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GUIDE TO READING

Analyzing Profiles

As you read the selections in this chapter, you will see how different authors create a compelling profile.

Brian Cable anxiously visits a mortuary and ends up in the embalming room.
Jon Ronson investigates the “sport” of competitive eating.
Amanda Coyne captures Mother’s Day in a women’s prison.
Gabriel Thompson goes undercover to learn about harvesting lettuce firsthand.

Analyzing how these writers organize and present the information they gathered from firsthand observations, interviews, and background research; adopt a role as spectator or participant-observer; and convey a thought-provoking perspective on the subject will help you see how you can employ these same techniques when composing your own observational profile.

Determine the writer’s purpose and audience.

Researching a profile gives writers a great deal of information about their subject, enabling them to impart their special perspective or insight into its cultural significance. Profilers seek to enlighten and entertain their audience, creating a fascinating, and occasionally disconcerting, portrait of other people at work or at play. When reading the profiles that follow, ask yourself questions like these:

What seems to be the writer’s main purpose?

to inform readers about some aspect of everyday life that they rarely get to know intimately?
to give readers a behind-the-scenes look at an intriguing or unusual activity?
to surprise readers by presenting familiar subjects in unexpected ways?
to bridge the distance between outsiders’ preconceptions and others’ experience?

What does the author assume about the audience?

that readers know nothing or very little about the subject?
that their expectations will be challenged?
that their interest will be piqued?
that they will be intrigued by the writer’s ideas or what people do or say?

Assess the genre’s basic features.

Basic Features

Specific Information

A Clear, Logical Organization

Writer’s Role

A Perspective on the Subject

As you read the profiles in this chapter, analyze and evaluate how profile writers employ the genre’s basic features. The examples that follow are drawn from the reading selections that appear later in this Guide to Reading.

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SPECIFIC INFORMATION ABOUT THE SUBJECT

Read first to learn about the subject. Much of the pleasure of reading a profile comes from the way the profile interweaves bits of information and insight into a rich tapestry of lively narrative, arresting quotations, and vivid descriptions.

Notice the describing strategies of naming, detailing, and comparing. These strategies help readers visualize places and people and create a dominant impression:

Naming

Detailing

Comparing

We passed into a bright, fluorescent-lit “display room.” Inside were thirty coffins. . . . Like new cars on the showroom floor. . . . (Cable, par. 18)

In this example, using the detail fluorescent-lit helps to clarify what Cable means by bright and also reinforces the simile comparing the coffins on display to cars in a showroom. For more on describing strategies, see Chapter 15.

Think about the different kinds of information, or topics, the writer touches on. In profiling a mortuary, for example, Cable identifies different jobs (funeral director and mortician), explaining the training people undergo and the tasks they perform, and also presents facts about the cost of funerals and ideas about cultural attitudes toward death.

Consider the sources of the information and how the information is presented. Some of the information comes from the writer’s firsthand observation, but much of it comes from interviews and background research. To present this information, profile writers rely on three basic strategies—quotation, paraphrase, and summary:

QUOTATION	“We’re in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, along with another funeral home whose owners’ names are Baggit and Sackit,” Howard told me, without cracking a smile. (Cable, par. 14)
PARAPHRASE	We ask one another where we are from, how long a drive we had. (Coyne, par. 3)
SUMMARY	I came across several articles describing the causes of a farmworker shortage. The stories cited an aging workforce, immigration crackdowns, and long delays at the border that discourage workers with green cards. . . . (Thompson, par. 5)

Profiles in academic contexts—for class and scholarly publication—are expected to cite their sources formally. See, for example, Cable’s use of parenthetical citation and a works cited list, But general interest publications seldom include documentation beyond links to other Web pages. Ask your instructor whether you should cite your sources, and if so, what academic style you should follow. See Chapters 24 and 25 to learn about the conventions for citing and documenting sources in two popular academic styles.

A CLEAR, LOGICAL ORGANIZATION

Determine whether the profile’s basic organizational plan is narrative, as a story occurring over time; spatial, as a guided tour of a place; or topical, as bits of information organized into categories. Look for cues like these that help orient readers.

