Question

In the following excerpt from "My Brother Paul," how does Dreiser blend narrative and nonfiction techniques to paint a vivid picture and develop his brother’s character?
It is useless to try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I can best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the following:

One night as we were on our way to the theater there stood on a nearby corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were supposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had an eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, so inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for the suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist combining his intended charity with a touch of ridiculousness.

“Got any pennies?” he demanded.

“Three or four.”



Part E
Why do you think Dreiser wrote this piece? What is he attempting to say by writing about his brother?

Answer 1

Toward the beginning of this passage, we will in general observe the teller (Theodore Dreiser) intelligent on the character of his sibling. The passage at that point changes to the account narrating of an event that clears up and bolsters this reflection. because of this can be a bit of exposition and Dreiser is yarn genuine people and their encounters, he makes it wonderful that it's about impractical to utilize words to catch the substance of what his sibling was extremely similar to. He respects portray an occurrence that enables the perusers to get a higher comprehension of his sibling and his temperament. Dreiser depicts the occurrence as though he's recounting an anecdotal story. He gives spellbinding insights about the environment and furthermore the character (his sibling) inside the scene, somewhat like a scene from a touch of fiction. He draws in on his authentic information of his sibling's attributes and uses this transient, genuine episode to help perusers to see his sibling and the manner in which he was liberal, thoughtful, and a shade bit naughty. He utilizes illustrative dialect to include profundity to the episode and keep up perusers' consideration.