The semicolon

Use a semicolon in place of a period to separate two sentences where the conjunction has been left out. View rule here, http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/semicolons.asp

Looking for work

This is an essay about a nine year old boy who lives in a poor area of fresno. Influenced by television he spends his leisure time outside to earn money, in an attempt to have class and fit in with the nineteen fifties ideal of what a family should be.

As this author paints the picture of his youth, he illustrates the status of his family and neighboring families. Influenced by TV he thinks he their family were to behave more like the family he sees on television they might be accepted by the white community. In addition he realizes that wealth is an important fact to this picture and immediately sets out to gain wealth and achieve his vision. Though he may not have luxuries like they do on TV, he is really quite happy and has the time of his life despite not having the nineteen fifties model family.

This author likes to use casual terms like nicknames, and leave a carrot out there for the reader while he switches directions and comes back to it. He also used a framing technique which was also quite intriguing. 

The boy is captivated by the TV images and what they portray. Seeing some value for himself--which is wanting to be embraced by the white community. He sets out to achieve his ends of obtaining this ideal. While he thinks he wants this to feel good, the author shows you that this boy already has the time of his life. He's free to play outside, engages with friends and siblings, and is able to pursue his idea of happiness each day. The author does illustrate his motive's for the appeal of such a happy family image, where the children aren't beaten, or wanting for anything, they have air conditioning and they aren't sneered at. While his siblings don't feel it would make any difference, he pushes on living his dream while working toward it.

foreign affairs political comic

Punctuation rule on dashes

Dashes--use a pair of dashes, not just one, to mark the beginning and end of a word group that needs emphasis. An em dash is the width of an m. Use an m dash sparingly in formal writing. In informal writing, em dashes may replace commas, semicolons, colons, and parentheses to indicate added emphasis, an interruption or an abrupt chance of thought. You can find this here http://www.grammarbook.com/puncuation/dashes.asp

Foreign affairs political comic

Foreign trade political comic

What we really miss about the 1950's

Literally the author is evaluating how people view the nineteen fifties. When the man was the bread winner, the mom was the home maker, and the children attended high school with bright future's ahead. The author illustrates that while some of this is true, when compared with the surrounding era's, much of it was just an ideal spoon fed the the american people through TV, radio, and government pamphlets. While this era had a lot of appeal, given to be seemingly safer and a more opportune time, it was also unbalanced to the opposite of our current era. 

Analytically the author uses a large amount of research in the form of studies and statistics, to compare our era's, and reveal the contrast of the fifties to now, and to help illustrate perspective.

I feel that while the author demonstrates the appeal of the fifties, she is very clear to point out the flaws of the era. While the time may have pushed ideals as listed above, people were trying to live up to them, but the portrayal was more myth than reality. The people were also ignorant of crime rates dull to sexism, and racism. The ideal might be nice, but it's not realistic.