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Detecting Author’s Purpose| J-1
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the following paragraphs:
Television has an important role in political campaigns. Consider
the distressing matter of television commercials. Imagine being
the media adviser explaining it all to Abraham Lincoln. “Yes,
there is a marvelous machine that lets you make campaign
speeches to all the voters across the nation at once. Let experts
package your message into brief advertisements. The ads will
be shown along with ads for breakfast cereal.”
Running for president through a torrent of slickly packaged halftruths reduces the political dialogue to a commercial proposition. “You’ll like this car better than that one” or “that president
will stand up to our enemies.” The setting cheapens, and the
oversimplification cheapens. Deciding which president to vote
for becomes less important than deciding what product to use
to wash your kitchen floor.
The purpose of the author of the above paragraphs is quite clear. He is critical
of the use of short television commercials to “sell” Americans on a particular
candidate. It is obvious that the author thinks this situation is degrading, not
only to the candidates but also to the voters.
Very often, however, authors do not state their purpose. It is up to you, the
reader, to try to detect it. Detecting the purpose of the author will add greater
meaning to what you read, and make reading more enjoyable.
It is important to remember that the author’s purpose may not always be what
it seems. It may appear that the author had one purpose in mind for writing,
when, in fact, the real purpose was entirely different. On the surface, for example, a humorous story about the crazy goings-on inside a business office may
seem to have been written strictly to entertain the reader. Yet a closer look may
reveal that the author’s real purpose was to expose a hopelessly inefficient
system in which there are too many unnecessary divisions and subdivisions,
and too many promotions based on seniority rather than merit.
Often an author has more than one purpose for writing. In 1965 Truman
Capote wrote the famous book entitled In Cold Blood, a stunning and impeccably documented account of the grisly murder of a Kansas farm family by two
ruthless young men. Capote’s reason for writing seemed to be to furnish readers with a terrifying, true-life murder mystery that they would never forget. But
his purposes went deeper than that. In addition to showing the workings of two
criminal minds, the author used part of the story to comment unfavorably on
capital punishment. Both killers were sentenced to hang, and Capote wanted
the reader to think about the fact that one of the killers did not die immediately.
Capote believed this to be cruel and unusual punishment in a supposedly civilized nation such as ours.
Copyright © 2013 Taylor Associates/Communications,
Inc.
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Recognizing Author’s Purpose
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Level J-1
E
Student Name_______________________________________________________________
Read the paragraphs and then answer the questions that follow.
1. Soon you will be competing with millions of others in the great American job market.
Here are some of the facts that you will have to know as a job-seeker. First, you
will have to offer a possible employer useful job skills. Next, you may have to compete with others offering better job skills or more experience. Finally, you will have
to assure an employer that you are the confident, dependable, creative worker the
company needs.
The author’s purpose
a.
b.
c.
d.
seems a bit obscure.
is quite obvious.
is definitely not stated.
is not what it seems on the surface.
Is there any particular statement of the author that supports your answer?
Yes No
If the answer is “Yes,” underline that statement.
2. After the space bus landed on the strange planet, the children in Mr. Rolly’s science
class began taking their first tour of Earth. Everything was so different. They even had
to wear air helmets in order to survive in the poisoned atmosphere. The first things
they noticed were the brown trees and grass that crumbled to dust when touched.
“Are the streams full of dust too?” asked one of the students.
“No,” said Mr. Rolly. “But they’re stagnant because factories were allowed to dump
millions of tons of waste into them. If you were to drink the water, you would get
sick.”
Next, they came to an area filled with large box-like objects. These were the buildings
of Earth, now mere towering ruins preserved in the dust. Soon they spotted many
small mounds, and wondered what they were. Mr. Rolly explained that they were
called cars, and that the creatures of Earth used a liquid substance called gasoline
to power them. When gasoline burned, poisonous substances were released into the
air.
“Why did they let this happen to their planet?” asked one boy.
“Perhaps they were just stupid,” said Mr. Rolly sadly. “They just went on polluting
everything.”
One of the girls shivered, “I don’t like this place,” she said.
The author’s purpose is to
a. show what life will be like in far-off generations.
b. point out the difficulties we constantly endure as residents of planet Earth.
c. offer a real-life look at space travel of the future.
d. dramatize the tragic consequences we face if we do not change our way of life.
Continued
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Level J-1
E
Student Name_______________________________________________________________
3. When considering a career, stop and take a good, honest look at yourself.
If you are to choose a career that will suit you — and to which you will be suited
— you will need to realistically examine what you can offer to the workforce and what
you may reasonably expect to get in return.
You might begin by figuring out a kind of “balance sheet” of yourself. On it you would
list each of the following: your educational background and preparation; your special
skills, aptitudes, and creative talents; your strengths and weaknesses of character,
especially those that are fundamental to the world of work; your own personal
goals.
The author’s major purpose is to
a. show how very different people are.
b. prove that certain types of people get better jobs than others.
c. show people how to go about finding the job that is best for them.
d. tell people about the variety of careers available in today’s job market.
Copyright © 2013 Taylor Associates/Communications,
Inc.