Carbone

The multigenre piece carbone seems to be mainly created to try to give the reader a feeling about what it's like to live with Alzheimer's. Instead of listing off facts and figures about the disease, it tries to give people the feeling of what it's really like to have, or to live with someone who has it; through a series of short blips, the reader is exposed to many of the difficult problems facing a family dealing with Alzheimer's. The audience is people like you and me, people that don't know much about the disease and have no idea what it's really like to deal with.

I think that in this piece it's the way all the genres are put together that's so effective. The blips of story are a great way to reach out to the reader. You start reading one of the stories, and it seems like a regular bit about a family; then you're hit with yet another example of how Alzheimer's affects people's lives. Then there's a break between stories, filled up with a poem or crossword puzzle or the like, followed by another story that hits you in the same way. It really is a great way to suck the reader into the world of Alzheimer's. There's a story to give you a jolt, then another piece to distract you away from the first story, then another story to give you a jolt again now that you've forgotten the feeling from the last one.

One issue that I have with the piece is that it's very long. I like how repetitive it is; making the same point over and over is very effective in this particular argument, as it really hammers the ideas home to the audience. However, by about halfway through the piece, I feel as though the point has already been made. The rest seems really like overkill, and tends to bore the reader and cause them to lose interest instead of adding to the argument at all.

Overall, the piece is very well done. The use of different genres and repetition is very effective, it just goes on for a bit too long.