Lydia's Story

1. I think Jan Brideau's main point in Lydia's Story is to help paint a picture in peoples minds about the tragic times during Hurricane Katrina. The things that some people had to go through to survive the rushing water and how they lost their homes and everything in them. The author of this story indicated all of this in the last paragraph when she says "The enormity of the double hurricanes became clear only after witnessing so many people left without homes."

2. I think that the point of view in Lydia's Story is third-person. While reading this it gave me a bit of anxiety for "Lydia". I didn't know what was going to happen. The way that this was written made it seem like I was there, watching what was going on. It was like a cameras point of view and I was actually there with her watching what was happening.

3. In the second paragraph of the story it had so many descriptive words that it helped put you in the place where the story was being told, it prepared you for what was to come next.
Some words that Brideau used to help make the story come alive are: soft-spoken, waxed and waned, tender, extracted, devastated, raged, windowless, rushing, bulky, precarious, spurted, waded, dragging, crouched, recede, perch, budge, proud, essence, hope, determination. All of these words are great describing words that help put better images in a persons mind. They make your emotions stronger instead of saying "her tooth needed to be taken out" the author wrote "It appeared that the tooth should be extracted"

4. The tone is very serious and informative. The audience is the rest of the people in the United States who have been hearing about Hurricane Katrina just on the news. I think the author wanted to spread someones experience through the hurricanes to show people how serious this situation is. In my opinion I feel like Lydia's experience is one of the better ones, there are others who have died or others who have watched family members drown. Having that be said, I feel like sharing Lydia's story is to show that one of the lesser devastating stories is still pretty traumatic. The author could have just written from the third-person objective point of view and we wouldn't get to feel what Lydia felt when she thought she was going to down. Or how she thought she was going to drown but she got herself to think clearly.