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Humor In Annie Dillard 'Essay It's Not Talent'

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Author, Annie Dillard, in her essay, “It's Not Talent; It’s Just Work”, emphasizes the difference between being talented and being disciplined. Dillards purpose is to persuade anyone that feels that they are incapable of doing something that anything is possible with hard work. She adopts a sentimental tone in order to appeal to her audiences feeling of confidence in themselves. Through Dillards effective use of certain words over others and her sense of humor, she is more capable of appealing to the emotions of her audience making them more confident. The very first thing that is noticed in Dillards text is the title, which in itself is a sophisticated form of her word choice. In her title “It’s Not Talent; It’s Just Work” Dillard makes …show more content…
Towards the beginning of her essay, Dillard uses her sense of humor to convince the audience that they are very similar. She explains, “Doing something does not require discipline; it creates its own discipline-with a little help from caffeine” (Dillard 1). She uses the caffeine one liner in order to convince her audience that being able to do anything doesn't mean being perfect at it. This use of humor allows the audience to infer that her success as a write has been influenced by caffeine, thus by humbling herself she makes them feel even more confident in themselves. Likewise, Dillard uses another form of humor to humble herself in the very beginning of her essay where she explains the burden of hard work. As a successful author dillard describes “hard work” as something that that makes her “queasy” and she then explains that she would “rather die in peace” (Dillard 1). Dillard uses her own humorous opinion on “hard work” in order to make her audience believe that they can be better than her. When her audience believes this, that they are better than a disciplined author, they believe more in themselves, hence, building upon her purpose of persuading others that all things are possible. Finally, Dillard uses a humorous form of personification to describe how people view her as a natural wonder when really

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