Essay on Close Reading

Submitted By yylee
Words: 1474
Pages: 6

The Innocent Man
We live in a world where we face challenges everyday. The daily obstacles we face just make us stronger each day to face the real hurdles of life. In the article, it is so clear to me that
Dyer has been pushed to extents that have forced him to rise up to the world and take charge of his life. After all, what does not kill you only makes you stronger. In his article, “Red Flags”,
Curtis talks about the life of Dyer, a football celebrity who had achieved high peaks as a rising athlete and delved to the bottom due to false charges and stereotypical racial injustice.
“Red Flags” as quoted from the article are “character concerns” that are affiliated with sports players. To my knowledge, I understand that red flags are like warning messages that can cause setbacks in professional sports careers. It is seen that throughout his career, Dyer has received a couple of “red flags”. Whether or not he deserved any of those warnings is a completely different question. It is also stated in the article that these red flags are not concrete warnings but potential signs. Curtis believes that Dyer deserves another chance as he was falsely portrayed as an offender by the media. When red flags are raised there are no degree of warnings.
Red flags in Dyer’s profile are analogous to switches, on or off, nothing in between. When there is a warning, people tend to avoid the fallen athlete; Dyer got released after failing his drug test.
The causes of the red flags are worth more investigations in Dyer’s behavior than red flags themselves. He left there, too, amid reports of marijuana use and gun possession. .. He and Fitz
Hill, the school’s president, were tweaking Dyer’s image for a return to college football
(Curtis, 1).

The sentences soften the condemnation of Dyer using marijuana and his gun possession.
Curtis brilliantly chose the word “too” followed by “tweaking”, making Dyer’s misbehavior trivial and negligible. “Too” casually addresses that it’s just an add-on information, which will be good if the readers know. Subsequently, the author polished Dyer’s image by using the word
“tweaking”. This implicitly implies that Dyer’s image is originally positive while just a little tuning needs to be done for an even better Dyer brand. Instead, the words “again” and
“rebuilding” would make the sentences sound completely different. They provoke readers to criticize and also emphasize Dyer’s second offense in gun possession and rebuilding his image is the only way to improve his reputation. The author tactically emphasizes on Dyer’s good character as he prefers to look at the glass to be half full.
Dyer is inexperienced and a pat seeker. He enjoys people adoring him. “it’s like you’re taking a puppy home. He’s been out, so he just gravitates to you. He just wants to be hugged” (Curtis 4). A man who has the traits of a naive little puppy. Curtis masked Dyer’s image with puppy personality, cute, innocent and vulnerable to the media. This masked personality has provoked the public to defend Dyer from any media attack. After all, he is just a young talented football player in the stage of maturing where extra care and encouragement should be given.
Although Dyer has the traits of puppy, he has demonstrated his ability to avoid real trouble.
This just comes to enforce the fact that Dyer is an innocent man by nature and due to circumstances, he had to act such to avoid possible predicaments.
Being raised in Little Rock Christian, Dyer was taken in by random people who were willing to clean and feed him. This gesture of kindness definitely impacted him at that tender age. Growing up in such a situation, Dyer have a soft spot at his heart for he has gone through

many hardships of life. Despite all that, he appreciates the love that he was showered with. As an adult, it is obvious that Dyer wants appreciation from his coach and is willing to leave his team when he realizes that he is treated