Biography as a Literary Device

Sonia Nazario had came out with two different works of literature, one a biography and another an editorial. In the biography Enrique’s Journey, the author puts her audience through an eyes of an immigrating child traveling alone, creating imagery of a lonely and scared child, and facing many dangers along the way to see his mother.

Narazio’s editorial ‘In The Children of the Drug Wars: A Refugee Crisis, not Immigration Crisis’, she makes an effective argument claiming that many immigrant children are escaping the harsh reality of being caught up in violence and guerrilla warfare of their home communities. Although Sonia Narazio uses similar purpose to spread awareness to helpless immigrant children, she uses contrasting diction for each of her writings to output different emotions in the audience.

In ‘The Children of the Drug Wars: A Refugee Crisis, not Immigration Crisis’, Nazario uses many argumentative techniques which applies to modes of persuasion that sets the overall seriousness and earnest tone. She sets her beliefs off hand that the U.S. is facing a refugee crisis rather than an immigration crisis like most Americans believe.

Her claim appeals to authority and appeal to reason and trust by explaining crisis with backup statistics. Narazio explains how she thinks the border has mistakenly seen as an immigration crisis when all immigrants aren’t in fact running away from poverty and looking for a better life from violence. Through out the article, she often uses diction like refugee, crisis, children and violence.

She is tying these repetitions together as it all relates to one another that ties back to her claim. Narazio makes the audience to think about the children while they read these repetition words in each paragraph. She spits outs more claims about the correlation of government corruption of immigration processing and deputes it over rightful morals.

She states ‘Judges, who currently deny seven in 10 applications for asylum by people who are in deportation proceedings, must better understand the conditions these children are facing.’ She backed this up with her moral beliefs of Honduran children facing violent dangers to be considered and use humanitarian parole. Overall, Nazario is trying to reach to the audience about a serious topic basing on reasoning and matter of opinions.

In Enrique’s Journey, Nazario gives historical context of Enrique’s journey with narrative imagery to give the audience a full imagine and emotional appeal .She tries to evoke personals emotions with a child character taking on dangerous travels. She makes the audience read interesting choice of diction to see the motion of Enrique. It keeps the reader engaged as they would want be caught up on Enrique. The word choices she uses sets an intense and scary tone.

Back to evoking emotional appeals, these words create personal emotions that makes them connected to Enrique, to have a feel in his shoes. The tone overall tell the readers what Enrique felt during most of his journey. The whole biography in looks of a lonely boy trying to make it on his own, and with the given historical context, Nazario thoroughly uses diction that sets the overall tone that evokes empathy and fear in the readers.

‘The Children of the Drug Wars: A Refugee Crisis, not Immigration Crisis ‘ and Enrique’s Journey, both contrary works present similar purposes of keeping endangered immigrant children in our thoughts, but uses different writing techniques to get her point across. The biography and editorial both talk about the issues of immigration.

As the biography makes the readers to empathize for immigrant children, and the editorial makes you dig deeper into handling the immigrant issue. Both making us the audience keeping the struggles of the children in our thoughts. Yet the biography Enrique’s Journey uses narrative techniques to tell a story of a traveling immigrant boy, and the editorial ‘The Children of the Drug Wars: A Refugee Crisis, not Immigration Crisis’ uses more of an objectives perspective of the issues on immigration with facts and statistics.

Both works are effective of trying to get the audience to see the real truth of immigration all in hopes that her spread awareness to change our beliefs and put more into action.

Though both have derive on similar topics and spread awareness, the difference between the both is how Nazario uses effective techniques to evoke the right reactions. She demonstrates her claim argument well in her editorial and was able to use imagery and emotional appeals to make the story lively.