Week 3

Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.

–Helen Keller

Good day! How was your weekend? I spent a part of mine wondering at the journey we all take, that long journey, you know, that leads to a distant country, and that is filled with strange twists and turns, enough to bewilder us at times.   Indeed, I thought about a documentary film called Ballet Russe that featured the "stars" of the original company, a small group of individuals now elderly but who in their youth kept alive a ballet tradition that might otherwise have been lost, and who represent the living history of modern classical ballet. They brought the art to small midwestern towns where people had never seen anything like it, introduced it to America and beyond. They didn't know at the time just how new and influential a force they were. Years later they can recount the stories of hard work and excitement and some privation all the training and touring entailed of them, many of them just 12-14 when they began performing. Their knowledge, and their memories, continue to inspire people. They were drawn by the beauty and exhilaration of the dance, their love and passion for it, and for performing. All the while, they were creating a legacy.

In a sense it's what we all do. In ways small or large, our thoughts and actions in response to life create karma, for good or ill, and we live the consequences. Another film I know, called Pan's Labyrinth (2006), directed by Guillermo del Toro, is a beautiful film, a modern fairy tale about a young girl's struggle to make sense of multiple changes and certain threats and dangers. She discovers seemingly magical sources of power that take the form, in part, of fantastic creatures that live in a spooky, labyrinthine netherworld. There she is told she is the heiress to an ancient title, a Princess, in fact, and given certain tasks to "prove" herself fit. She must learn to trust herself throughout, for things are not simply what they seem, and her survival, and that of others, depends upon her knowing what is what, and making the right call.

The twists and turns and dark corners and curves of the labyrinth are a symbol of the human unconscious, a cryptic "force" whose messengers can guide us on our life's path; though we must rightly interpret and wisely use this force, for it can be dangerous. Pan is an ancient nature God, associated with fertility and spring, with shepherds and their flocks, and is often depicted playing a pipe.  When we walk, and listen to the wind, feeling it on our skin, and the solid ground under our feet, we may sometimes hear in the wind the sound of his piping.

Stories–narratives–we tell them endlessly. They are built into the fabric of our lives. Our very lives are the stories we tell about them. The meaning we make of existence comes clear in the stories we tell each other, and each is one of the untold gazillions accumulating over time. Each has a point or a purpose. Each involves events, actions, a conflict set in motion, consequences, perhaps the underlying motives and feelings of those involved, the lessons and insights gained through the experiences recounted.

The following paragraphs are shaped as narratives:

A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb, and these six were among the survivors. They still wonder why they lived when so many others died. Each of them counts many small items of chance or volition–a step taken in time, a decision to go indoors, catching one streetcar instead of the next–that spared him. And now each knows that in the act of survival he lived a dozen lives and saw more death than he ever thought he would see. At the time, none of them knew anything.

John Hersey, Hiroshima

We imagine the action that took place in the event referenced above, but the writer does not show us the exploding bomb, the fire and smoke and devastation all around. The wails of the living, and the dying.

Narration does more than suggest, it shows action:

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick–one never does when a shot goes home–but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to go there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly sticken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralyzed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time–it might have been five seconds, I dare say–he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skywards like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

George Orwell, "Shooting an Elephant"

Notice how Orwell works the elements of sight, sound, movement in space, and deep feeling into the account, revealing only at the last line he has been lying down, firing up at the huge animal whose final collapse reverberates in our imagination.

Consider well the opening paragraph, as it should serve to draw the reader in to the story subject.  Choose concrete, specific words to relay setting and the emotions at the heart of your piece.  The following is the start of a roughly 5000 word biographical essay about the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who defected to the West in 1974, and returned at age 50 to pay homage to his roots and dance for all those who had in some way shaped him.

     It is raining, and Mikhail Baryshnikov is standing in a courtyard in Riga, the capital of Latvia, pointing up at two corner windows of an old stucco building that was probably yellow once.  With him are his companion, Lisa Rhinehart, a former dancer with American Ballet Theatre, and two of his children–Peter, eight, and Aleksandra, or Shura, sixteen.  He is showing them the house where he grew up. "It's Soviet communal apartment," he says to the children.  "In one apartment, five families.  Mother and Father have room at corner.  See?  Big window.  Mother and Father sleep there, we eat there, table there.  Then other little room, mostly just two beds, for half brother, Vladimir, and me.  In other rooms, other people.  For fifteen, sixteen people, one kitchen, one toilet, one bathroom, room with bathtub.  But no hot water for bath.  On Tuesday and Saturday, Vladimir and I go with Father to public bath."

      I open the front door of the building and peer into the dark hallway.  Let's go up," I suggest.  "No," he says.  "I can't."  It is more than a quarter century since he was here last.

