Use of personal experiences

Your assignment also asks you to focus on how the writer uses personal experiences when you analyze and comment on David Joy’s essay “Digging in the Trash”.

David Joy uses personal experiences to construct hidden argumentation. Instead of stating directly that poor people who end up badly are victims of their circumstances, he uses stories to show this to the readers.

The first personal experience he uses is a story about his grandfather. Through this story, Joy shows readers that his grandfather’s alcoholism and sometimes unpleasant attitude was also a result of living a very tough life: “His survival was a matter of stubbornness and anger. His survival was a matter of looking bitterly at the hand he’d been dealt and saying, ‘Sorry, boys, but I ain’t done playing.’ ” (ll. 73-77). The story also mentions the grandfather staying in a dysfunctional relationship, because his partner helped him stay away from alcohol: “One of his deepest truths was that he was a horrible alcoholic and he knew how bad he was without her.” (ll. 48-50).

The author suggests that we should consider why domestic violence and childhood neglect happen: “…he wouldn’t tell you stories about his old  man kicking him out on the side of the road or giving him presents only to horse-trade them away soon as he was drunk…” (ll. 94-97). In other words, he is trying to show that his grandfather was a victim of his circumstances and this is why he acted in less a...