There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. . . . We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. . . .
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," from 1841 Essays
Welcome back! I hope your first week of school went well. It is Tuesday, a day for looking back and looking forward, as perhaps is every day. We began last week with readings and freewriting exercises. Today we will follow up on the work you composed for submission today, sharing our thoughts and comments on the topics you've addressed. We will also begin composing an essay about ourselves, an autobiographical piece structured by means of narration and description. We will explore how the things we own reveal what has been pivotal in our lives, connect us to the events and stories of our lives. Writing is for many people a very satisfying way of exploring where they have been and where they may be going, and the connections between. In Why I Write, Joan Didion says: "We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and screamed, forget who we were."
Autobiographical narratives are structured as stories about the writer himself or herself, what some have called "core stories," and they are related to our core beliefs. Such stories show an individual caught in some way, facing something troublesome that has to be dealt with or overcome in some measure. They show the author both recounting and reflecting on personal experience, making sense of it, putting it in some meaningful frame to be understood and thus communicated to a reader. Such essays may have an historical, social, psychological, philosophical, and /or religious frame, delving into the events, the changes, the lessons, and particularly the themes that have shaped the author's life. Who one has been, and is, is the central focus; the story elements–character, setting, action–serve to dramatize the life. Description is used to convey the physical characteristics of person, places, and things, to bring them vividly to life in the reader's imagination, in specific forms, colors, shapes, sounds, scents–whatever the key sensations.
By writing we become, I believe, more conscious of what we see, for in the theater of our mind we look at things, turn them over, bring them close, take a step back . . . in short we find angles of view that might have escaped us had we not stopped to contemplate the show. Writing about anything, writing well that is, demands we find some perspective to put our subject in, a stance or idea to frame it. The frame and/or thesis tells a reader what to make of our subject. Say the subject–the raw material–is some event we can't shake from memory, whether from childhood, adolescence, or our adult life. Something happened and the memory of it has been shedding a certain light on the stage (screen?) that is there in our head. This subject (event, phenomenon, fact, instance, example, case–call it what you will) must be interpreted, its shape discovered, framed, its meaning revealed (in so far as we can grasp it).
Freewrites and Triggers for Digging:
Write a Lead (the journalistic term for the beginning of a piece of writing) to a question you find interesting:
Who are You?
Who were You?
What does it mean to grow up?
How does change begin? What does change look like?
Where have we got our ideas? Which have worked for us, and which have not?
Who or what was your biggest influence?
Who or what were the bringers of joy? Who loved you? Who did not love you?
What did you fear?
Where and how did you learn to feel independent, or not so? Secure and safe, or not so?
What does the work you have done reveal about you? About others?
Body Mapping and Hand Mapping: Trace your body or your hand onto a blank canvas. Write a feeling or an aspect of your character on the different parts of your body or on each of your fingers. Use the surrounding blank area to jot memory associations–people, places, happenings.
Write a short note or letter to yourself expressing one overwhelming or harsh truth about your life. Explore the source of this truth.
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Stories–narratives–we tell them endlessly. They are built into the fabric of our lives. Our very lives are the stories we tell about them. The meaning we make of existence comes clear in the stories we tell each other, and each is one of the untold gazillions accumulating over time. Each has a point or a purpose. Each involves events, actions, a conflict set in motion, consequences, perhaps the underlying motives and feelings of those involved, the lessons and insights gained through the experiences recounted.
The following paragraphs are shaped as narratives:
A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition–a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next–that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.
We imagine the action that took place in the event referenced above, but the writer does not show us the exploding bomb, the fire and smoke and devastation all around. The wails of the living, and the dying.
Narration does more than suggest, it shows action:
When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick–one never does when a shot goes home–but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to go there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly sticken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time–it might have been five seconds, I dare say–he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skywards like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.
–George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"
Notice in the selection above how Orwell works the elements of sight, sound, movement in space, and deep feeling into the account, revealing only at the last line he has been lying down, firing up at the huge animal whose final collapse reverberates in our imagination.
Consider well the opening paragraph, as it should serve to draw the reader in to the story subject. Choose concrete, specific words to relay setting and the emotions at the heart of your piece. The following is the start of a roughly 5000 word biographical essay about the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who defected to the West in 1974, and returned at age 50 to pay homage to his roots and dance for all those who had in some way shaped him.
It is raining, and Mikhail Baryshnikov is standing in a courtyard in Riga, the capital of Latvia, pointing up at two corner windows of an old stucco building that was probably yellow once. With him are his companion, Lisa Rhinehart, a former dancer with American Ballet Theatre, and two of his children–Peter, eight, and Aleksandra, or Shura, sixteen. He is showing them the house where he grew up. "It's Soviet communal apartment," he says to the children. "In one apartment, five families. Mother and Father have room at corner. See? Big window. Mother and Father sleep there, we eat there, table there. Then other little room, mostly just two beds, for half brother, Vladimir, and me. In other rooms, other people. For fifteen, sixteen people, one kitchen, one toilet, one bathroom, room with bathtub. But no hot water for bath. On Tuesday and Saturday, Vladimir and I go with Father to public bath."
