The Horizontal World Analysis

Author Debra Marquart in her memoir “The Horizontal World”, writes about North Dakota and how she confesses her love for it in a very indirect way. There were very many considerable amounts of situations in her hometown and visitors would think that the land is plain and unimpressive. Debra includes many strategies to characterize the upper Midwest. Some of these strategies include imagery, tone, and syntax, also, diction, personification, and pathos, and lastly, ethos, logos, and audience. Imagery is sensory details in a work; the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, call to mind an idea, or describe an object. Imagery involves any or all of the five senses. Debra uses imagery many times in her writing. “ Driving west from Fargo on I-94, the freeway that cuts through the state of North Dakota, you’ll encounter a road so lonely, treeless, and devoid of rises and curves in places that it will feel like one
Debra uses diction by choosing big, meaningful words in her writing. “Eureka- form the Greek word heureka, meaning “I have found it”- is reported to have been the word that Archimedes cried when he found a way to test the purity of Hiero’s crown.” This is just one example of diction. Personification is giving something human qualities. Debra uses personification by giving things that happened in North Dakota human like qualities. “What followed, Richard Manning observed in Grassland, was a war on roots: The place was a mess and it became a young nation’s job to fix it with geometry, democracy, seeds, steam, steel, and water.” War on roots describes war by giving it human qualities. Pathos is a quality that evokes pity or sadness. Pathos is used in the passage by Debra to show her emotions for North Dakota. “This place was a mess, and it became a young nation’s job to fix it with geometry, democracy, seeds, steam, steel and water.” This is one example of pathos in Debra’s