09 Oct Patterns of Development: An Overview

Order Instructions

Read the following paragraphs. State the method or pattern of development used in each paragraph. Explain your answer.

 

Example explanation: The paragraph “Western Man” is an example of narration. The purpose of narration is to . . . and this paragraph states the following narrative details.

 

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(1) “Western Man”

 

Western man did not enter the California desert until the end of the eighteenth century, 250 years after Coronado brought his soldiers into the Zuni pueblos in a bewildered search for the cities of Cibola. The earliest appraisals of the land were cursory, hurried. People traveled through it, en route to Santa Fe or the California coastal settlements. Only miners tarried. In 1823 what had been Spain’s became Mexico’s, and in 1848 what had been Mexico’s became America’s; but the bare, jagged mountains and dry lake beds, the vast and uniform plains of creosote bush and yucca plants, remained as obscure as the northern Sudan until the end of the nineteenth century.

(2) “The Invasion”

 

The invasion of locusts was swift and terrifying. They came like dive bombers out of the west. They came by the millions with the rustle of their wings roaring overhead. They came in waves, like the rolls of the sea, descending with a terrifying speed, breaking now and again like a mighty surf. They came with the force of a williwaw, and they formed a huge, ominous, dark brown cloud that eclipsed the sun. They dipped and touched earth, hitting objects and people like hailstones, but they were not hail. These were live demons. They popped, snapped, crackled, and roared. They were dark brown, an inch or longer in length, plump in the middle and tapered at the ends. They had transparent wings, slender legs, and two black eyes that flashed with a fierce intelligence.

(3) “Defining a Word”

 

Hint: Read the essay carefully. The Title and Topic Sentence may be a bit misleading.

 

In defining a word, the dictionary editor must work according to the cards or not at all. To define a word, then, he places before him the stack of cards illustrating that word; each of the cards represents an actual use of the word by a writer of some literary or historical importance. He reads the cards carefully, discards some, rereads the rest, and divides up the stack according to what he thinks are the several senses of the word. Finally, he writes his definitions, following the hard-and-fast rule that each definition must be based on what the quotations in front of him reveal about the meaning of the word. The editor cannot be influenced by what he thinks a given word ought to mean.

(4) “Today’s Computer Technology”

 

Today’s computer technology is rapidly turning us into three completely new races: the superpoor, the rich, and the superrich. The superpoor are perhaps eight thousand in every ten thousand of us. The rich – me and you – make up most of the remaining two thousand, while the superrich are perhaps the last two of every ten thousand. Roughly speaking, the decisions of two superrich people control what almost two thousand of us do, and our decisions, in turn, control what the remaining eight thousand do. These groups are really like races since the group you’re born into often determines which group your children will be born into.

(5) “Impact of Technological Advances”

 

Technological advances have social, cultural, and economic consequences, often unanticipated. When a solar-powered water pump was provided for a well in India, the village headman took it over and sold the water, until stopped. The new liquid abundance attracted hordes of unwanted nomads. Village boys who had drawn water in buckets had nothing to do, and some became criminals. The gap between rich and poor widened, since the poor had no land to benefit from irrigation. Finally, village women broke the pump, so they could gather again around the well that had been the center of their social lives.

(6) “Sadie and Maude” (a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks)Links to an external site. – Optional for 10 extra points

 

Maud went to college.

 

Sadie stayed at home.

 

Sadie scraped life

 

With a fine-tooth comb.

 

She didn’t leave a tangle in.

 

Her comb found every strand.

 

Sadie was one of the livingest chits

 

In all the land.

 

Sadie bore two babies

 

Under her maiden name.

 

Maud and Ma and Papa

 

Nearly died of shame.

 

When Sadie said her last so-long

 

Her girls struck out from home.

 

(Sadie had left as heritage

 

Her fine-tooth comb.)

 

Maud, who went to college,

 

Is a thin brown mouse.

 

She is living all alone

 

In this old house.