Week 4_2/6/16_Determining Audience

The book that I checked out from the library is called “No Longer at Ease” by Chinua Achebe, and was published back in 1960. It is clear that there is a lot of history and storyline to the text as it has writing on the sides of the pages and looks slightly worn. In the summary of the book it says that it “…tells the story of an African tragically under pressure from a changing world,” (Achebe n.p.). It was a donation to the Saint Louis University Pius Library by the Thomas R. Knipp family. The book is of pretty average size (12.5 x 19 x 2.75 cm), and seems like a doable read. The novel has 169 total pages; however, the font is average size or slightly larger than normal. The font itself, while it does not say in the back of the book, it a very pleasing and easy to read text. It has slightly larger looking margins, about 1.5 inches only on the outside of the text toward the cover. The author breaks the writing up into chapters with nineteen total. The novel does have some illustrations present in it, the first one being on the cover page, a black and white drawing of any angry looking face. There is then an image on the last page of every chapter. They are all done in the same style, in black and white, representative of people in a more modern style of art.

In my opinion, the audience of the book is someone who is not as rhetorically advanced and needs more guidance when reading a chapter book or novel. For example, the novel is broken down into relatively short chapters, so that the information is easier for the reader to comprehend, and to give the reader more frequent breaks while reading. The text size also indicates who the reader might be by how large it is, making it easier for someone to read it. The fact that there are large margins, and that the size of the book itself is on the smaller side also makes it easier and not so overwhelming when picking up the book to begin reading. Despite the relatively plain cover, the illustrations in the book make it more appealing and easier to follow along as the pictures add and can be used to explain the storyline. One also gets the impression that the book is for an older generation because of the language used in the summary and the time when it was published. Based on the set up of the novel, the fact that there are chapters and specific illustrations, it seems that this book is more fictionally based. Therefore, the audience would be someone who wants to read a story about African tribes and tragedy, but is not as rhetorically advanced as some, and needs it to be in more simple terms for the to be able to easily understand.

Achebe, Chinua. No Longer at Ease. Great Britian: Bookprint Limited Kingswood, 1960. Print.

(PR 9387.9 .A3 N6 1960)