Nonfiction authors generally have a purpose for writing: To inform, to entertain, to persuade, or a combination of the three. Consider the purpose of your book. For your comment on this post, include a quotation (with the page number, as always) that shows the author's purpose for writing. Then, in a few sentences, explain what the quote reveals about purpose. Comment by Friday, 12/7.
10 Comments
Luke Carver
11/30/2018 06:27:58 am
Authors express their meaning throughout novels through the words they choose. A quote I found that deeply hit me and really expresses what he is trying to convey about this new life says "Brilliant, vibrant, ecstatic, stunning . . . I could heap on one adjective after another to describe what this world looked and felt like, but they'd all fall short. I felt like I was being born. Not reborn, or born again. Just . . . born" (Alexander 38). This quote reveals just what he can express about what Heaven feels like. There is no words and phrases big enough to show how this new life is the life. The life we are meant to be given filled with happiness and joy. This story gives only a small amount of information to the beautiful and advanced life. It's as our body is a shell that covers our real person. It's as if this is a world that trains you of evil and death to show you that love and glory is above all. The world we live in is the devil's world but God still seeps in through us. Gods world is almighty powerful and this world is not comparable at all to that of Heaven. This is only the introduction to our real life.
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Jenna A
12/3/2018 03:50:02 pm
As I begin to progress through the book, I realize how much Eben has expressed the amount of support his family has given him during this time in his life. For example, when Eben is in the ICU his whole family rushes to see him as soon as they can. Eben also explains the emphasis of people put on family in the south. People in the south express their love and appreciation for their family more than people in the north do. Eben's sister, Phyllis, made a promise there was always going to be a family member next to Eben's bed at every second. As Phyllis sits next to Eben's bed, she says "You need an anchor to keep you here, in this world, where we need you. And we'll provide it" (Alexander 37). Also, Eben responds by saying "Little did she know just how important that anchor was going to prove in the days to come" (Alexander 37). I think Eben's purpose in writing this was to foreshadow how much his family support and comfort got him through his time in the hospital. Without his family next to him I wonder if he would of ever woke back up.
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Emily Schultz
12/6/2018 08:45:56 am
While reading the story I have learned that Alexander is trying to show a new meaning and light in life. During the story we see how Eben's experiences during the coma bring new knowledge to him. Even though Eben was in his coma he is able to find positive when he writes, "Evil was necessary because without it free will there could be no growth, no forward movement, no chance for us to become what God longed for us to be," (Alexander 48). After reading that quote from the book, I am able to realize that Alexander is showing us that we can't have good without bad because we would never truly realize how good something is. You aren't able to appreciate the good if their is no bad to compare it too. We have to learn from our conflicts to help shape ourselves to the most positive way God intended us to be.
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Morgan D
12/6/2018 09:09:05 pm
The author, Eben Alexander's purpose for writing this novel is to inform. "I was encountering the reality of a world of consciousness that existed completely free of the limitations of my brains" (pg. 9). This quote shows the Alexander's purpose because it shows him informing the reader of the world he was encountering in his coma. After this quote, he continues to inform us of what he experienced in his coma. This would be a good read for doctors so they could better understand the works of the brain in a coma.
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Melissa O.
12/7/2018 02:12:47 pm
Using the quote "As vastly complicated and mysterious as the actual mechanics of brain processes are, in essence the matter is as simple as that. Pull the plug and the TV goes dead. The show is over, no matter how much you might have been enjoying it. Or so I would have told you before my own brain crashed" (Alexander 8), I found that the point for the author to write this book was to examine and explain his otherworldly experience to the reader. Though I could see that some people might see this as a way of persuading the reader into believing that he experienced God while he was in a coma, I don't believe that that is the case. The author presents the information in a way that makes me feel like he is saying that we don't have to believe his story; it will be the same either way. I believe that he is trying to inform us of his experience and entertain us through his storytelling and plot. The quote shows the path that Alexander took throughout this incident. Before, he believed that when the brain turned off, so did the person and all consciousness attached to it. The last sentence, however, shows that when he is writing this story, he does not believe that this is the case due to his own personal experience.
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Annalee A.
12/7/2018 07:44:43 pm
The authors purpose for the novel is to inform you about his experiences while he was in a coma. He said that "Once I realized the truth behind my journey, I knew I had to tell it. Doing so properly has become the chief task of my life" (Alexander 10). Once he was able to figure out what medically happened to him he felt the need to share his rare experience. There are many beliefs on what happens after death and he felt that with his experience and medical knowledge he may be able to help figure out what really happens.
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Alyssa Dorn
12/7/2018 08:12:18 pm
"I'd been in several of these ICU s as a surgeon....people just inches from death..." (pg. 25). In this quote Eben depicts, yet another detail of his medical journey throughout the book. His purpose in saying these imaginable details in the book, is to bring the reader into his journey with him. Putting small, but crucial details in the book like this show us how near death he really was. This allows us to realize the depth in which he experienced the realization of his condition, and his experiences with heaven.
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Caroline Groll
12/7/2018 08:51:10 pm
In the first part of the book, Eben wanted to educate the reader on his favorite sport, skydiving. After getting further along, he begins to develop an informative tone speaking more about how comas affect the body and everything around it. " My mind, my spirit - whatever you may choose to call the central, human part of me - was gone " (Alexander 33). No matter his experience being a neurosurgeon, Eben never saw this coming. The flu was going around at the time and he thought that was the cause of is back pain. The reader gets an in depth look at what he went through, educating the public about medical information we would have never known otherwise. It also teaches us that being unconscious doesn't just affect people physically, but mentally. Because it is human to feel for others, situations like Eben's have the ability to mentally scar anyone who cares. We get an inside look at a world most people will never experience, which is the author's main intention.
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Kendall Comer
12/11/2018 07:17:08 am
Throughout the story, Eben uses many descriptive words and phrases to get his point across to the readers. In one of his paragraphs, his statement really hit me. He really describes his experience in this sentence without even saying much about it, which is very hard to do. He states "I know what suffering looks like, and the answerless grief on the faces of loved ones who have lost someone they never dreamed they could lose. I know my biology, and while I'm not a physicist, I'm no slouch at that either. I know the difference between fantasy and reality, and I know that the experience I'm struggling to give you the vaguest, most completely unsatisfactory picture of, was the single most real experience of my life" (Alexander 41). At that point, I really felt what he was describing, also knowing what it feels like to experience grief and see it on other people. This quote definitely persuaded me even more that his experience was not a fantasy.
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ms.p
12/11/2018 10:29:07 am
late
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