I feel my most successful assignment was my final essay, Essay 4. While I am happy with the work I produced for the other three, Essay 4 stands out in particular because it was the culmination of my experience writing essays in this class. I had the most knowledge of what works and what doesn’t when going into Essay 4, and I believe it served me well. An assignment I could have done better on was the Week 11 discussion board. It had completely slipped my mind during the week, and unfortunately I submitted it a couple days too late to receive credit. If anything, it serves as a reminder to keep my assignment schedule and time management more organized. Something I learned this semester was that the amount of research and effort you put in will always be reflected in the work you produce. If you give an assignment your full attention and constantly try to one up yourself, you will feel much more fulfilled and stress-free when it’s time to submit.
Jakob Yacker
I believe “The Wife” by Emily Dickinson is a poem that uses Carver’s idea of “commonplace but precise language.” Raymond Carver describes this idea as something that’s seemingly ordinary, but given its precise context and usage, suddenly holds a lot of weight behind it. A quote that I feel best matches this is when Emily Dickinson writes, “She rose to his requirement, dropped the playthings of her life to take the honorable work of woman and of wife.” On the surface, the quote seems rather straightforward. Without the context of the poem, it simply seems like the woman leaves behind unimportant and childish parts of her life when she gets married. However, given the context of the poem, the stanza can be interpreted as sarcastic. The parts of her life that are brushed off as “playthings” could be hobbies or people that are deeply important to her; yet, she no longer has time for them after becoming society’s ideal housewife. The words and phrases in the quote are fairly simple, but plenty of meaning left to be interpreted lies underneath.
I believe Fairy Tales aid in the development of a child’s mind. The article I read from List A was “Sex and Violence in Fairy Tales” by David Isaacs. While the article touches on how some older fairy tales have darker tones and hidden meanings, Isaacs states that they still carry important lessons for children. He believes that fairy tales help children digest new discoveries from the world and internal struggles. From List B, I chose “Tell Fairy Stories to Your Children” by Jane Stafford. The article makes it clear that fairy tales rely heavily on how the parent chooses to tell them. Things that could be considered negative are due to a poor choice/delivery from a parent. As for the fairy tales themselves, they can be used to strengthen the relationship between a child and their mother/father. As long as whoever’s telling the story follows the rules listed in the article, fairy tales can be some of a child’s happiest moments. These articles caught my attention because I feel they work hand in hand. A parent dictates if or how to deliver an element such as violence in a story, and can teach their child important lessons when doing so correctly.
A specific idea from “A Good Man is Hard to Find” that I would’ve missed if I hadn’t read the article was the idea of violence being used for a character’s “moment of grace.” Typically, I would expect violence to be used for an adrenaline-pumped action scene or a simple victory/loss. However, O’Connor says that violence is “strangely capable of returning (her) characters to reality.” It was interesting to see this idea fleshed out when I reached the end of the story, because it completely shifted my view of the grandmother. I viewed her as a desperate old lady whose biggest concern was her own safety; although, the use of violence gave her a moment of clarity that redeemed her. Being moments away from death, she finally felt actual sympathy for The Misfit, whereas before she was just trying to convince him to let her live. One would think she simply wanted to capitalize off The Misfit’s emotions, but O’Connor makes it clear that her final words were her genuine return to reality.
I believe I am improving in my ability to read poetry. Even with some improvement, I still catch myself rereading specific lines multiple times to fully grasp the sentence. More specifically, the older poems (such as Shakespearian poems) are less direct with their meaning. The sentence structure used in its lines is typically outdated today, which makes it read less fluently. At the same time, I believe this has prepared me to read Oepidus the King. One example of a poem by Shakespeare that uses rather indirect sentence structuring is “Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” A line such as “I have seen roses damasked, red and white, but no such roses see I in her cheeks…” doesn’t have the same flow as modern writing; therefore, it forces you to pay more attention to its meaning. Oepidus the King uses very similar language and sentence structuring; hence, I have experience to aid me in fully understanding each line. .
I am proud of the essay that I submitted, because it paid off to take the risk of a very bold stance. Usually, I would’ve tried to be more positive in my review of the student essay; however, I took the chance to be critical and very outward with the mistakes I noticed. When I saw that the quotes used in the sample essay weren’t actually in the secondary source, I kept questioning myself if I had been mistaken. I ended up taking the gamble and making a statement about the quotes being incorrect, and it helped my essay in the end. Something I learned to improve on was to use quotations when referring to one word, rather than apostrophes. The main takeaway I got from the experience was that I should keep taking more risks with my writing. For every future writing assignment, I also know now how important it is to hit every single point from the rules/guidelines in my essay. Most importantly, I learned how to make a strong statement with specific research to back it up.
While an AI generated essay on “The Lesson” by Toni Cade Bambara would be about socio-economic and broad social issues, I found the narrator, Sylvia, and the start of her growth to be more interesting. In the beginning of the story, Sylvia found Miss Moore to be an annoyance. She hated the way Miss Moore looked, and the constant lessons she would try to teach the children. Sylvia called the teachings boring, and would much rather have gone to the pool. I interpreted this as Sylvia normalizing the way life was, and not caring about Miss Moore’s lessons. Once they headed to the store, Sylvia’s behavior changed. Once the realization hit her that people spend more money on pointless toys than her family spends on life essentials, she finally started giving it some thought. However, it wasn’t a complete 180 from before. She shut down when Miss Moore specifically asked her what she learned, and didn’t wanna hear Sugar realizing it too. It’s almost as if Sylvia didn’t want to believe what she learned, and was taking it out on the people around her. After all, Sylvia was a child, and growth takes time. I found the first step in her path to seeking a better life to be the most fascinating part, as it’s subtle change was realistic. As for the title of the essay, I think “The First Stage of Grief” is fitting, because Sylvia was essentially in denial of her reality even though she knew better.
My understanding of the prewriting assignment for Week 1 is that it’s an activity to get us familiar with the Sample Student Essay, as well as the criteria that was set for it. For the activity, we were tasked with reading “The Most Handsome Drowned Man”: the short story that the Sample Student Essay was based on. After that, we also read an overview of the story. As for step three, we were linked a multitude of guides to look at. Such guides included a PowerPoint on thesis statements, a PowerPoint on inserting quotations, an illustration and video on formatting, and lastly an MLA citation guide. Once we finished looking at each of those guides, we moved onto reading the directions given for the Sample Student Essay. Finally, we were tasked with reading the Sample Student Essay itself. I believe the purpose of the prewriting assignment is to get us familiarized with the expectations that were set for the Sample Student Essay. In order to fairly and accurately evaluate the essay, it was necessary to read the source material itself, as well as learn how a student could meet said expectations.
