. The author has written this text for entertainment purposes. The two places within the two paragraphs are different, yet the author describes them in a similar way. He is writing about what he sees, starting with the scenery and ending with the people, all being very effective in keeping the readers interested and looking for more.
I would give my self 3 for the AO1 and a 9 in the AO3. After looking at the rubric, I have noticed that I did not examine the authors choices of form or structure. While I explained the types of word choices used by the author and how the text made me feel, I lacked heavily in stating the exact choice of word. For example, I stated ‘milky blue sky’ as an example of the describing words used by the author. However, I didn't list the type of word choice and how it is important to the text. I also lacked referencing specific characteristic features, such as the nouns and adjectives and how they make the text feel for the readers. However, I do believe that I did a decent job using words and phrases from the text, I just needed to be more specific and less repetitive when listing them. There could be more structure from the way I wrote it by stating specifically which place the quotes are from and show more of an understanding of the text. I think that I did a decent job stating how the text made me feel, but I could have done a lot more insightful referencing to the meaning, context, and the authors audience instead.
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