Dorothy Allison - Context

                                                       

 

February 3, 2015            

                                           

                                                                  CONTEXT

                                                                   

This Rhetorical Reading Response  “Context” by Dorothy Allison, (1994) a personal essay from the Connections book describes how the author, Dorothy Allison, looks back at her past that shows the differences between privileged, rich, or financially stable people versus less fortunate or poor people.  She recalls more than 10 years ago when she decides to take her lover to meet her family.   Dorothy Allison reflects back on the long drive, the stops in different cities along the way in order to stall for time and her concerns of how her lover would react to such a diverse culture of people.  Dorothy Allison wants the readers to visualize her past and take a glance at how the Context of her life impacted her as a child and how being judged by her life style caused embarrassment.

She wrote this essay to show people that not everyone is the same and nor does everyone have the same struggles.  Dorothy’s intended audience is anybody that has been through pain and can relate to her story.  The use of the words “my lover” within the essay was used by Dorothy as reference to her significant other.  This story really gets you to use context clues when reading for better comprehension. Her word choice allows you to see her emotion that she was feeling when it came to her spouse meeting her family.

            In a time when people were so easily judgmental of each other, Dorothy Allison looks back over 10 years and beyond of her life.  She thought about how such things as  color of your skin, the types of different life styles you lived “gay or straight”, and the class of wealth you had “deprived or more privileged” caused you to be judged harshly by others.  Because of the uncertainties of what the outcome may bring to her relationship, she recalls the road trip to take her lover to meet her family and the stops along the way to stall for time.   Dorothy Allison remembers as a child being deprived and how her mean tempered step father was judged by the store owner who stared at her family as they browsed the store, with no intentions of buying anything.   Lastly, she reflects back on how she felt then and even to this day.