Irreconcilable Dissonance

       In the 2010 edition of The American Best Essays, one of the writers, Brian Doyle, wrote the Irreconcilable Dissonance and had it originally published in the Oregon Humanities. He is a Canadian Writer and often writes based on his experiences and is known for his exceptional stories and writings for young children. As the author of Irreconcilable Dissonance, he wrote about the causes and present feelings of a divorce between a husband and a wife, provoked by the simplest things that even lead to lies or alter the attitude between a couple. For instance, he wrote about certain things that are not dramatic reasons for a divorce, instead they are disagreements or common things such as picking your nose, forgetting to pay the bills, or just getting tired of your spouse. Therefore, Brian Doyle’s purpose for writing this essay was to make couples aware that the idea of divorce is always present throughout a marriage or relationship because of the chance that either the husband or wife may want it to happen. As a result, the audience who Doyle most importantly wrote this essay for was those individuals who are married, are happily living with their spouse at the moment, and don’t believe that minor incidents or problems may lead to a divorce. Furthermore, in order for Brian Doyle to get his point across, he had to structure the context of his essay by setting different examples. For instance, Doyle wrote his essay by incorporating himself in it, setting reasons for which people get divorced, writing about what types of divorces he has read or heard about, and listing some feelings that come into action by experiencing or seeing a divorce.  More overly, the use of certain rhetorical devices such as imagery allowed the audience to picture the conflicts or problems that affected individuals towards a divorce, and the use of similes allowed the audience to know how a divorce can affect a person differently in terms of how they feel and react. Therefore, I do believe that Brian Doyle successfully accomplished his purpose, because he didn’t just write about a divorce story, he set the different scenarios for which divorces occur, and made these situations feel real to the audience by including daily necessities and responsibilities, over by which the couples disagreed on.

(Brunette and Brad Pitt, Jetss)