                                                                                      from "The Soloist," by Joan Acocella

Most of our stories are of events not so unusual; they are of events more homely, domestic, ordinary. These events are no less potentially interesting and dramatic. An important strategy is to narrow your account down to the one or several key events and not to swamp the telling by including too much or anything that does not work to make your dramatic purpose clear, flowing, and forcefully delivered. Dialogue used sparingly may heighten the sense of immediacy and reality. It should reflect real conversation, minus whatever does not move the action forward or reveal character. Simple words and short sentences work best.

Graded exercise (#2) due week 4: Write a 350-500 word narrative essay.  Aim here for drama, detail, immediacy and freshness. Include a short introductory paragraph, a well-developed body paragraph or two (or three), and a short concluding paragraph, for a total of about 350 words-500 words.  Zero in on details of setting, character, and action, and perhaps includes some dialogue for dramatic effect. Title the essay, double space the lines, indent for each paragraph.

The following is a list of topic suggestions:

*A now-I-know-better experience.

*An experience that shows something of what people are made of, or of what you are made.

*An experience that shows the power of love, anger, desire, fear, etcetera.

*An experience that brought about a significant change in you.

*An experience that reveals the kind of family you have.

*An encounter with a "stranger" you can't now forget.

Sentence Types: last week we looked at the simple and compound sentence types. To review look at the following and identify each as simple or compound:

1. Right here, right now, I would like to smoke a cigarette and take a long walk along the coast.

2. Every day the hot sun glistens on my back.

3. I am living in the moment.

4. On break I ran across the street, and in the process, Jennice called me.

5. Hannah went to the best hospital, and her friends visited her to keep her spirits up.

6. Nothing is worse than being stuck in bed, but attentive friends can make a huge difference in

such situations.

7. The lock was broken and glass lay glinting in the moonlight.

8. Come here, for I want to say something in private.

9. He appeared to listen, but his mind was elsewhere.

10. The stores had all closed, so we window shopped.

A complex sentence has one independent (stand alone) clause (one subject-verb combo) and at least one dependent (can't stand alone except as a fragment) clause. Short examples follow here:

Because he could not be reached by phone, I drove to his house, anxious to see him.

Jimmi walked to work after he crashed his bike.

Unless you give me another chance, we can go no further.

John is a man who loves women more than anything in life.

Bring me the book that you have been hiding.

I cooked and cleaned as the storm raged on.

A compound-complex sentence has at least two independent clauses and at least one dependent clause:

Jimmi hated to be seen as a hypocrite, so he kept his mouth closed while the others freely confessed to backsliding.

If you are to write effectively, your sentences must be clear; words are wasted otherwise.

After the sun dropped below the horizon, and as the moon began her ascent, we set up camp, eager for a chance to relax and eat and talk; each was possessed by the sense of great adventures to come.

Sentence Exercises for Homework: Do the following comma and fragment exercises at the URLs here posted:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/3/5/16

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/5/18/38

And the following exercise on the distinct uses of the semi-colon and comma:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/3/5/23

Week 2

Equanimity is a perfect, unshakable balance of mind.

–Nyanponika Thera

Welcome back! Here's hoping you had a peaceful and productive week, and enjoyed yourself.

     What will the day bring?  It is a question I ask myself each morning, and whether I am feeling dreadful or pretty darn good, I can never fully anticipate the answer.  Life is never truly routine, never without a multitude of things to wonder and marvel at.  As John O'Donohue writes, "If you could imagine the most incredible story ever, it would be less incredible than the story of being here.  And the ironic thing is, that story is not a story; it is true."  It is exciting to watch the world unfold, to witness the grand parade of things that pass before the eye of consciousness, to note the details, large and small, as one image, one thought, one feeling quickly passes on to the next! We ride the waves, sometimes on a crest, sometimes in a trough, but always we are in the realm of consciousness. . . . For me, meaning is found in the striving to become more aware of the life within and around us. If we can avoid getting caught up in our thoughts, the weight of which can at times be enormous, then we can connect with ourselves and others in that other space out of which all things flow and to which all return, and perhaps there find a goodness otherwise hidden. Behind the mask of appearances, there is a source, a cosmic sea of sorts; and instead of thrashing about in the waves as if at any moment we might drown, we might perchance learn to swim in harmony with that sea.  By writing we become, I believe, more conscious of what we see, for in our mind we look at things, turn them over, bring them close, take a step back . . . in short we find angles of view that might have escaped us had we not stopped to contemplate the show. 


