Case Study on Dave Barry :: History

Case Study on Dave Barry Much can be learned about Dave Barry's personal life by reading his books, which are compilations of the articles that he has written. His articles can be seen every Sunday in the Daily Break section of The Virginian-Pilot. He is a comedy writer who often points out annoying aspects of everyday life and makes fun of them. All of the following excerpts have been taken from the book entitled, "Dave Barry is not making this up" (unless otherwise noted). He uses a lot of parentheses to add asides, which further explain what he has written. Another technique in his writing that I have noticed is personification, sometimes in the form of quotes. All of these techniques are used in the following excerpts from an article entitled, "Food For Thought." Another problem is that our ant is starting to sag, both in the front (or, in entomological terms, the "prognosis") and in the rear (or "butt"). It doesn't look like one of those alert, businesslike, "can-do" ants that you see striding briskly around. It looks depressed, like an ant that has just been informed that all 86,932 members of its immediate family were crushed while attempting to lift a Tootsie Roll. But the ants that showed up at our experiment were total morons. You'd watch one, and it would sprint up to a Cocoa Krispie, and then stop suddenly, as if saying: "Yikes! Compared with me, this Cocoa Krispie is the size of a Buick!" then it would sprint off in a random direction. Sometimes it would sprint back; sometimes it would sprint to another Cocoa Krispie and act surprised again. but it never seemed to do anything. There were thousands of ants behaving this way, and every single time two of them met, they'd both stop and exchange "high-fives" with their antennas, along with, I assume, some kind of ant pleasantries ("Hi Bob! "No, I'm Bill!" "Sorry! You look just like Bob!"). This was repeated millions of times. I watched these ants for two days, and they accomplished nothing. It was exactly like highway construction. It wouldn't have surprised me if some ants started waving orange flags to direct other insects around the area. A technique found often in Barry's articles are graphic indicators, especially italics. The above excerpt shows how he uses them to indicate exaggeration ("This was repeated millions of times") and also to emphasize words ("†¦accomplished nothing).