“A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails” by Donald Hall
What fits the definition of the purpose of one’s life? How can one live out the entirety of his or her life and have accomplished success? At times, other obstacles and distractions may cloud one’s goal. In his essay “A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails,” Donald Hall achieves the purpose of informing his audience to keep an eye on the goal and not get obsessed with trivial items. First published in The American Scholar, 1961, a magazine filled with other literary texts, the essay was designated for an educated audience with a taste for literature. With this audience in mind, Donald Hall concerns himself with the lifestyle of Washington Woodward, a man who epitomizes the “more dead…show more content… According to William Manchester, these beliefs are highly inaccurate. In his essay “Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All,” Manchester uses vivid imagery and sententious diction to illustrate that war is not as magnificent as many people today assume. As a veteran himself, Manchester communicates with the readers of the New York Times, 1987. To convey the realities of war, Manchester uses unique vivid imagery based off of his experiences. Manchester states, “the romanticized view of war … runs like a red streak through our literature” (498). “Red” (498) is the color of blood and has an aggressively emotional connotation. Therefore, Manchester aims to illustrate that “the romanticized view” (498) is especially prevalent in our literature and overwhelms the truth. Once he has condemned the source of this twisted image of war that people today carry, Manchester goes on to give his own war experiences in vivid detail. For instance, Manchester recounts, “The best man in my section was blown to pieces, and the slime of his viscera enveloped me” (503). The fact that Manchester “barely escaped” (498) from it all forces his audience to reconsider the answer to Manchester’s question, “What are they commemorating [in celebrations regarding war]?” (500). Vivid imagery usually requires longer sentences, so Manchester uses shorter, more meaningful sentences throughout the essay to illustrate the…show more content… What role does it play in regard to privacy? In his essay “Graven Images,” Saul Bellow analyzes photography and its role in the life of others. How someone is “publicly seen” (564) is crucial to those who are commonly photographed. However, in the Jewish culture, photography involving “graven images” (567) is considered sinful. This essay had personal meaning to me. To begin with, the statement that “your amour propre is the territory invaded by the picture takers” (564) is accurate in that the infringement of one’s privacy requires him or her to pull up justification of some sort, at the very least. Things that are not revealed to the public cannot be reduced into the “two dimensions” (567) that photographers strive for. Second of all, the “graven images” (567) brought up at the end Bellow’s argument translated to signify idols. Bellow implies a similarity through the mention of his grandfather that pictures and idolization are similar in that they are both not definite and entirely accurate. The question that remains unanswered is whether or not it is bad to “Let the Record Show” (566). Certainly, there are things that are better off revealed that Bellow does rank compared to absolute privacy. Photographs are not really the best way to reveal private matters and it is not necessary that only through “rough treatment” (566) can the public blatantly exercise its “right to know” (567). I could relate to Bellow, having
