Debra Marquart is an American poet and musician from the small town of Napoleon North Dakota. In her memoir, The Horizontal World she writes about her life growing up in the Upper Midwest and her feelings towards it. Marquart characterizes other people’s opinion on the Midwest, to show how passionate she is about it. She conveys her perception towards the midwest by creating a false image of that region to only make her viewpoint seem stronger. Her purpose is to show the American people who don’t live there, how much of an importance and treasure it really is. Debra Marquart characterizes the upper Midwest as misunderstood and an asset to America. Irony is used in the passage,to characterize how the Midwest is unacknowledged, because of how