The Wreck Of Time Analysis

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Stephen Gadaleta Brooke Falk 101: Expository Writing – LW December 7th, 2009 Adaptation Leads to the Truth When telling a story, more often or not, the truth is what counts. If it is revealed that a story is not real, many would be disappointed. The emphasis on reality and truth are both key ideas in Annie Dillard's, "The Wreck of Time" and Tim O'Brien's, "How to Tell a True War Story." Dillard writes with a vigor, she outlines many different statistics and does a lot of number analyzing, in order to convey her idea. Dillard does not write to entertain, she writes to awaken readers to thoughts and ideas they previously ignored. O'Brien takes a different approach to convey his idea, he writes of war stories. In order for O'Brien to convey…show more content…
If someone is not emotionally involved in a scenario that individual will feel nothing no matter what the circumstances, simply because it does not concern them. By means of statistics and numbers Dillard makes the point that people will only respond to a personal account of how an event or experience affects them emotionally. A statistic affects an individual when it becomes important to that individual. When a statistic is discussed in regards to the collective, it will have no effect. However, if numbers are broken down to the local level then there will be an emotional out cry. When a relative passes, it becomes a tragedy in the family followed by days of mourning. The grief is felt throughout a rather small group of people on average ranging no more than a hundred being affected. The death of a single person is the starting point of a statistic in the making. What many do not realize is that statistics are being formed and brought about every second of our lives. Due to a lot of statistics being number crunching and playing out different scenarios many people dub this numbers unimportant. For instance, something that is overlooked during this time is that every second a person is dying somewhere in the world. Thousands of individuals have passed away in an hour of your life. It is not that these facts are hard to believe, it is more so the idea that they are hard to comprehend the magnitude of the seriousness. Dillard quotes the cold hearted dictator, Joseph Stalin, when she writes, "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic," (Dillard 170). This universal sentiment sheds light on the way in which humans ignore the many deaths in their society and stray away from the truth when they decide that it is not important. This is why Dillard quotes that a single

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