Style Mapping

Max Brooks' World War Z has a very scholarly formal language.  The connotation in his language is very straight forward and denotative because he is explaining the accounts of the war through his own eyes and other peoples' experiences.  There is a sense of harsh sound to his language because of the violent scary situations he and others have witnessed and been through; he is trying to get the point across so readers can fully understand what happened during this horrific time.  Unlike Max Brooks' language, Nic Sheff's language in Tweak is very different.  Sheff's blunt, common, and informal language is spoken in the first person in this book by a pothead introducing the book.  Also, the language is playful in a sense of a musical way as the narrator adds facts little by little in a lyrical-like way.  Yet, both Max Brooks and Nic Sheff are both straight forward and literal in the meaning of the words they chose.  Kenneth Kamler, M.D. in Surviving the Extremes has a scholarly language like Brooks but with a flow to his sentences like Nic Sheff.  Kalmer’s sentences are not as choppy as Sheff's, but they both have a lyrical and harmonious flow.  Yet, unlike Brooks and Sheff, Kamler has a figurative, metaphoric, and connotative language when describing the areas he's traveled to and the way he explains how he managed to stay alive in the most hazardous situations.  All three books have their similarities, but each writer has their own personality creating small differences that give away their own styles.