Prose: "The Problem That Has No Name": A Brief Analysis

Friedan's magazine report "The Problem That Has No Name" is a piece of expository prose. Here, the writer objectively discusses the issue and the situation, and reports different people's ideas, while she doesn't give her own views.  The writer acts as a camera and tries to be as objective as possible. Her report is narrated from first person objective point of view.

The title of the text serves as a means of provoking the reader's attention. It talks about an unnamable problem and this is strange enough to arouse different question's in the mind of the reader such as: "What is the problem?"; "Is there any such problem with no name?"; … etc. Therefore, the reader is persuaded to read the article in order to answer his own questions. Moreover, the reader gets more interested when, after finishing the first paragraph, he realizes that even then he has no idea what the problem is.

 

There is no sign of the writer's personal views in the article; therefore, she is objective. Her report looks like a camera view. Her camera starts a journey from her own office to different parts of the country. She traces the problem everywhere. The direct quotations prevent her report from being subjective and it remains objective and documentary. At last, the text ends open ended and without any conclusion. Thus, it leaves the reader to decide about the true nature of the problem.

 

She is also indirect which is the best way to effectiveness. She does not directly state that the problem is widespread. On the contrary, she implicitly shows the range of the problem by moving from the old ranch houses in the country to modern apartments in big cities.

 

This report could simply be changed into a narrative if there was a tightly knit plot with certain characters shown through a series of events and dialogues instead of scenes and quotations.

 

 

Prose: “Disciplining Children”: A Brief Analysis

 This article is written by John Holt. It is a piece of expository writing (in which the writer explains and analyzes an issue). The title of the article "Disciplining Children" shows the subject matter. In this article the writer tries to familiarize the reader with three very important sources of experience for a child: nature, culture, and superior force.

The writer directly starts his treatise by a general thesis statement – the very first sentence. The article is divided into three distinct paragraphs each explaining one of the three sources of disciplining children. The writer starts each paragraph with a general idea (a general definition of the related discipline). Then, with the help of different examples, he tries to clarify his major point. Afterward, he goes into details and explains different aspects of the main idea. At last, he ends each paragraph with a brief note on the related discipline as a conclusion.

The examples given by the writer are not straightforward. He does not explain the situation to the reader. Instead, he faces the reader with the situation all of a sudden. For instance, he says, "If he hits the wrong key, he hears the wrong note". In this example, the writer is certainly talking about a piano or another musical instrument of the same kind. Thus, the writer is not clear enough for two reasons: first, it is not necessary for the reader to imagine the exact situation in order to understand the writer's point; second, the reader's mind is activated and he will not be limited to only one situation. Therefore, it is not important to know exactly what kind of "key" the writer means; moreover, the reader can think of piano, keyboard, organ, … and he will see that as one of the rules of nature – something tat happens over and over again.

The writer's diction is plain and simple. He does not want to be technical and is trying his best to convey his own meaning. He is synonymous and expresses the same idea in different ways so that his readers – regardless of their education– understand what he means. For example, in the phrase "Discipline of Culture, of Society, of What People Really Do", he starts from a somehow technical term and ends in a very commonplace phrase to express his idea. Thus, his audience, are not limited to any particular group of the society. Or in another example, he says, "Nature, is impersonal, impartial, and indifferent

Prose: “The Baby Who Came to Stay”: A Brief Analysis

The title of the story is "The Baby Who Came to Stay" and it is written by Danny Seifer. It is a narrative prose which is naturally made up of a series of events. It is the story of a family in which a newborn infant comes into being. There are five characters in the narrative: the father, the mother (Maxine), the boys (Mark and Andrew), and the infant (Jeffrey). The father is the narrator of the story and he relates it from first person point of view. The subject matter of the story is jealousy.

The main conflict of the story lies in the fact that the parents being modern educated ones greatly rely on the theoretical information which is found in psychological books. Therefore, they think that with the introduction of the baby into the family, the elder brothers naturally will show jealousy towards it because they think that their parent's love is directed to the baby and thereby they will be less loved than before. (This kind of jealousy is called sibling jealousy.)  Nevertheless, what happened in reality was different and unexpected: the children "were immediately enchanted" with the baby. This caused the parents to think that their children are pretending to love the baby in order to protect themselves from being underestimated and degraded. This strategy and reaction was considered as "false front" by the parents. So they started to reassure the children of their love. On the other hand, the children's love was real and not a mere pretension; therefore, the parent's misunderstanding lead to another misunderstanding on the part of children – they thought their parents are jealous of the boys because Jeff loves them more than them.

The story starts with an exposition, meaning that the writer introduces the situation to the reader in the first paragraph. To provoke the reader's interest, the writer raises a question: why are the boys "enchanted"? This way, he creates suspense and the readers naturally will follow the events in order to know the answer to the question. In the course of the story and through a series of actions and reactions, the problem gradually gets bigger and more complex up to its greatest possible extent. This point is called the climax of the story and the points in which the problem gets more tense and complex are called turning points. In this story, each time the parents face an unexpected reaction, we have a turning point. (Maxine, Mark) interaction: "freeing himself from her kiss…", (Andrew, father) interaction: "he shifted her shoulder from under my comforting arms …", (Mark, parents) interaction: "go away for a while …", and (boys, parents) interaction: " … 'cause you're jealous …", are different examples of turning points in the story. These are the key events in the story.

The first two interactions are called the rising actions and they increase the intensity of the problem and help provoke the reader's interest.  The third interaction ("the last straw") is where the problem reaches its height, so it is the climax of the story. The last interaction is the resolution or the point when the problem is solved and the cause of all these misunderstandings is revealed.

The theme of a story is the central idea that connects every other part of the story together. The theme should be a sentence. However in a descriptive piece of prose, usually there is no theme but a subject matter.  The easiest way to get to the theme of a work is to ask ourselves, "What is the story trying to tell us?" The theme of this story may be that: you cannot always rely on books because things that happen in reality are not always mentioned in the books.

The writer's diction – the choice and use of words in a text – also helps to the essential point the writer is trying to make. The words used by the parents (like "sibling jealousy", unperturbed behavior", "unshakable basic sense of security", "reassurance", "false front", "normal disturbed reaction", …etc.) are quite technical and scientific while those used by the children ("mummy", "daddy", "You bet", "don't be cross with…", … etc.) are quite simple and natural for a child. This choice of words is quite intentional. This way, the writer wants to show the opposition between the practical reality in nature and the theoretical knowledge in books. Besides, use of negative words such as "unnatural", "unperturbed", "unshakable", & "unresented" intensifies the above opposition. It also shows that the parents' expectations arising from the books have not been satisfied.