A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis | Analytical Essay

Indledning
“Hillbilly Elegy. A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” published 28th of June 2016, starts off with J.D Vance stating that he finds it strange that his book exists, because he thinks he is too young to write a memoir and because he has not done anything exceptional.

Vance talks about when he graduated from Yale, which was a big achievement considered the family he came from.

He tells about his parents struggling with addiction and that he was mostly raised by his grandparents. After looking at the statistics, he explains that children like him often would struggle growing up.

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Uddrag
J.D. Vance has a combination of formal and informal English, in his writing style of the introduction to his book.

His writing style is often informal, as you can see in this quote “The coolest thing I’ve done, at least on paper, is graduate from Yale Law School, something thirteen-year-old J.D. Vance would have considered ludicrous” (ll. 6-7)

In this quote he uses the word “cool” which is a very informal word, this gives the text a kind of relaxed tone.

He also uses contractions like “I’ve”, first-person and personal tone that defines the sentence as informal.

Vance occasionally uses a more personal approach “You see, I grew up poor, in the Rust Belt, in an Ohio steel town that has been hemorrhaging jobs and hope for as long as I can remember.” (ll. 14-15)

Here J.D. addresses directly to us readers using the words “you and I”. This gets us involved with his story, simply by using terms such as “you see”.

This phrase is therefore informal in writing style. There is, nonetheless, also examples where J.D. Vance uses a formal writing style “Nobelwinning economists worry about the decline of the industrial Midwest and the hollowing out of the economic core of working whites” (ll. 76-77)

This is an example of his use of formal language as it includes a long sentence, third-person use, varied vocabulary, and a neutral tone.

In general, the intention with this introduction in to persuade readers to read the actual book.

However, Vance has a more specific intention with the book, and that is to show people how he grew up hopeless and poor in America.