Beyond the Meat
Ok then, so far you have been told that the theme paper is the meat of the main course for the meal of college writing, and in order to excel in the process of education you must master the boundaries of the five paragraph dilemma. You must know how to use the knife and fork of discovery. To know the boundaries is to know style. You have learned the technique of writing (or eating a theme paper). Congratulations to yourself! You are well on your way to enlightenment or in the very least employment!
Ok then, so you are well acquainted with the boundaries of the theme and have even picked up a few interesting techniques along the way. Now you must cross over the borders... invade the undiscovered country of whatever monster
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Clarity is in the eyes of the beholders and you feel beholden to whomever said that. Words come floating into your room, they circumnavigate the breath of your understanding and settle next to your sleeping cats... Phonemes, paroles, logocentrism, signs and signifiers... RATS! Words have a connoted meaning to the reader. A random placement of the articles of language will move you outside of the borders; but into an Eitherland of gibberish. Is communicating to the reader your goal or are you just trying to prove that borders can be crossed. GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF MAN! One of your overfed cats stretches. You are even more uncertain, unclear, unsure, [INSERT SIMILE HERE]
Ok then, one small step for you, one giant leap for your understanding of boundaries. Once over the wall of the theme there is only space... Maybe you should go underground like Art Spiegelman did when he wrote the Graphic Novels "MAUS". Two problems with this idea, you are not Jewish and you are not Jewish. Although, your family has had its own personal Holocaust; but do you really want to drag out the metaphorical skeletons from the closet of cliches? YOU need more
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That reminds you of a poetry instructor who once told you to,
"Write, write , write always write."
So you wrote. Mostly about your childhood's secret place in the woods where your Picture Rock stood. That large smooth stone... showing you images across its surface, projecting your life and the lives of people whom you would someday meet, the lives of people you knew, and knew that you would know. The rock that ran your daily movies. You can still see the frames sliding across the well worn face... if only you knew then what you know now. [INSERT CLICHE] (Oh you already did. Nevermind.)
And then one calm school day, a number of quarters after you finish your poetry writing class, you notice your instructors name on a newly published book. It's a new collection of poetry entitled, Picture Rock.
"Write, write, write... always write."
"Yeah," You say to your cats, "Right!"
"Hmmmmm is that a real ending?" You haven't even summarized the important ideas. Where is the conclusion? From whence cometh the light of your supposed enlightenment? Oh well, this is your cartographical journey. You have traveled outside the borders of the theme, past the signposts up ahead (bing bing, bing bing), and this will do just fine. You have known the borders and you have crossed them. You are certainly unsure of your new discoveries; but you have learned that the meat of the theme is only one part of the veritable feast of writing, and that you prefer the
In an excerpt of Unteaching the Five-Paragraph Essay," Marie Foley reveals how the Five-Paragraph Essay formula contradicts writing instructor's most basic goals. Foley shows that the formula deters from generating individual thinking. In today's society, essays are used by millions of people in order to express their different ideas. The Five-Paragraph Essay formula was originally developed to help retain the efficiency and clarity of the essay. Foley, however, believes that this process eventually separates the student from his or her written expression and should be used only as a first step tool for beginning student writers. Foley insists that the formula blocks discovery, squelches authenticity and undermines the reader's need for coherence. Foley shows that patterns of organization and more natural thinking can benefit the student.
When a person begins writing a paper it can prove to be a difficult task. Where do they begin, and how do they get to where they need to be? The articles “Shitty first Drafts” by Anne Lamott and “Accordions, Frogs, and the 5 Paragraph Theme” by Rob Jenkins bring together freewriting and careful organization into a symbiotic harmony. One has the reader focusing on letting their creative thought flow, and the other has their focus on an effective and adaptive formula. While each have their own unique viewpoint on how the writer can initially achieve their goals, the end goal is the same. With practice and skill, a little bit of freewriting and a little bit of organization can go a long way.
My Year of Meats (Ozeki) tells the story of two women in two very different parts of the world, and their tumultuous, life-changing journey with meat over the course of a year. Both characters come face to face with situations that test their beliefs and morals, as well as their resolve. There are many themes and lessons that come out of the two women’s’ journey regarding the media, meat products and capitalism, but one of the majors themes that is present in all aspects of the story is the idea of how ideals are carried through society. At one point or another, both women are faced with a choice to either continue on the path their life is currently on, or go against society and change their course. Ruth Ozeki supports the idea in her book that in order to be truly happy and have a less stereotypical society, each individual member of society must be willing to look at their own lives and change it themselves; otherwise, true change will never happen, and society will never be able to move past its limiting views.
Recently, I have been writing quite a few essays and papers throughout my college experience. This entails, but not limited to, English, History, and Economics. My style of writing and methods have generally remained the same throughout the process. In this assignment, I will be discussing how I prepare to start a paper, what my thoughts are through the process, and my strengths and weaknesses of what my final drafts look like.