I open the front door of the building and peer into the dark hallway. Let's go up," I suggest. "No," he says. "I can't." It is more than a quarter century since he was here last.
from "The Soloist," by Joan Acocella
Most of our stories are of events not so unusual; they are of events more homely, domestic, ordinary. These events are no less potentially interesting and dramatic. An important strategy is to narrow your account down to the one or several key events and not to swamp the telling by including too much or anything that does not work to make your dramatic purpose clear, flowing, and forcefully delivered. Description of key places and people draws a reader in to a story. Dialogue used sparingly may also heighten the sense of immediacy and reality. Dialogue should reflect real conversation, minus whatever does not move the action forward or reveal character. Simple words and short sentences work best.
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The following excerpt is from Mark Twain's Autobiography:
As I have said, I spent some time of every year at the farm until I was twelve or thirteen years old. The life which I led there with my cousins was full of charm, and so is the memory of it yet. I can call back the solemn twilight and mystery of the deep woods, the earthy smells, the faint odors of the wild flowers, the sheen of rain-washed foliage, the rattling clatter of drops when the wind shook the trees, the far-off hammering of woodpeckers and the muffled drumming of wood pheasants in the remoteness of the forest, the snapshot glimpses of disturbed wild creatures scurrying through the grass–I can call it all back and make it as real as it ever was, and as blessed. I can call back the prairie, and its loneliness and peace, and a vast hawk hanging motionless in the sky, with his wings spread wide and the blue of the vault showing through the fringe of their end feathers. I can see the woods in their autumn dress, the oaks purple, the hickories washed with gold, the maples and the sumachs luminous with crimson fires, and I can hear the rustle make by the fallen leaves as we plowed through them. . . .
Here is another Twain excerpt: I still kept in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal.
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There is a minute and twenty-one seconds left on the clock in the 2002 Super Bowl, and the score is tied. The New England Patriots have the ball on their own 17-yard line. They are playing against the heavily favored St. Louis Rams. They have no time-outs left. Everyone assumes that the Patriots will kneel down and take the game into overtime. That, after all, is the prudent thing to do. “You don’t want to have a turnover,” says John Madden, one of the television broadcast’s commentators. “They just let time expire.”
The game was never supposed to be this close. The Rams had been favored by fourteen points over the Patriots, which made this the most lopsided Super Bowl ever played. The potent Rams offense–nicknamed the “Greatest Show on Turf”–led the league in eighteen different statistical categories and outscored their opponents 503 to 273 during the regular season. Quarterback Kurt Warner was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player, and running back Marshall Faulk had won the NFL Offensive Player of the Year award. The Patriots, meanwhile, had been hamstrung by injuries, losing Drew Bledsoe, their star quarterback, and Terry Glenn, their leading wide receiver. Everyone was expecting a rout.
But now, with just a minute remaining, Tom Brady–the second string quarterback for the Patriots–has a chance to win the game. Over on the Patriot’s sidelines, he huddles in conversation with Bill Belichick, the Patriots’ head coach, and Charlie Weis, the offensive coordinator. “It was a ten-second conversation,” Weis remembered later. “What we said is we would start the drive, and, if anything bad happened, we’d just run out the clock.” The coaches were confident that their young quarterback wouldn’t make a mistake.
Brady jogs back to his teammates on the field. You can see through his facemask that he’s smiling, and it’s not a nervous smile. It’s a confident smile. There are seventy thousand spectators inside the Superdome, and most of them are rooting for the Rams, but Brady doesn’t seem to notice. After a short huddle, the Patriots clap their hands in unison and saunter toward the line of scrimmage.
Tom Brady wasn’t supposed to be here. He was the 199th pick in the 2000 draft. Although Brady had broken passing records at the University of Michigan, most team scouts thought he was too fragile to play with the big boys. The predraft report on Brady by Pro Football Weekly summarized the conventional wisdom: “Poor build. Very skinny and narrow. Ended the ’99 season weighing 195 pounds, and still looks like a rail at 211. Lacks great physical stature and strength. Can get pushed down more easily than you’d like.” The report devoted only a few words to Brady’s positive attribute: “decision-making.”
The quick decisions made by a quarterback on a football field provide a window into the inner workings of the brain. In the space of a few frenetic seconds, before a linebacker crushes him into the ground, an NFL quarterback has to make a series of hard choices. The pocket is collapsing around him–the pocket begins to collapse before it exists–but he can’t flinch or wince. His eyes must stay focused downfield, looking for some meaningful sign amid the action, an open man on a crowded field. Throwing the ball is the easy part.
