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.