Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Humbling Lens of Second Person

I am searching for key phrases that both shock the reader and communicate the purpose of the writing with the use of "you" language. Here are some phrases I found from excerpts in Adios, Strunk and White.

"you are exposed to things like this all the time," " you know this already," "you rely instead on a general immunity that only numbness can provide," "the ultimate reaches of your soul on permanent remote." ~Phrases like this still shock us, even though they state what we already know we do, because while we know we drift through life with this "numbness," we are mostly unaware how frequently we are unaffected by that which should affect us.

"attention lavished on you," "your greed and vanities and quest for self-fulfillment," "you want and want and want." ~It is shocking to be told how self-absorbed you are, but that seems to be the writer's intent.

"Yell...Don't....Learn....Crave....Do.....Develop....Turn....think...Marry...Go...discover...Finish...Divorce...Take,"
~All of these command verbs imply the "you." The writer wants you to understand the woman by leading you through a timeline of her life as if it were your own. As it mentions in the text, it is easier to sympathize with her because you are placing yourself in her shoes. This is the writer's intention, because she believes that readers will not be able to understand Clark in other terms than as a prosecutor.

Here is a biography about someone in my life written in the second person.

You don't even know how many people hate you. You walk through this world as if it were made for you, and every other person is there to cater to your every whim and desire. You do stop to consider how your actions and words will help or hurt those around you, but you don't care if it hinders you from getting what you want. A single-minded determination suffocates all other human emotion within you. You are a doer, a go-getter, a trampler, a machine. You are delusional because you think your skill at intimidation is akin to respect.

1 comment:

nellie said...

I tried to post a comment on this last week but failed to complete the necessary steps to do it...sorry!
I liked this description a lot. The intensity of emotion punches from the beginning and doesn't let up. The specifics at the end add depth too--"manipulation" and also the contradictory emotions in the list work well.
You're a good writer and I'd love to read your final vesion of "This I Believe" too!
Janelle