–How We Decide, Jonathan Lehrer
The most famous outbreak of plague in Europe was the Black Death of 1348. But plague was a constant presence, flaring up erratically, unpredictably, irresistibly, throughout the late Middle Ages and the Renaiisance. And Venice offered almost ideal conditions for its spread–it was a warm seaport with high humidity, just the kind of place where the black rat flea (Yersinia pestis) flourishes. This flea preferred its original host, but it was so lethal that it killed the host population, proving more deadly to rats than to humans. Only when it had killed the available rats did it settle for biting humans–carried into proximity with them upon clothes or other items. These items came from ships where the fleas had ravaged the rat (and some of the human) population on board. Since only the flea spread the plague, contact of human with human was not of itself contagious (though this was unknown at the time). That is why only one person in a home might be killed, and why people tending those already plague-stricken in the lazaretti usually survived. Isolation was an effective preventative only secondarily, if the flea was kept from other humans until it had time to die itself.
Because the plague struck so mysteriously, killing and sparing in patterns little explicable, the fear of it could be apocalyptic, especially when numbers of the unnoticed fleas struck large parts of the population. The plague of 1575 to 1576 killed 51,00 in Venice, almost a third of the population. Titian was one of its victims. Many saw in these catastrophes the punishment of an angry God, and turned to passages like Psalm 38.3 (37.3 in the Vulgate text used by the Venetians): “There is no health in my flesh, because of thy wrath: there is no peace for my bones, because of my sins.” Penitential services and public scourgings were meant to placate the Lord, and vows of reform were backed with promises to raise new altars or churches.
–Garry Wills, Venice: Lion City
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Some paragraphs, particularly ones descriptive or narrative, have no directly stated topic idea, but the idea is implied, the purpose of the paragraph clear. What is the implied topic idea in the following examples?
Every year the aspiring photographer brought a stack of his best prints to an old, honored photographer, seeking his judgment. Every year the old man studied the print and painstakingly ordered them into two piles, bad and good. Every year the old man moved a certain landscape print into the bad stack. At length, he turned to the young man: "You submit this same landscape every year, and every year I put it on the bad stack. Why do you like it so much?" The young photographer said, "Because I had to climb a mountain to get it."
–Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
We would go to the well and wash in the ice-cold, clear water, grease our legs with the equally cold, stiff Vaseline, then tiptoe into the house. We wiped the dust from our toes and settled down for schoolwork, cornbread, clabbered milk, prayers and bed, always in that order. Momma was famous for pulling off the quilts to examine our feet. If they weren't clean enough for her, she took the switch and woke up the offender with a few aptly placed burning reminders.
–Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Hanging in the trees, as if caught there, is a sickle of a moon. Its wan light scatters shadows on the snow below, only obscuring further the forest that this man negotiates now as much by feel as by sight. He is on foot and on his own save for a single dog, which runs ahead, eager to be heading home at last. All around, the black trunks of oak, pine, and poplar soar into the dark above the scrub and deadfall, and their branches form a tattered canopy overhead. Slender birches, whiter than the snow, seem to emit a light of their own, but it is like the coat of an animal in winter: cold to the touch and for itself alone. All is quiet in this dormant, frozen world. It is so cold that spit will freeze before it lands; so cold that a tree, brittle as straw and unable to contain its expanding sap, may spontaneously explode. As they progress, man and dog alike leave behind a wake of heat, and the contrails of their breath hang in pale clouds above their tracks. Their scent stays close in the windless dark, but their footfalls carry and so, with every step, they announce themselves to the night.
Despite the bitter cold, the man wears rubber boots better suited to the rain; his clothes, too, are surprisingly light, considering that he has been out all day, searching. His gun has grown heavy on his shoulder, as have his rucksack and cartridge belt. But he knows this route like the back of his hand, and he is almost within sight of his cabin. Now, at last, he can allow himself the possibility of relief. Perhaps he imagines the lantern he will light and the fire he will build; perhaps he imagines the burdens he will soon lay down. The water in the kettle is certainly frozen, but the stove is thinly walled and soon it will glow fiercely against the cold and dark, just as his own body is doing now. Soon enough, there will be hot tea and a cigarette, followed by rice, meat, and more cigarettes. Maybe a shot or two of vodka, if there is any left. He savors this ritual and knows it by rote. Then, as the familiar angles takes shape across the clearing, the dog collides with a scent as with a wall and stops short, growling. They are hunting partners and the man understands: someone is there by the cabin. The hackles on the dog’s back and on his own neck rise together.
Together, they hear a rumble in the dark that seems to come from everywhere at once.
