Assignment 9

Assignment 9

My target audiences for both of my interpretive essays are my peers and the professors who will be grading my final portfolio. It was their age, level of education, upbringing, gender, and knowledge of the topics that I had to keep in mind when writing these two papers. Thankfully, writing to this audience was not too difficult of a task because the group discussions gave me a sense of just how much everyone knew about the two different stories. And they allowed me to hear each and everyone’s individual response to Standing By and Lifelike. My own writing works to build relationships with these people because I took into account all this necessary information to write a productive essay. Also, my paper was not radical or reactionary in any way, so anyone can read my paper and understand the message I am trying to convey without being offended. Or they will not feel the need to dispute anything I have to say. The majority of my peers’ beliefs are consistent with what I believe in, so that made writing these two papers a lot more easy as well than it would have been had I been trying to build a relationship with a different audience. All of us are academics with the same goal in mind of achieving a degree, so I think we are better prepared to appreciate what another person has to say without being too argumentative.

               Here is an example of my efforts to build a relationship with my audience. This is my introduction for the first interpretive essay.

               Everywhere people go, people judge others based on their occupation, political party preference, ethnic heritage, appearance, race, religion, gender, creed, and even the clothes they decide to wear. People may not always be aware that they do it, and that’s because most people do it subconsciously. Without being completely aware of what they are doing, people tend to judge others based on their appearance, match that appearance with a certain stereotype, put that person in a certain group given the stereotype, and then compare that person to themself. It’s an innate, human habit that David Sedaris suggest all people may have and he unveils this idea in his story, “Standing By”. He also brings up the idea that, perhaps the airport is a forum that allows people to show their true hateful selves. This is the message I believe Sedaris was trying to get across to his readers. I believe he wants his readers to think twice before judging others. I believe he wants his readers to not judge others based on their appearance. He successfully conveys this message of his story by recreating an atmosphere that most people can relate to, using humor, using characters that most can relate to, as well as putting the reader in situations that are very familiar and hilariously so.              

               I am going to include more “I” statements to improve the quality of my paper. In both of my interpretive papers, I am very well removed from my writing. It is an interpretive essay, so therefore I need to give my readers a better sense of who I am and what I have experienced, so that my writing becomes more credible.