Blog #3 - Orwell & Montaigne vs. everybody else

There are many similarities and differences that distinguish Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" and Montaigne's "That Men Should Not Judge of our Happiness Till After our Death" from the more contemporary works that we've previously read for class.

Orwell's story is similar to "Superman and Me", "Out There", and "Biography of a Dress" because they all read like fiction. These works contain many elements that are found in fiction such as character, setting, plot, etc. The tone in Orwell's piece is strong as with the three examples mentioned because the author's diction evokes emotions in the reader (such as myself) to know exactly what the character is going through and feeling at that moment. There is dramatic tension in Orwell's piece when the main character is torn between having to shoot the elephant in order to not look like a fool in front of others, versus his desire to just leave it alone since it wasn't doing anything to harm him. Dramatic tension can also be found in the three pieces mentioned above because each character had to make a decision that would alter the course of the story and their lives. Orwell's piece is similar to Kincaid's "Biography of a Dress" because the story was centered on one moment - Orwell's centering on his encounter with the elephant, and Kincaid's when she was two years old when her mother made her a dress.

The only similarity that stood out with regards to Montaigne's piece and Lott's "Toward a Definition of Creative Nonfiction" is the use of quotations. Montaigne and Lott's pieces are similar because they are written in the form of an "essai", while the examples mentioned above read like fiction.

Compared to Montaigne's piece, the others were easy reads because of the language that was used throughout. Because Montaigne's piece was written at a much earlier time, the language used in his "essai" made it more difficult to understand. According to Lott's "Definition of Creative Nonfiction", humans want to have and create order in everything that they do, which includes their writing. It seemed to me that Montaigne was trying to create that order in his essay while the other writers created a pattern in their stories that made it flow more naturally. I guess Montaigne's piece was harder for me to understand which is why it was so different from all the other readings we've done in class.