Week 4
Icarus, by Henri Matisse
Hello to you all. Hope you had a good week since last we met. I read all the work submitted and have to say good job, for I found the material interesting and nicely composed. I will return these papers today first thing and accept any late work or revisions. If you have brought a draft of the narrative assignment set out last week, good. You will have time to work with it today and linked stories as well.
After reviewing the returned work and grammar practice, we will spend the class time working on narrative form. To narrate, you may recall, is to tell a story involving incidents, people in situations that evoke questions and/or insights and perspectives which the form allows you to present and explore by means of key events and moments, dominant impressions, and commentary. What happened, when, where, why, and the individuals involved are key elements, as is use of description to make readers “see” the scene, action, character. Often dialogue will bring a sense of the here and now, a dramatic immediacy and clarity of voice that immerses readers in the moment.
The following is a rendering of a fairly well known Indian story. It could serve as the start of an essay about how one deals with strong emotions:
The Cherokee people tell the story of a young boy who has been badly wronged by someone he considered a friend. The boy, hurt and furious, tells his grandfather about the incident. His grandfather nods and replies, At times, I too have felt hatred for those who do great harm and seem to feel no sorrow about it. But hate wears a person down and does not hurt the enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing the enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times. It is as if two wolves live inside me; they live inside you, too. One wolf is good. He is peaceful, generous, compassionate, and wise. He lives in harmony with all those around him and does not easily take offense. He fights only when it is right to do so. But the other wolf lives in me as well–and in you. He is full of anger, envy, self pity, and pain. The smallest thing infuriates him, He cannot think clearly because his anger is so great, yet that anger changes nothing. Sometimes, it is hard to live with two wolves inside me, for both of them struggle to dominate my spirit.
The boy looked intently into his grandfather’s eyes and asked, “Which wolf wins, Grandfather?” The grandfather smiled and said quietly, “The one I feed.”
I have several more examples from recent reading, youtube (poetry slam), Amanda Palmer, and I'm hoping you all can share some, however anecdotal or brief. I'd like to see you all pulling from a number of strong possibilities and seeing how often stories can be linked and tied, too, to current events and news.
So we'll free write to get started while being mindful of getting down those particulars–key place names, dates, key players, and images that put key ideas and feelings in concrete forms. Last week's posted piece by Annie Dillard is one model we can review for insights into formal possibilities.
We will refer to last week's page for more examples of narrative form as we practice this mode of development.
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Essay 3 (due week 5): A narrative essay in 350 words, titled and double-spaced.
Topic Suggestions:
Topic Suggestions:
1 . A personal breakthrough (emotional, physical, or spiritual)
2 . A novel, important experience–be it of a person, place, work or other
3 . An important family story or one someone has told you
4 . An account of how little things can make a large difference
5 . A now-I-know-better narrative of experience
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Greenland, the world's largest island
S Sentence Fragments: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/620/01/
Grammar Practice: Review the following exercise/practice work:
Review the material on pronoun use here:
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