Guys and their Cars

When I first heard this title I thought the essay would be a lot of car jargon. But Simmons surprised me by presenting an understandable and well-themed essay. The theme of a difficult father-son relationship that only grows through a similar hobby focuses the essay and prepares the reader for the ending. As Simmons grew up, he lost interest in battling with his father for attention through his bike, and instead found other hobbies and interests. The loss is felt through Simmon’s tone, where he admits to his ignorance of the separation and presents this separation poetically through a metaphor. A lost interest always causes emotional pain when another person is tied to that interest. Sometimes, it’s only a friend, other times a best friend, and even other times a loved one. Simmons’ essay is strong in portraying the focus on the motorcycle and on the loss, but his father never truly becomes a main character in the story. Readers understand that his father does not display emotion easily, but Simmons tells readers this more than he shows them. “Motorcycle Talk” encompasses fluidity, but the story ends before I can realize what happened. 

“M.B.W.F”

“M.B.W.F” it took me a moment to realize what this acronym stood for. I understand why Patricia Williams uses the acronym, because she repeats the phrase “My Best White Friend” at least thirteen times. Williams’ essay is definitely poignantly opinionated. In many ways the focus is less on her friend and more on the interaction between blacks and whites. The essay appears Williams as arguing with society about somewhat vague racial matters. Though the story is written as a personal essay, Williams may have written the essay more for a release of anger or frustration, and less for an audience to read it. Throughout the essay there is an uncomfortable tone of frustration. With this tone Williams states “on average, we black women have bigger, better problems”. Such a biased and poorly qualified comment can be offensive. Williams’ weak persuasion of the treatment of black people in the essay almost persuades readers of the opposite. Her best white friend seems like a kind and caring lady, allowing and being supportive of Williams finding a husband. The best white friend, though she may be superficial, never says anything racially against Williams. Instead Williams focuses on the negativity of the situation. Of her best white friend forcing her to dress up and find a white male, who Williams sees many of them as masters of slaves. Williams’ essay is aggravating, and though it may recognize some problems, the flaws in the argument causes an disdainful mood. 

The [Awkward] Car

Harry Crews’ style creates an awkward mood in his personal essay “The Car”, due to problems with transition and tone. Crews’ transitions at first flow, but half way through they become much weaker. The transitions become chronological and near the end he randomly shifts back to the first car he had. However, these weak transitions are not the main source of the awkwardness. The main source of this awkward mood is the very detached and almost superficial tone. This tone contrasts greatly with the emotional and significant events that occur in his life. Crews mentions in an uncomfortable manner and in a detached tone “a young lady” and the vague events that occurred in his car with her. But even more significantly Crews manages to maintain this composure when he writes about losing both of his cars. Overall, Crews’ tone causes an awkward reading and weakens his sincerity and ethos. With the weakened ethos, as a reader, I question his logic in completely getting rid of his car. Yes, he obsessed over the car, especially painting it, but that does not establish enough evidence for completely trashing his hobby of cars.  I too have had obsessions with games and tv. Yet, instead of throwing away the TV, I took a break from it for awhile, and then returned to watching tv when the shows were no longer so significant to me. Crews weakens his character by ending his essay in this manner, as I question his true intelligence, because it seems that he only saw two options: get rid of the car, or remain forever overly obsessed with it.

Fear and Societal Tyranny

Brent Staples writes about his problems as a young African American man and society’s fear of him in “Black Men and Public Space”.  Yet, Staples introduces himself as a shady character with the words “My first victim was a woman”, which contrasts with the purpose of the essay.  In some ways, Staples may have accepted that he does have victims who he incites fear in. Of course, not on purpose, but just because of the way he dresses and the color of his skin. Staples traumatic experiences, which are mentioned later in the story in a more general manner, portray his social isolation. The best part of the essay is that Staples approaches his frightening and pitiful topic with a calm and almost neutral tone. Staples’ tone portrays his acceptance of the fact that this is his life. Though, this acceptance may be a weakness in character, Staples acknowledges he was never a fighter, and that he lives “timidly to survive”. Although, in the last metaphoric sentence, Staples portrays his frustration at people by comparing them to wild bears. This metaphor creates the effect of Staples being in danger of wild animals.

                 Staples’ story reminds me of my “Middle School” essay. Staples portrays society’s idiocracy and stubbornness similar to my essays portrayal. While I was reading I noticed the fluidity of his essay. The easy change and lack of direct self-analysis allows the reader to decide who is in the wrong. I’ve realized that maybe in my essay I should focus less on telling readers my anger towards my past, and more towards portraying to the reader what I lived through in a calm and almost neutral tone.

This is not Water, this is air

The format of “This is Water” differs from many other personal essays. David Wallace teaches the audience a lesson about life through a much more direct and less fluid manner. Wallace's format follows a presentation of a didactic story with an analysis of that story. This format continues throughout the essay. The essay also does not focus as much on personal memories, but instead focuses on either didactic parables or general experiences. Although, Wallace does teach the readers and listeners a new approach to thinking and education, he continuously qualifies many of his statements. For example, Wallace writes that he will not “lecture on… so-called virtues.” Yet, by qualifying his statement, in a way, he admits that to a certain degree he will lecture on virtues. 

This qualification also weakens Wallace’s argument that explains the self-centeredness thought process and the realization of this thought process. Though, Wallace’s approach is enlightening, the approach only applies when I blame others or am angry with them. This anger does arise, yet, when it does not, when the emotion is mere frustration at life, that frustration is not necessarily harmful. However, this frustration should not be taken out on others. Wallace avoids this idea in his argument, causing a weaker and less developed essay. This weakness and the unnecessary qualifications and generalized statements weaken Wallace’s ethos. 

