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Part A+: Positive Description of Wal-Mart
A trip to Wal-Mart really opened my eyes to the pleasures of shopping. I saw rows and rows of cars fill up the huge parking lot. Cars of all types and hues could be seen – from sedans to coupes to SUVs. It is literally a sea of cars that fills the landscape. Incoming cars are filled with giggly, happy children and parents, awaiting the exhilarating shopping experience. Cars rushing out the gate are filled with excited people in a tearing hurry to get home and open up their shopping bags. In the grocery aisles, I see rows and rows of food stuff. The food is packed in colorful and mouth-watering packaging, which attracts buyers and makes them hungry. Ahead of the grocery aisles, there is a photo department where some teenagers are busy clicking their pictures. The flashes of light illuminate the area, just like lightning, one after the other. The sound of laughter is everywhere. The copy department is busy too. Young executives are busy making copies of work documents. They look to be in a hurry and the whirr of the copier machine and its on-off light also adds an aura to the illumination in that area. The furniture store has lots of tables, chairs, beds and mattresses. Happy children are jumping on the mattress, which is so soft they almost disappear into the mattress. It reminds me of my childhood. The pet store is filled with great looking food. I see so many dogs, big and small, salivating and wagging their tails, looking at the food packs. The clothes section ahead looks like the colors of the rainbow with clothes for any age and sex, lined up on racks. The car center has so many drivers buying oil and gas for their hungry cars. In the hair salon, there are so many women and men with different hairstyles and vibrant colors, like a peacock. Wal-Mart has everything that shoppers want including great discounts, to add to your piggy bank. I found the place energizing and I think it is the best place to shop.
Part A-: Negative Description of Wal-Mart
A trip to Wal-Mart can turn out to be a terrible experience. As I entered the gate, I saw people fighting to park their cars in the huge parking lot. Cars would almost hit each other, trying to get a slot before others. Some of the cars are so big they can hardly get space to park. The SUVs drive around filling the area with poisonous exhaust fumes. Cars rushing out are filled with screaming children, happy to have got out of the closed space of Wal-Mart. When I enter the store I see the grocery aisles. The aisles are filled with food packs, dusty, some broken; some people have thrown some packs on the floor. How do people buy such food? In the photo booth ahead, I see so many noisy and unruly teenagers, taking pictures. The flashing light of the booth looks very scary in the dark aisles. In the copy department, young executives are shouting and trying to get their job done at the copier machine. The machine makes noises and the strange yellow ray of light from the machine, adds a frightening color to the area. The furniture zone has more noisy children, fighting with pillows and throwing things around. They are jumping on the bed and there’s no one to control these monsters. I avoided the pet store, since I saw huge ferocious dogs and was scared of being attacked. The clothes section is badly arranged with clothes for any age and sex, mixed up. It was difficult to get my hands on a good shirt, for my size and color preference. The car center, had cars waiting to get serviced. The cars made so much noise and they polluted the place with smoke. I saw the hair salon, which again had loud blaring music and strange looking people with colorful, orange hair, some of it looking like the color of bushfires. Wal-Mart gives some discounts but I ended up spending more money than usual. In the end I was so tired and exhausted, that I quickly drove home from this terrible shopping experience.
Part B: Rhetorical Analysis
Introduction. For this rhetorical analysis assignment, my group was picked to write about a place where people are working. I have written about my shopping experience at Wal-Mart, giving opposing views on the same situation.
The idea behind choosing Wal-Mart was go present an opportunity to show many scenarios where I can compare the contrast my views. Since Wal-Mart has many departments, is always busy with people and is a unique experience, I believed it would be the ideal location for this assignment. I tried to ensure that the descriptions were capable of getting an emotional response from the readers (use of ‘Pathos’, in the Rhetorical Triangle). I have used a mix of comparisons, analogies and metaphors to bring the descriptions to life, in a sense. The language used is direct, delivered like a story, with lots of imagery and effects which seek to immerse the reader in the story.
In my positive and negative experience paragraphs, I have used a lot of action and sound oriented words to describe the scenario. For example, the term, ‘rows and rows of cars’ was used to describe the vast number of parked cars in the positive description. But in the negative description, I portrayed a picture of ‘people fighting to get space’ in the same huge parking lot, with ‘huge SUVs polluting the environment’. Again, ‘sea of cars that fills the landscape’, gives the reader the bigness and a visual idea of the size of the parking lot and number of cars parked. It is almost like the reader is already at Wal-Mart. But ‘big cars with hardly any space to park’, is a negative description of the same scene. Other positive imagery I have used include, ‘exhilarating’ experience to describe the happiness felt by shoppers and the mood in general. But in the negative description, ‘screaming children happy to have got out of close space of Wal-Mart’, clearly paints a contrasting picture.
Similes have been used to describe situations - ‘like flashes of lightning’ for instance was used to describe the flash from the photo booth in the positive description. Another sound based approach was ‘whirr of the copier machine’, clearly communicating the sound effect and imagery. The light from the copier machine producing the ‘aura’ of illumination, clearly gives a mental picture to the reader of what the place looked like. However, in the negative description, the light is shown to be scary and frightening.
In the grocery section, imagery was used to portray the deliciousness of food, with the sentence, ‘colorful and mouth-watering packaging, which attracts buyers and makes them hungry’. In the negative description, the packages were shown as ‘dusty and broken’ with packs strewn on the floor.
‘Even in the furniture store, imagery is created by words like ‘reminds me of my childhood’. It brings to view a vivid picture of how children enjoy jumping on mattresses and how they can sink into the softness. But in the negative description, I show an image of children screaming and throwing pillows. Another way to clearly bring the images to life was by using words like, ‘dogs salivating’ at the food counter. It clearly brings to mind an image of cute dogs ‘wagging their tails’. In contrast, the negative description shows the dogs as ‘ferocious and frightening’. The car center in the positive description, portrays cars as ‘hungry for gas’. The negative connotation, talks about the noise and smoke produced by the same cars. In the case of the hair salon, the positive description speaks of the various styles and colors but compares it to orange ‘bushfires’ in the negative description.
Conclusion. As we can see in the above analysis, I have used the ideas of effective connotation, tones, similes, picturization and contrast to create different imagery. Although the situation is the same, the reader is made to visualize two different sets of communication.
