Lopez Write Up

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez26oct26,1,3435455.column

Katrina comparisons are a different class of wrong

A quick summary of this story is he is comparing the differences between the Katrina evacuation and the San Diego wildfire evacuations, and how people are thinking these ones are going easier and how San Diego has more people be evacuated (they are wrong obviously, according to the story). He is also being critical of all political parties, saying, "Republicans are better at evacuations than Democrats. This seems to be particularly true when the Republicans in question can flee down the highway in Yukons while Democrats wait for buses trapped under water," & "And I hate to break up the back-slapping party President Bush, Gov. Schwarzenegger and various local officials staged Thursday, but the equipment shortage in the state's wildfires was indisputable."

This story has just about all Murray's narrative ideas = Character (obviously his style of writing and his sarcasm at points), Dramatic Action (what is going on…the wildfires), External and Internal Dialogue (external being the quotes, and internal being his one word sentences and his other thoughts, reactions, and whatnot), Place (San Diego vs. Katrina), Person (him, and all the other people in the story), his (Lopez's) Point of View, his (Lopez's) Narrative Voice, not much Exposition (because he is writing with an incredible amount of bias), Scene (San Diego, New Orleans, etc.), some Chronology (the time of the wildfires and how it is a current affair as well as the Katrina ordeal), and a Theme (the theme is summed up in the top of the article, “So much is different, and so many people want to overlook the differences”).

Lopez does a great job putting all the Narrative Themes in this piece, and the piece is not even very long. One part I really like about his writing, just like some other authors do, is how he breaks up graphs by using one word sentences as other graphs, it kind of makes things flow better and really emphasizes a point. It is really interesting to see how he uses long quotes, and a good amount of them, and doesn't just make it a news story, but is also making it a reading, narrative-type of a story.