Paper 1, Question 2

    

      The extract Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey written by William Least Heat-Moon focuses on a man and his wife(Q) on a journey around the United States. In their journey, the writer was sticking to the small places via small roads. The extract starts with the man and Q stopping at Little Lanesboro and they went into a store that had the look of an ´old village-grocery.´ William Least Heat-Moon then describes the store and sets the scene. The narrator proceeds to state the products that the store contains. A lady that works at the store shared with them the history behind the village. The store lady and her daughter proceeded to show the couple photos while the store lady gave them sandwiches to eat. While reading the extract, I came across the use of precise form, structure, and language.

     To start off, the form of the extract is a short story, which also contains travel and descriptive form styles. A short story is a brief fictional story that is shorter than a novel and usually only contains a few characters, in this case the characters are the man, his wife, and a couple others. Short stories have a narrator. In this case the narrator is the author. Travel writing is composed of the writing of different places, in this case the place being described would be the store called Joe's Country Store the couple went into in Little Lanesboro. Descriptive writing is described as writing that helps the reader have an overall picture of what they are reading. An example of descriptive writing in the extract would be all the products being listed such as . The list of the products; ¨banana peppers, pepperoncini, pimiento…¨ gives the reader the opportunity to imagine all the products and have an overall view of the store. Another example would be the description of the album as ¨an album of blurry snapshots or a folder of yellowed new clipping”

      The structure of the short story is chronological and linear as it describes the events in chronological order in which they happened. For example, the couple went into the store and it is followed by them meeting the story lady and eventually she shows them photos of the village and tells them the story behind it. Chronological structure is shown in the extract because in paragraph one the author tells us the setting of the story and gives the reader background information about what is about to happen. Paragraph two follows with a list of ingredients and shows the reader the steps in order to make a sandwich. This led to a ¨…turned a transaction into a conversation” In this conversation the store lady and her daughter showed the couple photos of the place. The last paragraph wrapped everything with a video of the ´Old Man Susquehanna.’ that was going to come into town and he did not have an invitation.

     William Least Heat-Moon uses great language throughout the short story. The author's usage of rhetorical devices such as narration and description gave the piece of writing a stronger claim because it helped the reader understand. The usage of the narrative perspective controls the release of information to the reader. The author makes use of many literary devices such as imagery, as well as the words he chose contain compelling vocabulary and adjectives. The use of imagery is introduced in the first sentence of the first paragraph, ¨..It had the look of an old village-grocery¨ describing the look of the little store. With only this sentence the reader can imagine the feel and the look of the overall store. Finally, the video of the old man in the last paragraph is an example of continuation and comparison since the man was coming to town.