– The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival, by John Vaillant
Notice that well written paragraphs develop adequately the subject; that is, there is sufficient detail and enough examples to make a persuasive case for the idea(s) expressed. Often, too, in descriptive and narrative writing you will notice the pattern of arrangement is either spatial (the eye moves from point A to B and on to C and D in clear, coherent direction) or chronological (time is tracked either from a beginning point on forward, or backward, or some mix of the past, present, and future). Sometimes both the spatial, as in description of a setting or scene, and the chronological, as in an account of actions in time, are at work. Look again at the examples above. How are they arranged?
Writing Assignment #2, due week 3:
In 500-700 words explore some element(s) of your life and identity in terms of both the past and present. Use some concrete means, some material possession or thing--be it only an image of a person, place, or object--to make the connection between your past and present. You will want to present this memento, as it were, and use it as a means of developing and providing structure to the essay. You, your life, your history, identity concerns, interests, etcetera are the actual focus of th essay. Remember, you want to create a relatively sharp portrait of yourself and some revealing moment or event that serves the narrative element. Begin in present tense, and create a clear sense of present setting or place.
The opening lines and/or paragraph should at least hint at the central idea. Supporting paragraphs should develop the promised topic by narrative and/or descriptive means. The conclusion should underscore your main idea and bring a sense of finish.
Title the essay, double space the lines, indent for each paragraph.
The following is a list of topic suggestions:
*A now-I-know-better experience.
*An experience that shows something of what people are made of, or of what you are made.
*An experience that shows the power of love, anger, desire, fear, etcetera.
*An experience that brought about a significant change in you.
*An experience that reveals the kind of family you have.
*An encounter with a "stranger" you can't now forget.
Also, read the opening paragraph or "lead" of several essays or feature stories from periodical literature or anthologies. Identify or describe the distinguishing features of those you find interesting and effective at pulling the reader into the writing.
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Sentence Type 1: The simple sentence has one subject and one predicate, the base of which is always a verb or verb phrase. And in English, the subject usually comes up front, followed by the verb and any other predicate elements. This subject-verb combo is called a clause, an independent clause, because it expresses a grammatically complete, stand-alone thought.
Jesus wept. Nuts! (that is nuts, this is nuts, he is nuts, etc., where that, this, he are the subjects and "is" the verb, with "nuts" describing the situation or person, as an adjective or subject complement).
Style has meaning. Choices resonate. What is the subject in each of the two preceding sentences? Style and choices, of course. And the verbs? Has and resonate, of course.
The house is surrounded by razor wire.
He and I fight too often. We cannot be good for one another.
After spring sunset, mist rises from the river, spreading like a flood.
From a bough, floating down river, insect song.
He drove the car carefully, his shaggy hair whipped by the wind, his eyes hidden behind wraparound mirror shades, his mouth set in a grim smile, a .38 Police Special on the seat beside him, the corpse stuffed in the trunk.
They slept.–intransitive (takes no direct object of the verb)
The girl raised the flag.– transitive (the flag is the object of the verb)
Inverted order: Lovable he isn't. This I just don't understand.
Tall grow the pines on the hills.
A fly is in my soup. With expletive (which delays the subject): There is a fly in my soup.
Sentence type 2: The compound sentence has at least two independent subject and verb combinations or clauses, and no dependent clauses. Each independent clause is joined by means of some conjunction or punctuation that serves to join:
Autumn is a sad season, but I love it nonetheless.
Name the baby Huey, or I'll cut you out of my will.
The class was young, eager, and intelligent, and the teacher delighted in their presence.
The sky grew black, and the wind died; an ominous quiet hung over the whole city.
My mind is made up; however, I do want to discuss the decision with you.
Sentence Type 3: The complex sentence is composed of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.
Many people believe that God does not exist.
Those who live in glass houses should not cast stones.
As I waited for the bus, the sun beat down all around me.
Any of the seven short coordinating conjunctions can be used before the comma to join independent clauses: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so: they can be remembered as FANBOYS.
*A semi-colon (;) must be used before adverbial conjunctions joining independent clauses: however, indeed, therefore, thus, in fact, moreover, in addition, consequently, still, etcetera.
Sentence Type 4: The compound-complex sentence has at least two independent clauses and one dependent clause.
As I waited for the bus, the sun beat down all around me, and I shivered in my thoughts.
Because she said nothing, we assumed that she wanted nothing, but her mother knew better.
She and her sister Amina are dancers, and they work at parties around town when they can.
While John shopped for groceries, two armed men forced their way into his home; fortunately, his wife and children were away.
Examples of subordinating conjunctions––those used in from of dependent clauses–– include the following: because, that, which, who, when, while, where, wherever, though, as though, although, since, as, if, as if, unless, et al .
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