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Narrative Cues

CALENDAR AND CLOCK TIME

On my first day. . . (Thompson, par. 6)

It’s a ten-minute contest. By minute six, . . . (Ronson, par. 10)

ACTION VERBS

I bend over, noticing that most of the crew has turned to watch. (Thompson, par. 8)

Joey decided that night to dedicate his life to the pursuit. He became obsessed. . . . (Ronson, par. 14)

TRANSITIONS OF TIME

While the other adults . . . (Coyne, par. 2)

First, I’m handed . . . Next comes the gancho. . . (Thompson, par. 6)

Spatial Cues

PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES

. . . the main lobby, adjacent to the reception room . . . (Cable, par. 6)

We are standing in front of the double glass doors that lead to the outside world. (Coyne, par. 20)

DIRECTIONS

. . . here in the visiting room . . . (Coyne, par. 1)

To my left, in the distance . . . To my right. . . (Thompson, par. 2)

LOCATIONS

. . . visiting his mother in prisons in Kentucky, Texas, Connecticut (the Pit of Fire) . . . (Coyne, par. 12)

Topical Cues or Logical Transitions

SEQUENCE	In addition, the burial site . . . (Cable, par. 24) Once. . . (Coyne, par. 18)
EMPHASIS	Even, or especially, if that world is a female federal prison camp. (Coyne, par. 4)
CONTRADICTION	But thinking about the next seven weeks doesn’t benefit anyone. (Thompson, par. 2) On the contrary, his bitterness . . . (Coyne, par. 13)
CAUSE	Because of their difference . . . (Coyne, par. 11)
CONCLUSION	So I am to be very careful and precise . . . (Thompson, par. 12)
SPECULATION	Perhaps such an air of comfort makes it easier for the family to give up their loved one. (Cable, par. 24)

Also notice whether the writer uses a different organizational pattern in particular passages. For example, Cable’s profile of a mortuary follows a spatial plan overall: beginning with him across the street from the building, moving first into the reception room, then into a chapel, the display room, and finally the embalming room. But much of the information within this general structure is presented topically: for example, he uses his position in the display room to relate information about caskets—what they are made of, their price range, the cost of funerals and how it has increased over time, and so on.

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To learn more about cueing the reader, see Chapter 13.

THE WRITER’S ROLE

Think about the role the writer assumes in relation to the subject:

As a spectator, the writer takes a position, like that of the reader, looking in on the people and their activities. Although profile writers sometimes refer to themselves using the first-person pronoun “I” to place themselves in the scene and tell us what they are thinking, they often maintain the role of a detached observer:

I found the funeral director in the main lobby, adjacent to the reception room. Like most people, I had preconceptions about what an undertaker looked like. Mr. Deaver fulfilled my expectations entirely. Tall and thin, he even had beady eyes and a bony face. . . . Indeed, he looked like death on two legs. (Cable, par. 5)
As a participant-observer. the writer participates in the activity being profiled in order to acquire insider knowledge. Participant-observers rely on the first-person pronoun “I” to place themselves in the scene and tell us what they are doing there, as this example from Thompson’s investigative profile of his work as a lettuce picker illustrates:

I stand up gingerly. It’s only my third day in the fields, but already my 30-year-old body is failing me. (par. 2)

A PERSPECTIVE ON THE SUBJECT

Think about the writer’s perspective on the subject. What is the main idea or cultural significance of the profile? To understand the writer’s perspective, it might help also to consider the writer’s main purpose, the audience to whom the profile was originally addressed, as well as where, when, and how (in what medium) it was published.

Identify any passages where the perspective is communicated to readers either

by telling—saying explicitly what the writer thinks about the subject:

Death may be the great leveler, but one’s coffin quickly reestablishes one’s status. (Cable, par. 17)
by showing—creating a dominant impression through description and narration:

. . . the mothers take deep whiffs from the backs of their children’s necks. . . . They hold them tight and take in their own second scent—the scent assuring them that these are still their children and that they still belong to them. (Coyne, par. 2)