...Which Essay is Better: A Narrative or A Descriptive? Ever read a story and say to yourself, “What’s happening?” Whenever I read a descriptive essay, that’s what I would say. In this essay I would be comparing and contrasting two types of essays, a narrative and descriptive. I have chosen “Are the rich happy?” by Stephen Leacock 1916 and “Sister Flowers” by Maya Angelou, n.d. By writing my essay, I want to give my views on each and decide which I would rather write. Narrative Essay A narrative essay reflects a personal opinion that is based on your own experiences. This helps you bring a reader into your very own mind and shows him/her the topic you’re writing about through your eyes. Telling a story or event the way it happened for you. It also could provide a sort of lesson or moral to be learned from the outcome of the story as well as what the writer did that contributed to it or not. It’s more on a personal level that any one reading could say that happened to them or that they learned from the story by not doing whatever it was that the writer did. In Stephen Leacock’s “Are the Rich Happy?” the author writes about his experiences with his friends, with of modest income. Most of it, all in his opinion, points out the problems or troubles those with an existential amount of funds in their bank accounts. He goes on to give some examples that he encountered several of his friends going through. “A friend of mine who has ten thousand dollars a year told me the other...
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...drawings are being left "for posterity," Berger finds something more important at work here (qtd in Berger 576). Instead he argues that it is through personal narrative (and art) that latter generations can truly comprehend the horror of this action (and others like it). He likens the images to "hell" and labels the action as one of terrorism--one that can never be justified no matter what political side one supports or what aims one hopes to accomplish. Response: Based on the types of readings I have assigned for this class, I don't think it should be any surprise that I believe in the power of the personal narrative. So, on this point, I completely agree with Berger. Reading the number of those who died in the Holocaust, or lost their loved ones in Pearl Harbor, or fell with the Towers on 9/11 has a power on its own. But it is too easy to become immune to numbers. A personal narrative prevents an audience from de-humanizing an issue, and hopefully focus on what is truly important. Rhetorical Analysis: Berger makes two rhetorical choices that are especially effective. The first is that he interweaves excerpts of personal narratives into his own essay. While these narratives support his point, he does not refer to them orexplicate them in any way. Instead he lets them speak for themselves. Since his point is that the personal narrative brings history into "living consciousness," this move highlights his thesis (575). Second, he uses language that polarizes his readers. By using...
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...When comparing Paul McHenry Roberts narrative essay "How to Say Nothing in 500 Words" and Maya Angelou's descriptive essay "Sister Flowers", Roberts essay holds superior because he uses 2nd point of person, relate-able topics, and problem solving strategies in his essay. By using descriptive language, an author has the power to tantalize their readers simply by word usage. Descriptive language "refers to words that are vivid, expressive, and highly specific to the topic" (Connell & Sole, 2013). For example, in the essay "How To Say Nothing in 500 Words", the author sets the mood by stating, "It's Friday afternoon, and you have almost survived another week of class" (Roberts, 2013). All college students, the author's intended audience, can relate to anticipating the weekend, and a break from the stresses of college coursework. In speaking directly to the reader, second-person point of view, the author, Paul McHenry Roberts, establishes an intimate connection. Roberts uses humor within the body of the essay as well, furthering the connection between himself and his audience. Roberts states, "All subjects, except sex, are dull until someone makes them interesting." (Roberts). He further goes on about how to set up a unique paper. Roberts lists examples of different topics throughout this essay. He creates an informative essay about writing on much-debated topics by thinking outside the box. As Roberts illustrates by stating" Picture poor old Alfy coming home from football...
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...Narrative Writing Part One: Narrative Components In at least 1-2 complete sentences and in your own words, define and describe each narrative component. You will find these terms listed and explained on pages 46-59 of the textbook. Thesis: The subject for a composition or essay. This is the first thing you always read in an essay or composition; it gives you the information for the whole essay. Narration: Narration is the action or process of narrating a story. The narrator is usually a personal character or a random character the narrator came up with. Dialogue: The dialogue is a conversation between two or more people in the book, or movie. Allusions: Expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly. Allusion is also a figure of speech. Writer’s voice: Individual writing style of an author. The voice can be thought of in terms of the uniqueness of a vocal voice machine. Figurative language: A figure of speech in which things that are different are compared by the use of the words like or as. Metaphor: Figure of speech that identifies one thing as being the same as some unrelated other thing as being the same as some unrelated other thing. The most prominent examples of a metaphor in English lit are “All the worlds a stage” monologue from “As you like it.” Simile: Figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing it another thing of a different kind. Understatement: The presentation of something as being smaller, worse or...
