The beginning of Caesar’s Last Breath, author Sam Kean opens up by describing in detail the gasses among our earth that ultimately make up the earth’s atmosphere. By opening up with such a broad topic, Kean digs deep and thoroughly explains each layer of the atmosphere in order to persuade and convince his reader of his claim. As the reader, I have to admit I am not too sure who Kean’s audience is. To take an educated guess, I believe Kean intends to reach anyone who is interested in the topic of what earth is composed on internally. The reason that I seem to be confused about his target audience at first was before I opened the book, I assumed this was based for a scientific audience who has an interest in the earth and the evolution of air. However, after rereading the first section and developing an understanding of Kean’s style, I realized that Kean is writing to everyone as his overall purpose is for people to be interested in what he is writing and to write to persuade the reader to continue reading. I was able to tell this as Kean almost displayed a passion through his writing that I picked up on. For example, when reading Kean’s section about air, he went into such excruciating detail that it was almost strange; now looking back, it wasn’t strange, it was an author showing true interest in what he was writing about.
One way Kean effectively told his story was by using explanations and examples throughout Making Air: Our First Four Atmospheres. As I mentioned above, the context contained a plethora of rich information, and also had some appeals of logos as Kean incorporated statistics to enhance his theme. Secondly, Kean arranges his piece in a specific way in which I believe can be directly linked to why his style was so effective. After closing the introduction, he went right into his story, where he went on about his passionate topic and overloaded the reader with facts and terms that he felt were important. After this, Kean provided explanations and support for what he talked about in his story, which can be extremely influential as he is providing support after he has presented his claim over and over. One move that I might steal from Kean in terms of my own final project is to take a small aspect what I’m researching, and completely overload the reader with facts and research to support my claim. In terms of Kean and as I mentioned above, he goes on to discuss air in rich detail only to tie it back into what makes up the earth. Also, I like the style Kean uses, specifically telling a story. In my final project, as Gloria Gemma has a heartwarming story behind their message, I may tell the story of how the organization came to be if I were to present this to anyone other than the nonprofit themselves. One potential question that I would ask Kean is what motivated/influenced him to go into such detail about the four layers of the earth outside of pure interest? As you can tell that he is interested in this field, I’m wondering if he has any outside experience with this topic.
1 Comment
Luke
4/9/2018 06:57:42 am
Upon reading Nick's analysis of Caesar's Last Breath, I believe that he has a well rounded understanding of Sam Kean's target audience and overall purpose for writing this text. Lastly, I think that what Nick is taking away from this book to incorporate into his own work will be effective in fufilling Gloria Gemma's mission.
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Nick GrayAlways looking for comments, questions and concerns. Please do not hesitate to comment! Archives
April 2018
NotesTo comment, click the title of my blog and once the page loads, scroll to the bottom and leave a response! |