HELP ASAP PLEAS In this activity, you’ll read “In Praise of Slacking” and demonstrate a deep understanding of the text. You’ll note evidence that shows how the author uses diction and syntax to achieve a particular effect.

Part A
Read this excerpt from the argumentative text “In Praise of Slacking.” In the table, record three quotes (words, phrases, or sentences) and explain how each quote demonstrates the way that diction and syntax affect tone, voice, and mood.
Summer in the United States is a season often celebrated as a time to embrace the joy of doing less. But why do less only in the summer? As the lives of many renowned authors show, doing less is an ideal we should embrace throughout the year.

French essayist Michel de Montaigne is one example. He famously “retired” from his public life as an important government official to sit in the tower of his estate. There, Montaigne spent his days reading and thinking. This “lazy” lifestyle allowed the author to write his well-known essays, which are praised the world over.

Consider also the American writer and thinker Henry David Thoreau. His unusual career contains only occasional periods of traditional work to support his reflective years living in an isolated cabin near Concord, Massachusetts. This behavior prompted some of his fellow residents to suspect him of laziness. But Thoreau’s many works of writing and his intensely documented records underscored that he was indeed ambitious. Like Montaigne, Thoreau used time away from traditional work not to escape life but to embrace it.

The American poet Walt Whitman was also suspected of being a slacker. When he was fired from the Aurora, a New York newspaper, the management publicly accused him of laziness. During his days as a newspaperman, Whitman was fond of taking long walks in the middle of the day. Whitman’s mental and physical wanderings may not have seemed productive to others. Yet they nurtured the imagination of a man still widely hailed as one of America’s best poets.

Whitman’s words express the value of doing less in life. For example, he writes about the experience of gazing lazily at clouds and wonders if life can get any better: “What is happiness, anyhow? Is this one of its hours, or the like of it?—so impalpable, a mere breath, an evanescent tinge? I am not sure—so let me give myself the benefit of the doubt.”

Whitman wrote these words in his journal on October 20, 1876. They are comforting proof that mental breaks can work wonders long after summer has passed. The only trick, as another summer ends, is to make time for them.

Source: National Endowment for the Arts