“Litany for Dictatorships” by Stephen Vincent Benet, “Preliminary Report from the Committee on Appropriate Postures for the Suffering” by Jon Davis
1. Word Choice, Sentence Structure in “Preliminary Report”
“Photogenic” “aesthetically pleasing”
Lots of “you” and “we”, dehumanizing
Italicized certain words; “eliminating” and “suffering”
Sounds official, reads like a speech
2. Punctuation, Formatting, and Spelling in “Preliminary Report”
Three italicized words
No indentations, made it seem like they were tired of trying to worry about the problem
Lots of commas to restate and describe how annoying the have-nots are
Seems mechanical and bureaucratic, “In addition”, “therefore”
3. Tone, Imagery, and Perspective in “Preliminary Report”
Sarcastic, condescending. (Satirical from the author’s standpoint) Seen in “Those of us employed by the agency are sworn to oversee you.”
Title is bureaucratic and condescending
Compares clean socks/shoes of the haves to the bare feet of the have-nots
Talks about the “blank stares” that the have-nots give
States that the have-nots have “haloes of flies”
Narrator’s perspective seems to be that of a bureaucrat who is not interested in the problem and wants to manage it as easily as possible.
From his perspective the only thing to worry about is keeping the jobs of the people in “the agency” and ensuring that tourism does not decline.
People like him only want to “manage” the problem, not “eliminate” it.
4. Word Choice and Sentence Structure in “Litany for Dictatorships”
Followed a specific format. For these people, for those people…
Chose words which evoked violent imagery, “crucified”, “lynch”, etc
Repetition throughout; both words and sentence structure
Starts with long sentences and suddenly gets short
5. Punctuation, formatting, and capitalization in “Litany for Dictatorships”
Each stanza represents a different sort of people
Odd Capitalization in quotes, used as mantras?
Odd indentations at some points
Last stanza is different from the rest. Every line ends with a period.
Time and Knowledge capitalized
6. Tone, Imagery, and Perspective in “Litany for Dictatorships”
Chronicles facts but gets immersed in them
Sums up what we did wrong in the past, accepts it
Full of imagery; bad situations and quotes which add to the scene. “Headless Hen”
Uses imagery to alter the ideas of the reader, i.e. quotes which one might actually hear in this world
Dehumanizing tone
“Perfect State” brings Communism/Fascism to mind
Wonderful, Connor! Thanks very much for posting.
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