My Inner Shrimp Essay Anaylsis

3 Pages 761 Words

To make one’s writing more effective, the author must utilize a variety of elements of style. Examples of these styles include schemes, tropes, word style, and specificity. The essay, “My Inner Shrimp,” by Garry Trudeau, uses a high style of writing and a multitude of tropes.
Word style makes use of the author’s choice of word usage. High style contains complex sentences and sophisticated words. Most formal writing is composed in high style. This style is not used in conversation due to its formal nature. Because of its complicated nature, it has a tendency to confuse the audience and clutter the writings of inexperienced authors (Mulder 61).
The story, “My Inner Shrimp,” contains many examples of high style. “I feel the pain of the diminutive irrespective of whether they feel it themselves, because my visit to the planet of the teenage midgets was harrowing, humiliating, and extended” (Trudeau 507). This particular quote displays the high style of writing. The elaborate word usage shows the author’s intent to portray a formal essay. All of the adjectives describe the mood of the author’s time spent in an intolerable world.
Another example of high style writing is, “Almost as an afterthought, I ascended the staircase to inspect the loft, ducking as I entered the bedroom” (Trudeau 507). This arrangement of words would not be used in casual conversation. The content of this sentence depicts the use of proper english. Through Trudeau’s choice of the words ‘ascended’ and ‘afterthought’, instead of less descriptive words, he formalized the passage.
The high word style is once again shown in the following passage, “My first week of school, I was drafted into a contingent of students ignominiously dubbed the ‘Midgets,’ so grouped by taller boys presumably so they could taunt us with more perfect efficiency” (Trudeau 508). The words in the quote are fancy - sounding and diffi...