The Inevitable Result of Cleaning Out my Room
Sigh.
I miss in-class essays. I know. I’m a geek. I can’t help it though. I’m finally going through my papers from A.P. English (taken senior year in high school). Being that I can’t help but get sidetracked I’ve been re-reading essays I wrote in that class. While this may seem narcissistic, I’ve decided to give you a sampling of my writing from this time. (While you critique them, do remember that they were written in 40 minutes).
Billy is Spastic in Time
“We had been foolish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.” Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. puts forth this statement in the moving first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade. While in this beginning chapter Vonnegut speaks directly to his readers, giving insight into himself and his purpose for the novel, the novel is primarily fictional presentation of the war through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim. Written as an anti-war novel, based upon Vonnegut’s experience in Dresden during World War II, Vonnegut uses the nature of time and our place in it to reveal the brutality of war.
The insight which Vonnegut offers his readers in the first chapter, which is written as a sort of author’s note, is the key to understanding the rest of the novel. He challenges his readers to consider the dimensions of time through various quotes and his own thoughts, such as his reflection, “I asked myself about the present; how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” The stream of consciousness which he uses in the first chapter persists and is exaggerated or confused as the reader is drawn into the convoluted tale of Billy Pilgrim.
Vonnegut presents Pilgrim as a man who is continually traveling back and forth in time in order to juxtapose the complete misery of war with the commonality of life. In Vonnegut’s words, “Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.” He is continually shuffled back and forth between his past, present and future. Due to this stratagem, each war scene is made more brutal and unbearable when compared with the rest of Pilgrim’s life. The comparison brings back Vonnegut’s confession from the first chapter, “I think of how useless the Dresden part of my memory has been, and yet how tempting Dresden has been to write about.” Pilgrim’s life previous to the war and afterward stands apart from the Dresden part of his life, yet despite how useless the war is in his life he cannot be taken away from it.
Whether waking or sleeping, Pilgrim continues to live out his experience in the war through the rest of his life. Vonnegut not only plays with time in order to convince his readers of the brutality of war but also to present his own inability to stop looking back. While revealing the utter desolation of war he also seeks to free himself of the memory. As Vonnegut conceded in his first chapter, war is inevitable. He concludes his first chapter, “People aren’t supposed to look back. I am certainly not going to anymore. … This [book] is a failure, and had to be since it was written by a pillar of salt.” Slaughterhouse-Five was written by a man who could not keep himself from looking back though he understood the inevitable futility of his action. Similar to Pilgrim, Vonnegut is spastic in time.
I wonder how upset God is when we argue against his word?
Excerpt from an essay which was to be “a carefully reasoned, persuasive essay that defends, challenges or qualifies” the assertion made by King Solomon at the end of Ecclesiastes.
King Solomon concludes the book of Ecclesiastes with the statement, “For in much wisdom is much grief, and increase of knowledge is increase of sorrow.” While this assertion holds merit, Solomon’s statement falls short. Wisdom and knowledge remove the blinders from humans’ eyes, revealing the world as it is, evil and corrupt yet with remnants of goodness and purity. Though the possessor is robed of ignorant bliss, a fuller joy mingled with grief can be the result. The joy of the wise and knowledgeable is far greater than the blind bliss of the foolish and ignorant.
The dual nature of wisdom and knowledge is demonstrated in Lloyd Alexander’s tale “The Fledgling.” In Alexander’s fable a young man acquires a book containing all the wisdom in the world. As he begins to read the first half he lives off the joy of the knowledge which he is gaining. He is continually filled with awe and wonder as he comes to understand the nature of science and the mysteries of the earth. Time passes and the pages begin to give him knowledge of the harsher side of the world: the cruelty of man toward each other, and the overwhelming destructive power of the earth. He learns of war, hatred, famine, murder, floods, etc. One day, he stumbles upon a mirror and discovers that the wisdom and knowledge which he has gained sped up his aging process and he now appears to be an old, wizened man. Despite this, he continues to read on. In the last pages of the book he discovers hope and the power of wisdom and knowledge to help prevent hatred and warn of natural disasters. Wisdom and knowledge produce in him a harvest of grief and sorrow mingled with joy and hope.