Locker Room Talk v. My Inner Shrimp

While reading these essays, the first aspect that stood out to me was both of the essays’ length. I was overjoyed by their shortness.  Yet, soon I realized it is not the length that affects the amount of substance in an essay, but instead how each author tackles this limited length. Locker Room Talk was the shorter of the two, yet, in many ways it had much more substance. The author begins by creating contrast between “wonderment” and “wonderful” and by redefining the word “wonderment” into a feeling not of joy but of a detached awe. Dunn also uses concise memories to help show this reflective meaning of the word. He finally ends with a stream of consciousness analyzation of the reasoning behind such speech in the locker room. He emphasizes this stream of consciousness using questions to incite his inquiry. Dunn’s conclusion by the end, though seemingly cliché, has strength and depth through the lengthy analyzation of the one scene in the boy’s locker room.

Contrastingly, Garry Trudeau’s essay, My Inner Shrimp, is longer but contains much less showing and more telling. The story is confusing from nearly the beginning, where in one moment Trudeau is tall and in another moment he is short, and by the end both. Trudeau only presents readers a detailed introductory scene that leads to his reflection limiting what is shown.  Also, Trudeau’s self-reflection into the past contains much less showing and more telling, as he vaguely recalls and generalizes the bullying he survived through. Through such distant generalizations the audience never truly can connect with Trudeau and his battle, thus causing the meaningful significance in his conclusion to become cliché. 

Shaping Up the Absurdity of Nora Ephron’s Obsession

While reading this article, it was interesting to see not only Ephron’s style, but also the progression of her social interactions she had because of her small breasts. Ephron writes about her dilemma mainly in the past tense; however, for emphasis she easily glides into the present tense. For example, the day she returned from her summer vacation and realized that her best friend had already developed a figuere. That day emphasized Ephron’s inadequacies, and distanced her from her best friend. This loss and “betrayal” of such a close friend deserves to be emphasized using the present tense. In a way, that day was the turning point, where Ephron began to feel that she would never be truly a woman. The other time Ephron writes in the present tense occurs when her boyfriend’s mother tries to give her advice on dealing with her small breasts. Ephron emphasizes this moment in the present tense, because this was the day that she began to feel society was mocking her. After this paragraph, Ephron focuses more attention on the minute examples of society’s cruelty and judgment. Ephron’s style and revelations in the present tense create a progression and development in her social treatment and standing. 

"Boyfriends": Pleasurable, Interesting, and Easy to Connect With

  Being a teenage girl, connecting and sympathizing with Suzan Allen Toth's relationship with Peter was pretty easy. As Toth described her gut-wrenching fear of never having a boyfriend and becoming an "Old Maid", I too recalled those times when I was 15 and having those same feelings. My fear of always being alone was only emphasized when my boyfriend unexpectedly broke up with me after a month. However, like Toth, I too "found" my own Peter that summer. My Peter was someone I had known forever, but never truly connected with. This person tentatively reached out to me, while I, like Toth, responded in an almost wild manner. Though, I did not randomly lick my Peter, I still had no idea what to do, so I just began avoiding him out of fear. Yet, I did learn from Peter that summer; I learned to never expect anything and just allow the unexpected to occur. With such strong feelings already arising in the introduction, my interest was heightened, as I listened what her story was and watched to see if she would respond differently than I did. I envied Toth’s amazing relationship, but loved how she always made it realistic and even awkward, as if she were my good friend and was trying not to make me too jealous. Realistically, our stories culminated in the same conclusion, she “simply rode away from [her] Peter”, and I simply flew away from mine.

My Response to "My Father's Life" and the enjoyability or lack of it

Though, Raymond Carver does present a story that is easily understandable, the theme of the essay throughout is vague. Carver's tone toward all the tragic events that occur contains ignorance and seems to be only a factual retelling. However, Carver may have purposely used such a placid tone to cause an emphasis on his one emotional attack where he suddenly begins crying. Although the tone is stylistically interesting, the tone does not please me. Many events remain vague and do not contain the necessary self-analysis, leading me to believe that Carver tries to be too optimistic about his father's kindness and greatness. The overall generality of these memories also affects the theme of his father’s greatness by causing the theme to be too fatalistically optimistic and undeveloped.  The most non-pleasurable facet of the essay is the contrast between the mood and tone of the essay. I, as a reader, felt appalled at Carver's father behavior and the memories presented. This mood caused me to be very angry and upset at Carver's great potential for mental insight. For an essay to be pleasurable to read, the essay needs to teach you something new, thus allowing for personal growth emotionally and mentally through another's experiences and insights.

My Personal Response to Rodriguez

      Richard Rodriguez’s intriguing style of writing adds to the interesting conflict between his public and private languages by emphasizing the eventual progression of, and opinions about, his struggle in a subtle manner. Rodriguez’s style appears during the nuns’ visit, where his troubled perception of the “intruders” who speak “gently” and “with great tact” is revealed (Rodriguez 283). These examples evidence Rodriguez’s implications of his early biased disdain for the public language and become interesting to me as I struggle to solve the mystery of the argument’s progression to an almost uncaring summarization and cryptic public “silence” (Rodriguez 285). The interest deepens as I connect to Rodriguez’s mental battle with societal languages, because of the similarities with his life and mine. I, too, am bilingual and was born in America, where I first learned Polish. However, unlike Rodriguez, I was assimilated into the English language in the hazy memories of my preschool years. Yet, more similarities appear between Rodriguez and I, as he becomes distanced from his parents. Rodriguez’s opinions and attitudes intrigue me, because of the foreign approach to a similar problem. This foreign, yet not too foreign, approach is necessary to cause interest.

Works Cited

Rodriguez, Richard. “Public and Private Language.” Life Studies. By David Cavitch. Seventh ed. Boston: Bedford/‌ St.Martin’s, 2001. 282-87. Print.