Thursday, August 30, 2012

Second Assignment: A True Story

What struck me the most about this story was how contrasting the narrators language was with Aunt Rachel's. The only other book I have read that has been this difficult for me to decipher an accent was Huck Finn. Based on the language, slang, and pronunciation in this story, it is very clear to tell right off the bat what race each person belongs to, even without Twain's physical description. When just looking at Aunt Rachel's grammar it is easier for us to infer more about her circumstances than it would be for us to do with the narrator. Through Aunt Rachel's thick accent, dropping all "R's" and replacing them with "W's", it is clear to the reader that she is from the South. However, by just looking over the narrator's few lines, he could come from anywhere.

While the spelling is far from correct in Aunt Rachel's speech, the reader can make out every word phonetically. I found that I had to read this entire story out loud and even develop my own accents for each of the two characters. When trying to read silently in my head the words became one jumbled mess and without patiently sounding out each word aloud I simply could not get through it. Another thing that threw me off when looking over the text was all of the punctuation. The way in which Aunt Rachel would continuously combine her words together practically put an apostrophe in every word.

I think Aunt Rachel's language is what gives the story a more personal feel. It is easy to understand her emotion, while the narrators voice can often be hard to figure out what he is really feeling.

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