Catron v. McPhee

The readings for today are ones that I find to be very interesting. They do not share too many similarities but they do have a lot of differences between them. When comparing the authors Catron and McPhee, we can realize many differences. First off, the obvious difference would be gender. Catron uses personal experiences to draw in her audience and make it more relate-able. On the other hand, McPhee decides to not include any background information in his reading at all. Based on their writing skills and the languages used, I came to conclude that Catron is slightly younger than McPhee. Another aspect that the two readings differ in is their intended audience. Catron's artical was very clearly intended for a younger audience of teens and younger adults. She mentions that she is still in school, and talks about things relevant in todays society such as iPhones. She makes herself very easy to relate to and I even found myself really entertained when reading her thoughts. We can tell that she wants to keep the audience generally entertained because it is hard to keep younger people entertained now a days. McPhee however, does not do a very good job at keeping the audience entertained. I believe his intended audience was scholarly people and an older crowd. He used an abundance of difficult words that some younger people may not be familiar with. His article was much more formal than Catrons. Lastly the articles have extremely different aspects for the setting of the events taken place. McPhee does not have one consistent setting at all. He bounces back and forth between a humming birds life along with other animals. He uses them as almost a metaphor for humans. There is no specific place or time in his article, it is all very vague and general. Catron's article gives us a specific setting of a bar and then moves to a bridge. The mood is clearly set and explained and she even provides us with some personal background information. After comparing these two articles we can see that they are much more different than they are alike. I personally think that Catron's style works better and was more interesting than McPhees.