One of the first things I noticed about Wheeler: he uses a lot of adjectives. His listed descriptions of the different hands that have passed over the Church foyer’s pews are heavy on the descriptions (the reachy grabby hands of babies, the bony hands of the aged, the strong cold hands of pallbearers). Even though we discussed in class that this may be inadvisable because it doesn’t sound like real speech, Wheeler’s voice for storytelling feels appropriate with his descriptions.  He often uses repetition  in his descriptions in a way that sounds more like poetry than prose at times. The music he keeps playing in the background, what sounds like a soft hymn, carries Wheeler’s story along like a light fog, creating an ominous, but barely perceptible atmosphere. Wheeler’s pauses are rarely silent; they tend to leave “just the already-established ambience of the scene for a few seconds or more” (Biewen). His pauses come between introductions of new images in scenes, allowing the listener to allow the scene to enter their minds before having a new one revealed; he stops briefly between sentences when he describes his mother’s vomiting in the night, then describing her looking for a bottle of pills, and then himself, hearing her and then falling back asleep. Each image is one swift scenic punch after another, and the pauses between them are meant not to build suspense, but to allow a moment for the listener to appreciate what has been said.  When Wheeler tells of leaving when everyone is praying for his sister, and he says, “I’d be the only one to blame” the pause that follows is one that feels as though Wheeler has stepped  away from the audience and is taking an entirely introspective moment of guilt and shame.

Although Wheeler’s voice never actually sounds the way I’d assume he’d be speaking in real life, every he said sounded natural. Nothing sounded scripted, and there were moments where he swallowed audibly, as if the emotions were real. As we spoke about in class, Wheeler seemed to be speaking as the best version of himself; with flawless descriptions and perfectly placed pauses. In fact, Wheeler’s diction is far enough from normal speech that it begins to sound more and more performance-like. At times, Wheeler’s essay begins to sound more like a spoken word piece or slam poem.