Delanie Wampler

Ms. Burgoon
AP Lang&Comp.
4/27/14
1997 Essay #1
In an autobigoraphy titled Fault Lines, Meena Alexander compares her fractured identity to
someone cracked with fault lines. Her fractured identity is due to her lack of connection to one
place. She is fractured, or has fault lines from having too many identities put into one body. In
the passage she conveys her personal torment and feelings of discontent.Through the uses of
language such as rhetorical modes, stylistic elements, and other literary techniques Meena
Alexander is able to portray her dislocated past.
The three rhetorical modes Alexander uses in her writing are ethos, pathos, and logos.
Through these devices she is able to depict her personal feelings accurately. Her ethical
standpoint or ethos is that a person who spends too little time in too many places growing up
with too many languages will not know who they truly are. They will have an identity crisis
because they lack strong roots, which is why Meena states, I have sometimes longed to be a bug
on a tree, blooming in due season, the tree trunk well rooted in a sweet, perpetual place.(44-46).
Her emotional position is that she feels tormented by a lack of past and inner conflict. She
doesnt feel like a united person. Her logical view of her personal identity crisis is that she is
truly the definition of a fault, in that she lacks something, and she is cracked by multiple
migrations.
In the autobiography Fault Lines, the elements of tone, audience, and purpose are employed.
The tone of the autobiography based on the passage is depressed, conflicting, and questioning.
The audience that this autobigraphy is most likely targeted to is people who moved around alot
when they were growing up and any adults that feel as though they have a fractured or broken
identity. The purpose of the autobiography was to convey a personal message of self-evaluation.
It gives insight to people who are having the same inner struggles as Meena Alexander. She
wants to write down what shes feeling inside because she wants to share those feelings,
knowing that time does not come fluid and whole into her trembling hands (50).
Along with the rhetorical modes and elements of style used in Alexanders writing, other
rhetorical devices are also used. The diction of the passage is made up of descriptive and
question words like Where, How, and What. The syntax includes many questions,
definitions, and vivid descriptions. Alexander uses simile to portray what shes feeling when she
says, After all, my life did not fall into the narratives I had been taught to honor, tale that closed
back on themselves, as a snake might, swallowing its own ending: (32-34) and also when she
describes her perfect life to flower bud blossoming outside her mothers house (40-43). She uses
a metaphor when she compares her past that never was to a choke hold(47-48). When she
describes her mothers house she employs the use of imagery to paint a picture for readers.
In Fault Lines, an autobiography, Meena Alexander uses elements of language to convey her
fractured identity. She connects her fractured identity to her lack of strong roots and compares
hereslf to a fault mass, cracked by multiple migrations(80). She describes in depth the internal
struggle and confusion she battles everyday because she fails to find a sense of unity within
herself. She is able to tell readers that she is still trying to figure out who she is, so that they can
understand what kind of person she is. Through, rhetorical modes, elements of writing style, and
other rhetorical strategies Meena is able to give her writing meaning, and accurately depict her
identity dilemma.