The Girl Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat Analysis

The Girl Who Identified Literary Techniques in Dr. Sacks’ Work
In order to be an effective science writer, one must clarify their writing and ideas and captivate and convince his or her readers in their articles. Dr. Oliver Sacks’ article “The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat” successfully clarifies, captivates and convinces readers using various literary techniques that are common to both Science writers and English literary writers.
Throughout the passage Sacks utilizes simile as a way to clarify his ideas for the reader. To clarify something means to make something clearer; in writing a strong tool used by authors to clarify is the metaphor or simile. Metaphor and simile are effective tools for clarification as they can put unclear ideas into terms that the common reader can understand. An example of this technique from the reading is when Sacks compares Dr. P’s understanding of the visual world to that of a computer. According to Sacks, “Dr. P., on the other hand, [compared to the aforementioned dogs], functioned precisely as a machine functions,” “he construed the world as a computer construes it, by means of key features and schematic relationships.” By comparing Dr. P to a computer, Sacks is able to convey the extent to which Dr. P compartmentalizes the visual world. This simile shows that Dr. P has a fragmented world view …show more content…
It does not matter if that something is a moral, a viewpoint, a fact, etc. but without this argument an article is worth nothing. Sacks is able to convince his readers by intelligently using language that convinces his readers of his point in an accessible way; he writes in a manner that sounds more literary than scholarly. This is not to say that his writing does not sound intelligent, but it sounds more approachable because it reads more like a novel than an article, thus making it more accessible. An example of this phenomenon is the following