4.2 Ho Davies

Shane Salm
8:00 a.m. Section
99102854450
Assignment 4.2
When looking over the piece “What You Know,” by Ho Davies, there is much more to be seen and examined. His features you could say. By features of course I mean his style of writing, his tone of voice, word choice, and in general just the way in which he wrote this piece. There are several things that I would like to talk about, mainly his tone of voice and the style of writing. Along with that, I also found some other features quite interesting.
First, I would like to look at his tone of voice. He isn’t quite gentle, and yet at the same time, isn’t too vulgar with his words. On occasion he might throw a swear word in, but to me it adds to the effect of getting his voice and emotions involved. He seems to keep his word level quite basic, helping the reader understand the material much better. He might challenge us with a word or two, but again it is to add the effect of the piece. The intent being to make us think about what he is trying to imply about not only writing itself as in grammar, but to make us think about what we want to write about, and if it might be possible to write well on it.
One more thing that I noticed, and it might be related to the questions for this assignment, but it seems to be an internal struggle with himself. He is contemplating a lot, whether to write a piece and submit it as Clarks and get money for it. There is struggle between him and his students, trying to prove who might be right, but it is difficult with the lack of education in English to prove who might be right. There is struggle about trying to tell his students, not forcefully, what to write about. They want to write about death, suicide, but like he says, how is it to be made fresh? There is so much that has to be taken into consideration, but it is hard to do, when you are not the victim of suicide. In this case he tries to follow Clark’s footsteps, but finds it difficult to still find out what he went through. He might have achieved the objective of seeing what murder is like when shooting at a human silhouette, but it’s still not the full amount.
As much as I know this piece is fiction, it almost seems real, and I have a difficult time getting the idea into my head that it is fake and not real. But my opinions and descriptions don’t reflect the idea of it being real or fake. I still feel that his intentions are to tell us to write about things that we are comfortable with and that we are able to relate with, rather than guess about and try to figure out what something we might not have experienced is like. With his choice of words, repetition, voice, and style, I feel like he is telling us that not all texts have to be constantly moving, but also able to go back and forth at times. But in order to do this, one must be good at knowing how much and when to do it