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| By Lee Atkinson. Source: Australian Traveller |
Without a doubt, the article is targeted to oyster lovers in NSW that also like a bit of travelling.
To start the article, Lee Atkinson intrigues readers by telling them myths about oysters - Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite, emerged from the sea on an oyster shell; Roman emperors cherished them like they did with gold; Casanova was rumoured to have eaten dozens of them off the breasts of his mistress.
These stories arouse readers’ interest and put oysters on a pedestal for worship. Atkinson also starts by joking, “oysters are one of the world’s ugliest foods”, making the bivalve all more interesting.
However, Atkinson fails to weave these elements into the article and to resonate the end with the mythical beginning, making the article seem incomplete.
The writer also provides readers with some distinctive features of each farm, such as what readers can do there apart from eating oysters. But again, there are not enough significant details to distinguish one farm from the other. After reading the whole article, only two farms stand out in my mind – whose owners are mentioned or quoted in the article.
This brings us to an element that would have greatly enhanced the value of the article if it had been emphasised – the people. Why not bring the people who work there, travel there, slurp oysters there, to life? What are they like? What do they say about the farms and the oysters? Is there any anecdote?
Even though the article is lacking some sensory details, the pictures that go with it help readers to image themselves slurping the silky, creamy oysters and sipping a glass of white wine, while floating in the sound of ocean.
The article is informative but it’s short of being exceptional. I love oysters, so I’m interested in the content of the article. But the article lacks some elements that I’ve mentioned in this critique.
Ariel, you commend & criticise the article so well for its pros and cons, the world is your oyster!
ReplyDeleteGreat choice of article and nice analysis! I love oysters too and just reading your critique makes me want to have some right now!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the article seems a little incomplete and that perhaps it would have been more appealing had the author brought it back to the mythical beginning. However I also think that it also works the way it is written because the way the author mentions the mythical part does not work as an anecdote, and hence would not add any "value" to it.
And as you said, the images definitely drive the story. I love what you wrote about the images - great description...makes me want to go somewhere in the Mediterannean region