Joan Didion and Dave Barry are both excellent writers with full command of the English language. However, they differ in both their purpose and styles when writing. In her essay “John Wayne: A Love Story” Didion writes, “As it happened I did not grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues…they have never been John Wayne…” Didion’s purpose in writing the aforementioned section was to express the distinction between other men and the legend of a man that was John Wayne. To this end, she employs a complex sentence with many participial phrases which she skillfully intertwines with an extended metaphor to further her point. The style is reflective and introspective, and …show more content…
The ethos Barry employs serves to further his purpose by testifying that he, too, struggled with the same issues the writer is, which makes him qualified to give advice on the subject. Similarly, the authors differ in their methods of using prior experiences. Barry incorporates prior experience as follows, “The movie was called North to Alaska but I can tell you nothing about it as I spent the time wondering whether it would be necessary to amputate my right arm, which was getting no blood flow…” Barry uses his earlier experiences primarily as a point of humor, employing a complex sentence in order to further add to the comedy of the scene through experiential evidence. Didion, by contrast, uses her previous experiences as learning opportunities or memories to reflect upon, as evidenced in her analysis of Wayne’s influence, “And in a world we understood early to be characterized by venality…he suggested another world…a place where man could live free.” Didion draws upon her prior experiences as points of analysis. Through her usage of the compound sentence, she furthers her purpose of analyzing Wayne’s lasting influence on her life through a supposition about the moral and ideological values that Wayne