Above all, the acquisition of knowledge and wisdom increases a man’s responsibility toward others.
Ugh! I just came to the most frustrating essay. Oh, I remember clearly how frustrated I was when this essay was returned to me. The essay was to focus on an except from the novel Obasan. I loved the excerpt and, when I wrote the essay, I assumed a bit of the narrators voice (dreamlike and illusory.) That did NOT go over well. Instead of jumping into my point and purpose I had been slowly moving toward it, just as the author of the excerpt had. Since I ran out of time just as I was beginning to articulate my actual point, my teacher assumed that I hadn’t even understood the piece. Re-reading it I still think my teacher was being thick.
Now I’ve stumbled upon "A Modest Purposal". Oh, I love sarcastic writers!
This folder contains much more then my essays from A.P. English. I’m discovering notes from French class, coloring pages and maps from Fantasy class, writing assignments from Creative Writing with Ms D, handouts from Carrier’s Humanities class along with the handouts from A.P. English. Just now I found my in-class essay evaluating Out of Africa.
Dinesen’s pacing often reminded me of her description of the natives, having no concept of time. Her tone is that of a starry-eyed storyteller with an occasional suppressed laugh as she lays before her eager listeners her tale, retaining and savoring the boiling emotions she has kept just under the surface.
Funny what we stumble upon is it not? I’ve come to an article that I never intended to find. It was an accident tonight just as it was the night I first came upon it. I was researching eugenic sterilization online first semester senior year for my government class. One of the articles that Google brought up was “Why I Am a Lawyer” written by Mark J. Welch 1996.
Every once in a while, someone asks me why I chose to become a lawyer, and I am usually uncomfortable with the question. We all choose our careers for a wide variety of reasons, and each of us is motivated by an unaccountable number of events and impressions.
But invariably … [he goes through an article he read about Dorris Buck that influenced him, then something in his own life that also influenced him. Two pages later he comes to this:].
Why did I become a lawyer? I wanted to change the world. I still want to change the world. But in the end, it is not “the world” or “the system” we must change: it is ourselves. The fault I find most often is not in the law or in the legal system, but in the people whose judgment is wrong; and I cannot find in my heart any better tool for improving judgment, except time dedicated to that tasks at hand, and perhaps this is the one flaw in the legal system: it does not allocate enough time or attention to those who encounter it, and quick decisions are often wrong.
(To read the full article, which really is amazing that middle part is VERY good you can go to http://www.markwelch.com/buckbell.htm)
I can’t help but smile. I just found my essay “Big, Beautiful and Bold” my memoir about growing up overweight in America. When we were given the assignment to write about something we had struggled through I really didn’t feel like being overly serious. Therefore, I chose this topic. To me, it was hilarious but it wasn’t all b.s. either. Here is an excerpt from my conclusion:
At one time, I believed that “my weight doesn’t define me.” Now, I’ve come to see that struggling with obesity has defined me. …I have gained confidence being “fat” or “well over my target weight.” I cannot imagine who I would be had I not struggled with my weight or who I would be were I to lose weight.
While I’ve discovered many more interesting articles and essays I believe I will end with an excerpt from Mark Twain’s essay
On the Decay of the Art of Lying
Essay, for discussion, read at a meeting of the Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford, and offered for the thirty-dollar prize.
Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption, -- no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man’s best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying in the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this theme with diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters to the mothers in Israel. It would not become to me to criticize you, gentlemen-who are nearly all my elders-and my superiors, in this thing-if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than fault-finding; indeed if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received the attention, the encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament, or shred a single tear. I do not say this to flatter: I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition. [It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and to give illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me to beware of the particulars and confine myself to generalities.] …
(if interested in reading this article in its entirely you can find it at http://www.arthurdurkee.net/lying.html)