The Common Life

In Scott Russell Sander’s essay “The Common Life,” Sanders reflects on his own personal experiences with place and community and expresses the importance of community to each person’s happiness and to the world as a whole.  By using diction strategically in a way that expresses to the reader that Sander’s has an understanding of his environment and the community in his environment in a manner that only someone who is comfortable with those surroundings could understand,  he is able to create a feeling of home and family through his style of writing.  As Sanders starts off the essay he describes his surroundings using adjectives that would not be commonly placed with the nouns he is describing.  For example when he says it was a “delicious afternoon” or when he describes his daughters as having “eager dark eyes and shining faces.”  By using these syntax combinations to create a style of writing that expresses his comfort with his surroundings he is able to emphasize the overall importance of community and the impact that “a place created and filled by our lives together” has on each person’s individual happiness.  Sander’s carries on this style of writing throughout the story by using personal examples to emphasize his point of encouraging community.  The style he uses creates a lively tone that exemplifies how community has personally impacted his life and how it has created happiness for him individually.