You have known your family your whole life. You have experienced unforgettable memories together. But sometimes you realize that you do not actually know them. You cannot understand their thoughts and their acts. The gap between the generations can be deep and it is one of the main themes in the extract from the autobiography “Open” by Andre Agassi.
Andre Agassi is a former professional tennis player born in Las Vegas in the USA. His father, a boxer, Mike Agassi was born in Iran. But after Mike had traveled a lot and discovered the world due to his career as an Olympic boxer, he moved to the USA. The extract from the autobiography is the part about Andre Agassi’s childhood. The story takes place in Andre Agassi’s home where he lives with his …show more content…
The style is very informal and maybe a bit low. The language is very simple and looks like spoken language. The informal style is shown in his description of the grandmother where he calls her “a nasty old lady from Tehran with a wart the size of a walnut” (p. 7 ll. 1-3). He also uses words as “nagged” (p. 7, l. 12), “pecking” (p. 7, l. 17) and “squawking” (p. 7, l. 18). The informal style and the spoken language may reflect that they come from a low social class. The sentence structures are also simple with short sentences and they are mostly paratactic. There are exceptions to the informal style. When he describes his uncle he uses a metaphor, “He’s the mirror image of my father but his personality is the exact opposite” (p. 10, ll. 199-200). The metaphor contains and shows the contrast between the father and the uncle. They might look the same but their personalities are definitely not the same. He also refers to his father as “the dragon” which is a metaphor that reflects his personality. The story is told by a first person narrator. The first person narrator is the main character is the story, Andre Agassi. The readers have the impression that he is present in all the situations he describes even though it is impossible that he was present when his father was boxing in Iran. Even though the stories is told by a first person narrator it is sometimes hard to distinguish between who is talking. For example in the quote, “Where did you sleep? We slept on the dirt floor! All of us in one tiny room! In an old apartment house built around a filthy courtyard. In one corner of the courtyard was a hole – that was the toilet for all the tenants” (pp. 7-8, ll. 53-58). The dialogues with no clear speakers make it hard to read and strengthen the impression that it is written in an informal
Andre Agassi is a former professional tennis player born in Las Vegas in the USA. His father, a boxer, Mike Agassi was born in Iran. But after Mike had traveled a lot and discovered the world due to his career as an Olympic boxer, he moved to the USA. The extract from the autobiography is the part about Andre Agassi’s childhood. The story takes place in Andre Agassi’s home where he lives with his …show more content…
The style is very informal and maybe a bit low. The language is very simple and looks like spoken language. The informal style is shown in his description of the grandmother where he calls her “a nasty old lady from Tehran with a wart the size of a walnut” (p. 7 ll. 1-3). He also uses words as “nagged” (p. 7, l. 12), “pecking” (p. 7, l. 17) and “squawking” (p. 7, l. 18). The informal style and the spoken language may reflect that they come from a low social class. The sentence structures are also simple with short sentences and they are mostly paratactic. There are exceptions to the informal style. When he describes his uncle he uses a metaphor, “He’s the mirror image of my father but his personality is the exact opposite” (p. 10, ll. 199-200). The metaphor contains and shows the contrast between the father and the uncle. They might look the same but their personalities are definitely not the same. He also refers to his father as “the dragon” which is a metaphor that reflects his personality. The story is told by a first person narrator. The first person narrator is the main character is the story, Andre Agassi. The readers have the impression that he is present in all the situations he describes even though it is impossible that he was present when his father was boxing in Iran. Even though the stories is told by a first person narrator it is sometimes hard to distinguish between who is talking. For example in the quote, “Where did you sleep? We slept on the dirt floor! All of us in one tiny room! In an old apartment house built around a filthy courtyard. In one corner of the courtyard was a hole – that was the toilet for all the tenants” (pp. 7-8, ll. 53-58). The dialogues with no clear speakers make it hard to read and strengthen the impression that it is written in an informal