One might compare this to the grueling, tiresome and back-breaking efforts of writing a good essay. Many of us have been writing essays for a long time now. Some of them are A papers, and well some them not as good as we thought they were. Throughout the years, teachers have shown us the proper technique and several examples of papers,
We would do research on a subject or a person, and write about them. We, once again, were not allowed to be unique in our writing or think creatively or critically. This is the time when I was taught the five paragraph essay. As stated in Gray’s article, the five paragraph essay is detrimental to students’ writing. This format for writing is damaging because it doesn’t allow students to express their own ideas about a topic. It does not allow for any creativity or uniqueness in a paper. In tenth grade, I wrote many papers for my English class, but I never once got an A on them. I was led to believe that my writing was weak because I could not relate to what I was writing about. I did not have any emotional connection to the research papers I had to write, and it made it harder for me to write them. I had grown up not being allowed to think critically, and therefore, my papers in high school lacked creativity and deeper
Autobiographer, essayist, playwright, poet, satirist, Enlightenment writer and philosopher – these are just a few of the hats worn by French born François-Marie Arouet, more famously known by the adopted pen name Voltaire. Beyond his written work Voltaire was an outspoken advocate for the freedom of religion, expression, and the separation of church and state. He used his versatile literary work as a tool to criticize the Catholic Church and overall intolerant French society. Voltaire’s cynical writing reached its highest potential in his rapid-fire satire Candide, or Optimism. In the novella, Voltaire told the story of Candide – a young man on a quest for happiness and spiritual fulfillment who encountered tragic setbacks that eventually led to bitter disillusionment. The purpose of Candide was to mock philosophers of the
The women had to experience being raped while they were still virgins which must have been a horrible moment in their lives. It was made worse by the fact that it happened multiple times in the case of the old woman. Cunegonde’s response was to scream, struggle, bite, claw and try to scratch the Bulgar soldier’s eyes out(Voltaire, 31). Cunegonde tried to resist being raped but was overpowered and stabbed which is what would be expected in that kind of a situation. From the way She retold the events to Candide one can see how strong she is in being able to move past it, then again she didn’t have much time to dwell on it as events around her forced her to move on from it. The old woman wasn’t too descriptive on what occurred when she was raped but she did say that “The Princess of Palestrina and I certainly needed all our strength to withstand everything we underwent...(Voltaire 40)” From this we can assume that the women were raped many times over the course of the trip. from what we read after that however, one can tell it must have required a great deal of strength to continue on even though there were times she thought of committing suicide. The women were strong and had a good ability to adapt to the situations they found themselves in a little better than the
In the novel Candide written by Voltaire there are several symbols throughout the story. One of those symbolic figures that seems to stand out in the story is the character Candide, a gullible and innocent boy who experiences many hardships after being vanished from the castle of the baron von Thunder-ten-tronckh. Candide seems to be a representation of people's innocence and how they tend to lose it throughout their lifetime as they witness and experience new things in the world and grow wary of the consequences that every different situation may hold. For example, Voltaire mentions in the beginning of the story that “nature had bestowed upon [Candide] the gentlest of dispositions. His countenance expressed his soul” which shows to the reader that Candide is kind and innocent at the beginning and that he has not the slightest intentions of interfering with another persons life in a negative manner (3). However, later on in the story after Candide has killed Don Issachar and the Grand Inquisitor, Candide justifies his murderous behavior to Cunegonde by saying that “when you are in love, and jealous, and have been flogged by the inquisition, there is no knowing what you may do” which demonstrates that the gentle and kind Candide has turned into a murderer as a result of his previous life experiences which in turn provides an excellent example of how people lose their innocence and turn to violence overtime (22).
In “The Gender Blur: Where Does Biology End and Society Take Over?” Deborah Blum states that “gender roles of our culture reflect an underlying biology” (Blum 679). Maasik and Solomon argue that gender codes and behavior “are not the result of some sort of natural or biological destiny, but are instead politically motivated cultural constructions,” (620) raising the question whether gender behavior begins in culture or genetics. Although one may argue that gender roles begin in either nature or nurture, many believe that both culture and biology have an influence on the behavior.
All through our academic years we were taught how to write. Starting with elementary, when the form of writing was first introduced, it consisted of compositions with simple prompts about our weekends. Now, that there was an idea of how to write, middle school English teachers began teaching students a writing format. This format is commonly known as the five-paragraph essay, which entailed an introduction, three supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The five-paragraph essay began being strongly implemented in high school and it leads to many debates whether or not it benefited students proceeding into college. I believe the five-paragraph format was helpful for high school students starting out, but is not as beneficial to freshman
Thousands of people die each year due to the way our meat products are being handled. Animals are being forced to live in poor conditions and they are given drugs and food that are unnatural. The cow herd size has increase 8 times more than it was 16 years ago and two percent of livestock farms now raise 40% of the animals in the United States (Weaver). These statistics are painting a picture of the industry that the beef market has created. The way that these industries are running is having a negative impact on both the animals and society.
Mason, Haydn Trevor. Candide: Optimism Demolished. Twayne's masterwork studies, no. 104. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992.
I have learned many things throughout the course of the term, including such things as: how to write an essay and how to improve on essays that I have already written, how to locate and composite better research through the use of numerous resources found at the campus library, the internet, and the “Common Sense” textbook, how to cite research, examples, and quotations properly within the contents of my research paper as well as document it accurately according to MLA standards. Through the exploration of the “Subjects and Strategies” textbook, I have learned nine different methods used when writing an effective essay and how the different writing styles affect the overall theme and tone of the essay when used properly. This past semester, I have encountered many difficulties when trying to write these essays, but through the use of the textbooks, the aide of the instructor, and once I was able to classify the different types of essays and styles, I found them possible to overcome.
“We have been very conditioned by the cultures that we come from and are usually very identified with the particular gender that we happen to be a member of.” This quote by Andrew Cohen explains partially how gender identity develops, through the conditioning of our environments. The most influential factor of gender development, however, is still a very controversial issue. An analysis of the gender identification process reveals two main arguments in what factor most greatly contributes to gender development: biology differences (nature) or the environment (nurture).