So Long Ago

I found "So Long Ago" by Richard Bausch to be a very engaging and pleasurable read. His diction was superb and complex, and the stories melancholic tone really helped to convey its message to the reader. I found what Mr. Bausch had to say about memory and how we treat big events in our life to be very profound, and his bringing up of how our contemporary selves look on our actions in the past was very relateable to me. His attention to detail in regard to the events in his life was also quite impressive, and gave a clear image of what he was describing.

There are numerous instances where Mr. Bausch uses pathos to appeal to the reader. Such an instance includes "At the time, I wasn’t old enough to understand the difference between the humoring of children, which is a large part of any talk with them, and truth-telling," where Bausch gets readers to feel and understand the narrator's life as a child and how naive he was. Another instance of Pathos is where the narrator questions his son about joyful events in the past, only to learn that he does not remember them, resulting in his son being unaware "Innocently, simply, without the slightest trace of perplexity or anything of what I was feeling, which was sorrow," conveying how the narrator is disappointed his son has forgotten periods of joy between the two.  Bausch also uses Pathos to convey the narrators  feelings in regards to his Grandmothers funeral and seeing her dead body, saying how h  "stood there and looked with a kind of detached, though respectful silence at this, aware of it not as death, quite, but death’s signature" in response to seeing her dead body. 

Mr. Bausch's diction and pathos make the story very powerful and moving, and conveying both innocence and maturity in different time periods. The story's similarity to my own past experiences makes it all the more meaningful to myself.