First AICE Blog

The author uses the first paragraph to show us a lot about the landscape in order for us to know how beautiful the scenery is in Kashmir. In the second paragraph, there is a lot less of this descriptiveness, and instead, it just tends to tell us about how terrible it is in Qazigund. 

The first thing that I would like to talk about is the color scheme difference between the two paragraphs. Kashmir has yellow mustard-like fields, snow-capped mountains, and a milky blue sky. From this, we can infer that the author is using this in order to show us how he truly enjoys the scenery involved within Kashmir and it makes me as a reader feel like it is a comforting natural environment that I would like to go to. On the other hand, there is no color scheme involved when the author talks about Qazigund except for in the text when it states, "Buses packed with men with red-dyed beards were going in the direction from which we had come." This shows us that the feeling they get is crowded and possibly uncomfortable with the surroundings in this place. It also talks about the dust, charcoal, and human excrement to make us cringe at the surroundings. The author may have done this in order to get the reader to feel emotive towards why Qazigund was a dirty place. 

Throughout the text in both paragraphs, the author used the first-person viewpoint in order to get their point across. I think that this was very beneficial towards describing the text in the best possible way because the first person is a lot better than the second person and third person in terms of describing to us what the author is actually thinking. This is because we get it from a first-hand experience and not from somebody else. I think that this helped the author truly get their point across of why Kashmir is truly beautiful and why Qazigund is truly not. 

Furthermore, I would like to talk a bit about the descriptiveness that the author uses to get their point across. In the first segment, words like the morning mist, coolness, and even steep rocky slopes can be used to show us how it is a place that you would want to go to because of the nature and pleasant nature that it provides. In the second paragraph, however, it talks about months of old dirt, crowded buses, and tobacco in order to make us feel like it is a place that we would not want to go to.