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Final Essay: Ways of Seeing the Self (Through Places/Through Experiences)
5-7 pgs
First draft due in conferences 4.24, 4.26
Final draft due Monday, 5.1
Your final essay is not about you. Well, it’s not all about you. It's an essay about a place or experience that you feel accurately describes/analyzes an important part of you.
That is, it is just as much an essay about a place (as in Eudora Welty’s store) or an experience (as in Annie Dillard’s walks through the woods) as it is about you. This essay is about seeing deeply into the nature of an object or an experience in an effort to see deeper into yourself. It’s about balancing out memories with our (limited) abilities to process them into something ‘real’ or ‘believable.’ As in Scott McCloud’s analysis of comics, it’s about trying to reunite the image with the word—about bringing the memory into the present, the image into the action. You are trying to come to terms with your own “way of seeing”—and what you are trying to see is, finally, yourself as reflected by a place or experience.
As Berger writes, “The meaning of an image is changed according to what one sees immediately beside it or what comes immediately after it” (S&W2 633). These places or experiences are all about context, all about what comes before or what comes after… and finally, we create them as they create us. But as we consider what this essay is, let us first consider what it is not:
This essay isn’t a "Me, as a Person" essay. Don't try to tell us too much about yourself and don't try to tell more than one small, contained story about a place OR an experience. This isn’t an essay about some "life-changing" experience/moment in your life, like when you realized that you don't have to be popular or give into peer pressure, etc. It is possible, of course, to write good essays about "big" topics (i.e. love and death), but I'd like you to focus on the small things, the minute particulars.
This is an essay that will require you to be a bit vulnerable, letting yourself (if need be) look foolish in order to come to some sort of understanding. This is an essay that does more than it seems to--a story that has another level of meaning.
Things to think about when writing about an experience:
This essay will require you to think idiosyncratically. Begin by recalling little moments, those moments that are unique to you--like when you were trying to show off on the jungle gym and fell and got the wind knocked out of you AND got poison ivy. Or whatever. These small moments can easily expand into an essay. Focus on the small, colorful details of the everyday, you'll be on the right track
Things to think about when writing about a place:
Pick a place that is vivid for you in the way that the little store is for Welty, a specific place that you can see and smell and feel when you think about it. Write an essay about this place, but rather than just describing the place itself, think of the place as a lens through which you will show (not tell) a story—a story that involves you in some (however peripheral) way. Do not try to reveal everything about this place, but center your story on a single incident.
On Words:
In writing this essay you must break yourself of the habit of using boring words, words that don't work. Replace these with words that are SIGNIFICANT, words that are concrete and can convey emotion. Here are some suggestions (please steal others):
Adjectives: scorched, blistered, frothy, translucent, fringed, dazzling, stealthy, dank, murky, placid, lucid, tinny
Adverbs: (avoid using too many of these-focus on verbs) wiggly, grudgingly, willfully
Verbs: droop, explode, soar, shudder, bellow, dart, slather, lug, smash, heave, shatter, lull, soothe, ramble, amble, flutter, slur, fling, caw
Final Hints for Writing About Places and Experiences:
1. Students have a tendency to include every detail of a place, from top to bottom. This will make your paper a series of "To the right was a staircase with carved wood. If you went up the staircase and to the left you saw.... To the left was.....to the right was...." Keep the space small in order to focus the paper. Choose parts that convey the whole. The same holds true for experiences, although in less concrete ways.
2. Your piece should not begin with a vague generalization (about childhood, remembering, a vacation). Does it? If so, delete it and begin with a significant detail (even before you let your reader know what the place is, although this too should come in the first paragraph). End as you began with a strong detail. Simply taking your reader around the space or experience and back to the beginning isn't enough; there must be an image or an idea that links the story together. You might end with a final piece of dialogue that seems to summarize the feelings about the space or you might return to a sensory detail that began the whole thing. Don't feel as though you have to tidy up, discuss in one paragraph everything that has happened since (i.e. "Even though it has been a long time since I've been there...") Rather than doing this, keep your reader in the scene (the "then').
3. Write in simple past or in the present to avoid tense shifts. Avoid at all costs "We would always go"-the 'would' and the 'always' are repetitive. Even if you would always do something, show your reader one particular time when did it--this makes the story seem more immediate. (Compare "We would always go" with "We went" and "We go").
4. To think about: how do you stop the story to the give dialogue and action that occurred in your particular place without getting too caught up in this action? How can you make a few lines stand in for much more?
5. Vary sentence structure. Avoid passive verbs. Think active, think action. Also, avoid cliches like "crystal clear" and "sky blue" and "like a rose." Instead create your own original metaphors (direct comparisons) and similes (comparisons using like or as) but don't overuse them (they can become tedious).
On “Morals” and “Meanings”
Your "moral of the story" should not be presented as a moral. When asked what the story means, six different people should give six different (if only slightly) different answers. A good essay raises more questions than it gives answers.
Essay #2: Seeing
5-7 pages
First Draft Due: Wed. March 29
Final Draft Due: Monday, April 3
For this essay, you will be researching and analyzing an image. In short, you will presenting a way of reading/seeing one image or photo of your choice (from the list below) that takes into account not only the subject matter and construction of the image (composition, lighting, media, etc) but also a bit of biographical and cultural analysis (insofar as it supports your discussion). You need to consider not only what the image looks like (in great detail), but how it was put together, what it "says" or "means" (if anything at all, which is its own form of meaning), and how it fits into a larger cultural/social/political context. In order to make all of this fit together, you will need to construct a specific thesis around which you can organize your interpretations and investigations.