      Writing about anything demands we find some perspective to put our subject in, a stance or idea to frame it. The frame, topic, or thesis tells a reader what to make of our subject. Say the subject–the raw material–is some event we can't shake from memory, whether from childhood, adolescence, or our adult life. Something happened and the memory of it has been shedding a certain light and force. This subject (event, phenomenon, fact, –call it what you will) must be interpreted, its shape discovered, framed, its meaning revealed (in so far as we can grasp it) in the writing we do about it. It's not easy, but that is the challenge.  A composition of even a single paragraph must organize itself around an idea, stated or implied, which is the thesis or topic idea. Ideally, each sentence relates to the paragraph topic and the effect is of a unified whole.  Read the following examples, whose topic ideas are in italic letters:

            Journeys are the midwives of thought.  Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships, or trains.  There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads:  large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places.  Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of landscape.  The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do; the task can be as paralyzing as having to tell a joke or mimic an accent on demand.  Thinking improves when parts of the mind are given other tasks—charged with listening to music, for example, or following a line of trees. The music or the view distracts for a time that nervous, censorious, practical part of the mind which is inclined to shut down when it notices something difficult emerging in consciousness, and which runs scared of memories, longings and introspective or original ideas, preferring instead the administrative and the impersonal.

            —Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel

Everything is changing. . . . This is a prediction I can make with absolute certainty. As human beings, we are constantly in a state of change. Our bodies change every day. Our attitudes are constantly evolving. Something that we swore by five years ago is now almost impossible for us to imagine ourselves believing. The clothes we wore a few years back now look strange to us in old photographs. The things we take for granted as absolutes, impervious to change, are, in fact, constantly doing just that. Granite boulders become sand in time. Beaches erode and shape new shorelines. Our buildings become outdated and are replaced with modern structures that also will be torn down. Even those things which last thousands of years, such as the Pyramids and the Acropolis, also are changing. This simple insight is very important to grasp if you want to be a no-limit person, and are desirous of raising no-limit children. Everything you feel, think, see, and touch is constantly changing.
–Wayne Dyer, What Do You Really Want For Your Children?

Starting about one million years ago, the fossil record shows an accelerating growth of the human brain. It expanded at first at the rate of of one cubic inch of additional gray matter every hundred thousand years: then the growth rate doubled; it doubled again; and finally it doubled once more. Five hundred thousand years ago the rate of growth hit its peak. At that time, the brain was expanding at the phenomenal rate of ten cubic inches every hundred thousand years. No other organ in the history of life is known to have grown as fast. –Robert Jastrow, Until the Sun Dies


What my mother never told me was how fast time passes in adult life. I remember, when I was little, thinking I would live to be at least as old as my grandmother, who was dynamic even at ninety-two, the age at which she died. Now I see those ninety-two years hurtling by me. And my mother never told me how much fun sex could be, or what a discovery it is. Of course, I'm of an age when mothers really didn't tell you much about anything. My mother never told me the facts of life. –Joyce Susskind, "Surprises in a Woman's LIfe"



Note:  Some paragraphs, particularly ones descriptive or narrative, have no directly stated topic idea, but the idea is implied, the purpose of the paragraph clear, and the development shows unity and coherence.  The term coherence refers to the orderly, intelligible arrangement of sentences, phrases, and words.  Repetition of key words and use of transitions  are two ways of creating coherence.  Transitions  are words and phrases that clarify the connections between thoughts, for example:  now, then, after all, finally, for example, in the meantime, indeed, thus, likewise, similarly, on the one hand, on the other hand,naturally, of course, in conclusion, etc.  




  What is the topic idea, implied or explicit, in the following examples?

After our meal we went for a stroll across the plateau. The day was already drawing to a close as we sat down upon a ledge of rock near the lip of the western precipice. From where we sat, as though perched high upon a cloud, we looked out into a gigantic void. Far below, the stream we had crossed that afternoon was a pencil-thin trickle of silver barely visible in the gloaming. Across it, on the other side, the red hill rose one upon another in gentle folds, fading into the distance where the purple thumblike mountains of Adua and Yeha stretched against the sky like a twisting serpent. As we sat, the sun sank fast, and the heavens in the western sky began to glow. It was a coppery fire at first, the orange streaked with aquamarine; but rapidly the firmament expanded into an explosion of red and orange that burst across the sky sending tongues of flame through the feathery clouds to the very limits of the heavens. When the flames had reached their zenith, a great quantity of storks came flying from the south. They circled above us once, their slender bodies sleek and black against the orange sky. Then, gathering together, they flew off into the setting sun, leaving us alone in peace to contemplate. One of the monks who sat with us, hushed by the intensity of the moment, muttered a prayer. The sun died beyond the hills; and the fire vanished.
            –Robert Dick-Read, Sanamu: Adventure in Search of African Art