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...2013 On Becoming a Writer 3 The main idea of the essay is the fact that the author always had the desire to be a writer but he was faced with the difficult of writing during his time at school, his English classes were very hard and confused. The others points I found on this essay is: * The author faced and thought that only the rich people could write and that being a writer as professional did not have a good future, but even that he had begun to think about being a writer. So in his third year at college things changed for him. * When his class assigned to Mr. Fleagle, he was waiting another sad and dull year because the Mr. Fleagle was recognized as a person with no inspiration, no glare, his way of dressing or even his physical characteristics made the students in the city do not have a good conception of Mr. Fleagle. * Another important point that the author cites in his essay is he was not disappointed for a long time, because he expected an antipathetic professor. Also he cites the teacher wanted his students to like Macbeth, but the teacher didn’t know how to influence the students’ whit that passion he had for Macbeth. The author makes a citation which one the teacher always used in the classroom and is very interesting “do not you see”, the author claims it as his teacher was placed in front of students in a tone of mild surprise ignorance of them. What I realized at the end of the essay is the author decides to break the rules and finally begins...
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...Nothing in 500 Words by Paul Roberts, an essay, discusses common mistakes made by college freshmen in academic writing. During my semester of Intro to Expository Writing, my academic writing has greatly improved. My writing started as “Elementary school was like a fairytale; there was a pretty princess and a handsome prince, but I was an evil villain.” And has grown to “Through her diction, Walls creates various tones in order to convey to her audience that despite obstacles, it is possible to escape from a dysfunctional family in hopes of a brighter future.” Using How to Say Nothing in 500 Words, I will be evaluating my own writing by discussing my strengths, weaknesses, and how I have grown as a writer. Writing narratives have always been a personal struggle for me. Unless I passionately come up with a story, and immediately write it on paper, my narratives are bland. It is hard to write personal life-changing stories when I have a deadline. One weakness of mine is using colorful words. For example, a sentence from my personal narrative was written as “It was magnificent with its stained green carpet and plenty of wooden bookshelves stocked with colorful books.” In retrospect, this is how it could have been written, “The spacious library had wooden bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound books, which rested on gritty emerald carpet.”...
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...well-educated: A Narrative Response to Alfie Kohn’s “What does it mean to be well-educated?” To be or not to be well-educated: A Narrative Response to Alfie Kohn’s “What does it mean to be well-educated?” Alfie Kohn’s essay “What does it mean to be well-educated?” begins on a personal note using his wife as an example to substantiate his hypothesis. Encountering Alisa at the very beginning of the essay was indeed a refreshing way to initiate thought into a subject not often considered. Today not everyone ponders the real relevance behind education nor does anyone contemplate just how much of education is needed to be considered well-educated. Alisa has a doctorate in anthropology and is an excellent physician yet her lack of knowledge in basic math and English leads her husband to question the implications behind what true education is all about (Kohn, 2003, pars. 1-4). My first response to this startling line of thought was that something like this had never occurred to me before. One is either educated or not. But where does one cross over from educated into well-educated and what does the latter term encompass? These were interesting premises that galvanized me into Kohn’s text, rapidly seeking a resolution for my questions. The first question that Kohn tackles involves the purpose of education. Is education meant to create better individuals or introduce better professionals? (2003, par. 7) Although difficult to decide between the two I still felt...
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...I found that Richard Rodriguez's argumentative essay was compelling and persuading. The structure of his personal narrative drew my attention in how he would express his emotions in such rhetoric frases. “In the early 1970s, Nixon instructed the Office of Management and Budget to identify the major racial and ethnic groups in the United States. OMB came up with five major ethnic or racial groups.” His claim in his essay is that all the groupings of people only exist in this country but do not really split all races apart how President Nixon labeled them. “But I was reinvented by President Richard Nixon.” Rodriguez stated that President Nixon reinvented him because President Nixon was the one categorizing all races into the races we have today. “For “Hispanic” is a gringo contrivance,[3] a definition of the world according to European patterns of Colonization.” Rodriguez emphasizes that the term “Hispanic” is a term that was...
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...Emmanuel Obeng Professor Rosalie Yezbick LITR220 25 March, 2016 Course Reflection It has been an amazing eight weeks of intense but fun time learning about American Literature. There were some awesome topics, essays and readings that were my favorites. However, there were also some few topics that even though were interesting to read were my least favorite. The body of this essay is going to be talking about my three favorite as well as my three least topic, essays, forums and reading throughout the course. My first is Anti-Slavery and Slave Narratives in week seven forum, some of the challenges Linda Brent faced while she lived under Flint. While reading, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” it actually made me feel very sad for this...
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...Olaudah Equiano was a man that went through hell and back. Throughout his life time he experienced slavery, pain, and loneliness. Equiano wrote of this amazing and detailed journey and shared the things he saw and experienced throughout his life. In this essay I will be talking about his journey in two ways. The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, he explains his detailed experience and in his biography it explains less details about Equiano but it goes into detail when it comes to location, facts, and slave work force. In my essay I will compare and contrast the differences and similarities between the interesting narrative of Olaudah Equiano and his biography. I will prove that Equiano interesting narrative is true based off the comparison of his biography....