You need to have at least three reputable sources for this paper (no more than two from the web--let me know if you aren't sure what a 'reputable' source is) that can be either biographical or critical or historical (or all three). Your citations need to be in MLA format (look to Hacker for more information).
We will be going over the various specifics of this topic in class, but make sure you read (or re-read) "Reading an Image" on page 661, "Reading a Photograph" on page 672, and "Reading a Painting" on pg. 670 (if applicable).
Images for discussion (pick only one image-some artists will have more than one):
Sebastiao Salgado, 594-597
Alfred Leslie, 88
Tracey Baran 70-71
Roy Ethridge, 39
Richard Misrach 177, 178
Lauren Greenfield, 254-55
Essay #1: Seeing and Writing
First draft due: During conferences, 2.13-2.15
Final draft due: Friday, Feb 17 (by 2pm, in front of my office)
Your first essay will consists of two parts, yet you will turn them in at the same time (both in conferences and as your final draft).
Part 1: Seeing
3-4 pages
The first part of your assignment is, on the surface, a personal essay. I want you to take a personal image and an experience associated with it and write about the ways they interact and overlap--turning yourself into an "unscrupulous observer." Whether an actual photograph or just a mental picture, this image needs to be a scene from your life rendered into a flattened moment, like Dillard's tree with lights. This is an exercise where you force yourself to stop an event in time and examine it as a thing, an object.
This experience can be, as in Welty's story, a moment from your childhood or something more recent (although the scope of your narrative must be much more limited than Welty's). But whatever you choose, it needs to be something slightly ordinary as well as slightly unusual. Try to find a moment that isn't necessarily "life changing" or "seminal," for such experiences tend to weigh too heavy on their own. Likewise, try to find a moment that is brief and bright--one that can fit into three pages without feeling shortened. You want to write about something that gets at a quieter and more personal aspect of how you see yourself and the world around you.
Part 2: Writing
3-4 pages
The second part of your assignment will be to take one of the stories we've read so far (Welty, Dillard, Hiss, or Iyer) and write a short analysis of how they approach the idea of "seeing and writing" as an intellectual and personal concept. What connections exist for them between these two seemingly disparate ways of confronting and interacting with one's surroundings? How do they differ? You may need to employ a bit of summary (a tiny tiny bit--assume your reader is quite familiar with the text), a bit of analysis, or a bit of argumentation in the process of writing this, but it is important that, no matter how you approach this paper, you keep your focus tightly on the article in question. Use quotes from the source text (two or three at most) and discuss them thoroughly. Don't veer off topic into personal thoughts or vague assumptions. By the end of this short paper, I want you to feel as if you've nailed down a tiny, but tremendously important aspect of the text in question.
Writing Suggestions:
Below, I've listed adaptations of Lee Gutkind's five points of creative nonfiction (The Essay at Work). I believe that they can be very helpful for this particular assignment...
Beginnings: Your piece should not begin with a vague generalization. Does it? (And chances are it does.) If so, delete it and begin with a significant detail (even before you let your reader know what the place is, although this too should come in the first paragraph). I spend a lot of time crossing out the first page of essays. Save yourself some time and avoid vague beginnings.
Endings: End as you began with a strong detail. Simply taking your reader around the space and back to the beginning isn't enough; there must be an image that links the story together. You might end with a final piece of dialogue that seems to summarize the feelings about the space or you might return to a sensory detail that began the whole thing. Don't feel as though you have to tidy up, discuss in one paragraph everything that has happened since (i.e. "Even though it has been a long time since I've been there.") Rather than doing this, keep your reader in the scene (the "then) and do not reflect on it from the "now"
Tense: Write in simple past or in the present to avoid tense shifts. Avoid at all costs "We would always go:" the would and the always are repetitive. Even if you would always do something, present it as though you are or were doing it once--this makes the story seem more immediate. (Compare We would always go with We went and We go).
Show, Don't Tell
In general, avoid feelings: I felt happy, I felt scared, I had fun. Rather, find ways of describing what made you happy etc. Also avoid trite statements such as "It was beautiful" or "It was ugly." In writing this piece you must break yourself of the habit of using boring, limp words, words that don't work for you. Replace these with words that are SIGNIFICANT, words that are concrete and that convey emotion. (think "fungus green" as opposed to "yucky green")
figurative language: such as metaphor, simile; departure from the standard meaning of words.
metaphor: a link between unlike things (She is a rose)
simile: a comparison of unlike things using like or as (She is like a rose)
Avoid:
Hyperbole (especially hyperbole that tells): "It was the most incredible thing that ever happened to me; I felt like I was free." This will not make your reader feel your feelings along with you; it will make your reader think you're being melodramatic. Notice the way that professional writers write about overwhelming experience. Annie Dillard, for example, compares herself with a bell that has been struck. She combines simile and metaphor with physical description to let the reader experience what she has experienced.
Overly sentimental details; these just sound false rather than beautiful. Therefore, avoid making inanimate things human (such as "The sun smiled down on me in happiness" or "I knew that the wind was calling me"). Simply describe these things with as much detail as possible.
Choppy sentences that repeat subject verb, subject verb. Vary your sentence structure.