Sights and Sounds of America

By employing the rhetorical devices of parallelism, paradox, repetition, metaphor, and oxymoron as seen in, “…fish and crabs and shrimps lay beautifully   on white beds of shaved ice…”, “…one day perhaps the city returns and rips out the sore and builds a monument to its past…”, “…to the new developments, to the semi-rural supermarkets, the outdoor movies, new houses with wide lawns and stucco schools where children are confirmed in their illiteracy.” and “The district is still too good to tear down and too outmoded to be desirable”, Steinbeck conveys a critical tone. Steinbeck criticizes the stupidity that has infected the once scrupulous city. The author uses the oxymoron “semi-rural supermarkets” to attempt a phony idea, furthermore employing a hopeful tone as stated in “…one day perhaps the city returns and rips out the sore and builds a monument to its past…”, by using adjectives and phases such as one day, perhaps, monument, and to its past. Parallelism is employed by using clauses such as “to the” several times respectively as seen in “to the new developments, to the semi-rural supermarkets, the outdoor movies…”. Through the use of the rhetorical device of metaphor as seen in, “…fish and crabs and shrimps lay beautifully on white beds of shaved ice…”, Steinbeck conveys an appreciative tone. Steinbeck uses the phrase “beds of shave ice” to imply a connotative meaning of a relaxing environment wherein the fish, crabs and shrimps lay without the fear of desolation. The rhetorical device of paradox is rendered by parallelism and the inverse relation of “too good to tear down” and “too outmoded to be desirable.” The words “too good” and “desirable” along with “tear down” and “outmoded” are inversely related to each other, thus they create a paradox. Therefore, the paradox is that the district has lost all its essential and distinctive characteristics, even though it is well constructed and is still standing. The general truth of which is the buildings have lost...