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...Possibilities of Covering Gilman’s Wallpaper Karla J. Murphy In his introduction to The Pedagogical Wallpaper, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock notes how the pedagogical diversity of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” prompted him to collect essays for this book. He goes on to explain that “given the ubiquity of the text within various academic settings, I was also struck by the absence of attention to the text within pedagogical contexts. Despite the large (and steadily growing) body of criticism to the story, very little of it explicitly addresses its importance as a tool to facilitate learning or various ways in which to make use of the text in the classroom” (3). As a collection, Weinstock’s The Pedagogical Wallpaper contains informed, detailed, and diverse analysis that attempts to shore up the absence of “pedagogical possibilities” concerning Gilman’s transgressive short story (9). Among the contributors are a MOO space specialist, a Gilman scholar, a queer theorist, an existentialist, a formalist, and several reader/student-response theorists. Because each essayist presents a distinct critical perspective on Gilman’s text, each essay is likewise concerned with “how the narrative teaches and how to teach the narrative” (5). Thus, it seems to me that Weinstock’s The Pedagogical Wallpaper resonates with Pedagogy’s conviction that teaching is central to our work as scholars and educators, no matter what our particular perspective. Indeed, Weinstock’s commitment to diverse...
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...The writing of the long song “How can I be proud of my Jamaican roots, when my ancestors had been slaves”? This question asked by a woman with Jamaican roots followed British novelist Andrea Levy for a long time. She wondered how anyone could be ashamed of his or her legacy and thus the foundation of her book, The Long Song, was laid. However, writing the book was a more difficult task than presumed. Levy considered many things at the preliminary stage of the book as she knew that she didn’t want to write yet another historical novel about slavery. This is the reason why she chose to write the “behind the scenes”-essay, The Writing of The Long Song. Herein she elaborates and discusses the process of writing her book and raises important questions that deal with extremely relevant themes such as family pride and the filtering of history. Levy opens her essay with a flashback to the conference she attended several years earlier in London where the main theme was the legacy of slavery. She remembers a woman asking the panel how she could be proud of her Jamaican roots when her ancestors had been slaves (p. 7, ll. 5-7). Levy doesn’t remember the panel’s answer to the woman but the question stayed with her for a long time and it ended up being her motivation for writing the book The Long Song. Levy is of Jamaican heritage herself and in contrary to the young woman, she proudly acknowledges her slave ancestry: “If our ancestors survived the slave ships they were strong. If they...
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...Rhetorical Modes 1. NARRATION L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S 10 1. Identify the purpose and structure of narrative writing. 2. Recognize how to write a narrative essay. Rhetorical modes simply mean the ways in which we can effectively communicate through language. This chapter covers nine common rhetorical modes. As you read about these nine modes, keep in mind that the rhetorical mode a writer chooses depends on his or her purpose for writing. Sometimes writers incorporate a variety of modes in one essay. In covering the nine rhetorical modes, this chapter also emphasizes these as a set of tools that will allow you greater flexibility and effectiveness in communicating with your audience and expressing your ideas. rhetorical modes The ways in which we effectively communicate through language. 1.1 The Purpose of Narrative Writing Narration means the art of storytelling, and the purpose of narrative writing is to tell stories. Any time you tell a story to a friend or family member about an event or incident in your day, you engage in a form of narration. In addition, a narrative can be factual or fictional. A factual story is one that is based on, and tries to be faithful to, actual events as they unfolded in real life. A fictional story is a made-up, or imagined, story; the writer of a fictional story can create characters and events as he or she sees fit. However, the big distinction between factual and fictional narratives is based on a writer’s purpose. The writers...
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...On my Light-Giver essay, I received a score of 6/6-, which is understandable, because I can acknowledge that my essay had both good and bad aspects.To further explain the positive attributes of my essay, the most prominent detail that popped out at me throughout the entirety of my essay was how I was very descriptive. Rather than telling, I did a lot of showing through sensory details and imagery. For instance, at the end of the first page I wrote, “Simply reminding myself of what I endured brought shivers up my spine, caused a cascade of goose bumps to break out onto my skin, and spread an unwanted prickling sensation throughout my entire body.” My use of imagery really painted a picture in the reader’s mind and made them feel as if they were truly...
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...Second Semester Final Exam: Portfolio A: Narrative/Descriptive Writing Parasailing (Vignette) Narrative and descriptive writing is the writing style I enjoy the most. The vignette I wrote about is a story that happened to me when I was younger and this kind of writing allows me to relive this memory on paper. I find this kind of writing easier to write and easy to relate to because it’s all about me. It is harder for me to write and relate to a book that we read in class since it isn’t about my personal life. This kind of writing style helps me reflect on the something I learned because I have seen how much I have grown this school year based off of what I wrote about and my writing style. This kind of writing style allows me to describe...
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