Tone Analysis of "Every 23 Minutes"

Essay by bccocxHigh School, 11th gradeA+, December 2004

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In "Every 23 Minutes," a non-fiction essay written in current time, the author, Linda Weltner, expresses her feelings toward the deep matter of drinking and driving. Weltner uses a reflective, disappointed tone through the use of rhetorical questions, repetition, and syntax.

In Weltner's essay, she expresses her feelings to the reader with syntax. Intense sorrow is expressed through short statements like "A Wedding" succeeded by "Followed by a funeral." The deep feeling is voiced to the reader with lines like "A heart breaks." The reader then starts to realize how important this matter is and drinking and driving could kill anyone at anytime, especially someone that is loved.

Through repetition, Weltner shows the emphasis that someone could die any minute. "Every 23 Minutes" is stated multiple times, making the reader feel that the matter is very serious and repeats itself often to enforce more threat that it could happen to anyone.

Weltner also repeats short, to-the-point, sentences like "A dream ends" and "A void opens." These statements make the ready really think, Could I be killed by someone that drinks and drives?

Through the use of rhetorical questions, Weltner makes the reader really think how serious the matter of drinking and driving is. Weltner says such things as "Every 23 minutes, who dies?" to tell the reader how many different people die every 23 minutes. It could be someone's mother, wife, husband, or someone that could be loved by someone else. "...someone that somebody loves" even enforces this point that everyone that does die in a drinking and driving related accident is usually loved by someone. "How could you bear it" is asked towards the reader signifying how painful it is when someone that is loved dies is gone and that words can't even describe...