Katie Haegele starts out her essay with a summary of how she procured her dollhouse and why her interest in it has been revived twice, once when she was eleven, and once since she has entered adulthood. In a casual but not extremely informal tone, Haegele is able to convey to the reader a story-teller vibe while discussing how her childhood hobby was reanimated in adulthood to the reader, through not only her choice of words, but also her captivating style which makes itself known in various ways throughout Haegele’s essay.
This essay was adapted from Katie Haegele’s memoir, “White Elephants: On Yard Sales, Relationships, & Finding What Was Missing,” which is one of the key reasons as to why I believe Haegele’s tone in her essay conveys to…show more content… For instance, Haegele’s sentence structure varies healthily in length, adding to the story-teller vibe that her essay gives off, making it almost as though she were in the room with the reader reciting the essay herself. A good example of this is when Haegele makes a statement, and then follows up with a more in-depth description of what she’s referring to, for instance, Haegele writes, “Then I went shopping for accessories. In the catalogs I browsed online I found sewing machines and spinning wheels you could get if you decide your dolls are into needlework.” What she’s doing is shopping for accessories, but more specifically what she’s doing is browsing online catalogs. This way of writing allows the reader to know what’s going on, before going into detail, rather than when the author writes something out in detail to paint a picture to the reader gradually. Farther on in the essay Katie Haegele wrote, “I’ve always had this romantic idea that I could be a lexicographer, so I decided that should be Lily’s job.” Haegele places herself on the same level as the reader as she talks about the backstories she has created for the dolls she purchased after restoring the dollhouse. Her use of casual diction further helps to further add to the atmosphere she creates in her essay. In her essay, Haegele asks the reader to “Picture it: If you put up real wallpaper [on a dollhouse] the designs would look terrifying, with huge flowers blooming nauseous on the walls, or parrots like prehistoric predators,” playful imagery with negative connotations of sickening displays of flowers and horrifying parrots, Haegele’s simile provides a welcome contrast of a more negative connotation than that of the essay overall. Haegele’s essay keeps up a direct sentence structure that holds the reader’s attention throughout her