In the old-time Pueblo world, beauty was manifested in behavior and in one's relationships with other living beings. Beauty was as much a feeling of harmony as it was a visual, aural, or sensual effect. The whole person had to be beautiful, not just the face or the body; faces and bodies could not be separated from hearts and souls. Health was foremost in achieving this sense of well-being and harmony; in the old-time Pueblo world, a person who did not look healthy inspired feelings of worry and anxiety, not feelings of well-being. A healthy person, of course, is in harmony with the world around her; she is at peace with herself too. Thus an unhappy person or spiteful person would not be considered beautiful. --Leslie Marmon Silko, Essays

Notice that well written paragraphs develop adequately the subject; that is, there is sufficient detail and enough examples to make a persuasive case for the idea(s) expressed. Often, too, in descriptive and narrative writing you will notice the pattern of arrangement is either spatial (the eye moves from point A to B and on to C and D in clear, coherent direction) or chronological (time is tracked either from a beginning point on forward, or backward, or some mix of the past, present, and future). Sometimes both the spatial, as in description of a setting or scene, and the chronological, as in an account of actions in time, are at work. Look again at the examples above. How are they arranged?



Graded Writing Assignment #1: Construct a single-paragraph piece (no more than a page is necessary).  It may narrate an experience or event that reveals something about you or others or the world we live in.  It may be descriptive of a place, a time, a person, or a thing.  Use first-person voice, the familiar "I" that we use in conversations about ourselves. We may get time to work on it in class; nonetheless, you will revise and bring it to class week 3.  Bring this essay to class week 3. Make sure to double space the lines, to use 11 point type in Times font, and to indent the first paragraph (and all paragraph beginnings). Try for 200 words. Underline in text the explicit thesis idea or write at the bottom of the page the implicit thesis idea. Bring this essay to class week 3.

SENTENCE TYPES
Sentence Type 1: The simple sentence has one subject and one predicate, the base of which is always a verb or verb phrase. And in English, the subject usually comes up front, followed by the verb and other predicate elements such as direct and indirect objects. This subject-verb combo is called a clause, an independent clause, because it expresses a grammatically complete, stand-alone thought.  Examples follow here:

Jesus wept. 

Style has meaning.

Choices resonate.

Nuts! (that is nuts, this is nuts, he is nuts, etc., where "that", "this", "he" are the subjects and "is" the verb, with "nuts" describing the situation or person, as an adjective or subject complement).

What is the subject in each of the three preceding sentences?  Jesus.  Style.  Choices.  And the verbs?  Wept and has and resonate.

And in the following?



The house is surrounded by razor wire.



He and I fight too often. We cannot be good for one another. 


After spring sunset, mist rises from the river, spreading like a flood.



From a bough, floating down river, insect song.  (Sentence fragment here . . . no verb).

They slept. –intransitive (takes no direct object of the verb)

The girl raised the flag. – transitive (the flag is the object of the verb)



Note inverted syntax order: Subject follows the verb instead of preceding it.  Lovable he isn't. This I just don't understand. Tall grow the pines on the hills.

Normal order: A fly is in my soup. With an expletive (which delays the subject) it looks like this: There is a fly in my soup.

Sentence type 2: The compound sentence has at least two independent subject and verb combinations or clauses, and no dependent clauses. Each independent clause is joined by means of some conjunction or coordinating punctuation:
Autumn is a sad season, but I love it anyway.
Name the baby Huey, or I'll cut you out of my will.
The class was young, eager, and intelligent, and the teacher delighted in their presence.
The sky grew black, and the wind died; an ominous quiet hung over the whole city.
My mind is made up; however, I do want to discuss the decision with you.

Any of the seven short coordinating conjunctions can be used before the comma to join independent clauses:  for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so:  they can be remembered as FANBOYS.

A semi-colon (;) must be used before adverbial conjunctions joining independent clauses:  however, indeed, therefore, thus, in fact, moreover, in addition, consequently, still, etcetera.
Sentence Type 3: The complex sentence is composed of one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.
Many people believe that God does not exist.
Those who live in glass houses should not cast stones.
As I waited for the bus, the sun beat down all around me.
Because she said nothing, we assumed she wanted nothing.

Examples of subordinating conjunctions include the following:  because, that, which, who, when, while, where, wherever, though, as though, although, since, as, if, as if, unless, et al .

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 Examples of cumulative structure to consider:  

 The trunks of the trees were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves. 

  In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.  In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.  Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust that they raised powdered the trees. –Ernest Hemingway

He drove the car carefully, his shaggy hair whipped by the wind, his eyes hidden behind wraparound mirror shades, his mouth set in a grim smile, a .38 Police Special on the seat beside him, the corpse stuffed in the trunk.   

Another example of  cumulative structure:  The couple reconciled after several years, having realized that their problems and differences were not as great as their desire to be together.

For homework, do the following comma exercise:  http://owl.english.purdue.edu/exercises/3/5/15