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Out Of The Dark Rhetorical Analysis Essay

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Out of the Dark is a dreamy sparsely written novel by Patrick Modiano. It follows they story of a man looking back on his time as a young drifter in Paris, where he meets a woman named Jacqueline. He eventually become involved with her and the go to live in London together. On day she disappears, only to reappear 15 year later at a party, and again in the distance. In the essay I will discuss a passage in which the protagonist, while drinking in a café, spots Jacqueline with another of his acquaintances, Cartaud, and doesn’t attempt to talk to them, but then calls after they have entered Cartaud’s office. In this passage of Out of the Dark, Modiano shows the paradox of the protagonist’s desperation for companionship coupled with his inability to achieve it though a change from calm to frantic tone, urgent syntax, and the symbolism of his inaction and his ended phone call. …show more content…
Specifically, the change in tone between the first and second halves of this excerpt, from a dreamy, detached tone in the beginning to an excited almost frantic tone in the second half. The calm tone in the first half is shown with words like “gradually” and “absently”. The frantic tone in the second half is shown with words like “jolt” and “fixed on”. These two tones are in drastic contrast to each other, and it is quite clear when the tone changes, when the protagonist noticed Jacqueline and Cartaud. This change in written tone is meant to indicate a change in how the tone of the protagonist thoughts, his mood. Seeing people he wants to engage with clearly interest him, it completely changes his mood and thinking. This clearly show he desires human interaction, that companionship interests

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