The text by Jen Webb provides us with an overview of the Miles Franklin award winner; ‘The Life to Come’ by Michelle de Kretser. The text effectively and accurately use the cohesive devices to bring out a succinct but clear summary of the book. Throughout the text, the reader is fully engaged and absorbed, since the text is rich in cohesive chains and cohesive devices. Through these, the text achieves the author’s intention, linking of the different parts of the text to provide a combined wholesome meaning to the reader. The text includes each of the main characters in the book whose lives are being described, and they are all linked by connectors from the first paragraph to the other subsequent sections.
The article contains repeated terms such as “characters” that emphasize the content of the novel being reviewed. Other repeated terms include; “individuals,” “life” and “selfishness.” The Repetitive terms create lexical cohesion thereby laying emphasis. For example, the characters are the primary tools that the novel employs, since the author herself is interested in the lives of characters, who are living empty lives. In the prior paragraphs, the text gives an overview of the motivation for such kind of a story, the repetition of the word life fulfills this objective accurately since the book is about life. The author of the book ‘The life to Come’ ventures into the evaluation of the lives of people who are filled with flaws and have empty lives, different from the one they desire.
The word variations such as the transition from “characters” to “characterization” creates the overall cohesion within the text. At the close end of the book, the author also uses a variation for kind and kindness; this is an attempt to depict the contrast between the expectations of the actual characters and what the reader would want them to be like. Thus, the novel is populated with different characters, which Webb’s article bring out undoubtedly.
Webb maximizes on connectors and punctuation to provide clarity within the text. For instance, when explaining about Ash and Cassie, the brackets are used to give additional information on Ashfield Tamil, without changing the content. The quotation marks are also extensively used to bring out concepts as they appear in the novel. In the same part of the text, comas are widely used to link the different sentences and clauses. Conjunctions such as “but” in the text, contrast Ash’s intelligence with his thoughtlessness, and the poor mannerism with which he treats women. The other connectors like “other,” “then,” and “next” allows Webb to list the characters in their chronology and connect the characters. The words are used at the beginning of each of the paragraphs they introduce to allow for ease of transition from the different characters. The smooth flow from one paragraph to another effectively brings out the coherence within the text.
The author also achieves cohesion within the text by application of synonymy. The character set, where Webb uses “individuals” in place of “characters” in the section that summarizes the characters that the text intends to list. The text also achieves cohesion by use of collocation. In the last paragraph, the author employs the use of words such as stories, characters, book, and novels to summarize the article. The words are mostly used together because they refer back to the same thing, in this case, they draw back to the characters under evaluation in De Kresters book. These are words you unsurprisingly anticipate to occur together because, in a way, they supplement each other.
The text is a highly cohesive and coherent article. The broad usage of the lexical and grammatical cohesive devices collectively designs the coherent chains. The usage of these is very essential as the reader can follow the content from the introduction to the conclusion. From the text, one can easily understand the message in the novel; that is how people are living their lives even though it is not the one that they desire to have, and the way struggle to cope with it, most of them not being able to enjoy their lives fully. The examples show people whose lives are empty, which the author uses to provide evidence to the message. The illustrations give an outline of the chronological order and organization of ideas in the novel being reviewed.
