book

Stop Whining and Embrace Happiness

21 Pages 1508 Words 1557 Views

Writers create and/or adapt stories for the reason of informing of morals, themes, information, or entertainment. Whether these stories are adaptations of real world experiences of the author or the people that influence them, or elaborate creative worlds from the minds of the authors that wrote them, every story is written with a purpose. Using “How Dave Grohl taught me to stop whining and, against every no impulse in my body, embrace happiness” by Steve Almond as a nonfiction example and comparing His work to Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady With The Dog” to see and define the advantages and disadvantages of each type of story. When fiction writers fabricate stories the level of complexity, details, symbolism, and clarity of messages is only limited by the imaginations of the creator, while for nonfiction the meaning of the story is the readers conclusion, which may not be the same as the writers, therefor fiction being the best method of conveying meaning to readers. Steve Almond’s nonfiction essay “How Dave Grohl taught me to stop whining and, against every no impulse in my body, embrace happiness.” Tells the story of Almond, a writer for spin magazine struggles the get and later interview with Foo Fighters lead man Dave Grohl. The story is told in first person with details only given that are known by the narrator. Almond is a very cynical person, labeling classes of people based on the actions a few that he is observed and having preset judgment on the lives of people’s he’s only seen a glimpse of, almost always in a negative manner. The ways situations are interpreted are important to get an understanding the message the narrator is trying to put forth. Almond’s first impression into the world that surrounds Grohl is not a good one in his eyes “The first time I arrived at the Foo compound, some asshole in a black Beemer pulled up behind me and laid on his horn, then burned rubber into the parking lot. That was the closest I would come to interacting with Dave Grohl for the next two days” (191-192). Though Almond has yet to met Grohl, he assumes that the “asshole” (191) that he met at the Foo Fighters headquarters behaves similar to Grohl. Almond never explains why he thinks in this manner and without this understanding of why he sees his worlds in this light. Soon he gets his interview with the “semi-divine” (193) Dave Grohl believing that the famous are above the common man. To Almond’s amazement, Grohl is just your average fellow man and that just because he is rich and famous doesn’t mean he is automatically an asshole. Almond has led the reader to believe using his interpretation

Read Full Essay