The [Awkward] Car

Harry Crews’ style creates an awkward mood in his personal essay “The Car”, due to problems with transition and tone. Crews’ transitions at first flow, but half way through they become much weaker. The transitions become chronological and near the end he randomly shifts back to the first car he had. However, these weak transitions are not the main source of the awkwardness. The main source of this awkward mood is the very detached and almost superficial tone. This tone contrasts greatly with the emotional and significant events that occur in his life. Crews mentions in an uncomfortable manner and in a detached tone “a young lady” and the vague events that occurred in his car with her. But even more significantly Crews manages to maintain this composure when he writes about losing both of his cars. Overall, Crews’ tone causes an awkward reading and weakens his sincerity and ethos. With the weakened ethos, as a reader, I question his logic in completely getting rid of his car. Yes, he obsessed over the car, especially painting it, but that does not establish enough evidence for completely trashing his hobby of cars.  I too have had obsessions with games and tv. Yet, instead of throwing away the TV, I took a break from it for awhile, and then returned to watching tv when the shows were no longer so significant to me. Crews weakens his character by ending his essay in this manner, as I question his true intelligence, because it seems that he only saw two options: get rid of the car, or remain forever overly obsessed with it.