Reponse to Mitford

Mitford Response 1:

Death is a very scary concept to humans. People have established explanations or euphemisms that try to lessen the permanent nature of it, whether it is through religion or simple phrases. Nobody wants to believe that in a single moment they could be gone from this earth wandering eternity alone. Diminishing the dramatic and frightening finality of death is natural. Embalming is a way for people to comfort themselves over the loss of a loved one and diminish the terror associated with their own death.

Throughout history and across cultures people have embalmed their dead to temporarily ward off the effects of decay in order to perform a good bye service. From the ancient Egyptians’ intricate procedures to the Inca’s value of mummification, cultures have established embalming methods to treat with their dead. The United States and Canada are no different in the fact that they must honor their dead in some ritual. For some reason or another, an open casket funeral that employs the use of embalming is the most common. The fact Europeans, Africans or Asians have another burial process, it does not matter if embalming is accepted in the US.

Death is not a pretty or elegant event, nor should embalming have to be. The grisly details, although disturbing in the telling, are necessary in order to ward off the appearance of the petrifying and ugly aspects of death. I did not need to know the exact steps in the embalming process, nor did I want to know. Sometimes details are better left unknown. For example, I committed an uncomfortable mistake by reading The Jungle byUpton Sinclair. I was nauseous for a couple of minutes but I didn’t have a sudden resolve to become a vegetarian. Embalming is disgusting but perhaps a necessary process.

Life, and death, can be unpleasant and people should not be deterred but uncomfortable details. Embalming is a gruesome amalgamation of euphemisms and processes that lessen the appearance of death. Since so few things are sugar coated in life, why not sugar coat death, the one thing that everybody fears.

Compare and Contrast Essay

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General Statement Essay

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The Human Cost of an Iliterate Society Response

In The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society by Jonathan Kozol, the author uses repetition and short anecdotes throughout his essay to convey the disadvantages illiterates face in modern society. Kozol repeats ‘illiterates cannot” at least nine times in the essay, the majority at the beginning of the paragraph. It highlights the limitations of illiterate people have to circumvent in order to live a normal American life. Kozol also has numerous “illiterates do not” and “illiterates depend” to further emphasize the lack of freedom and dependency on other people’s trust and honest intentions.

Kozol also employs the use of anecdotes to emotionally appeal to the reader. From the woman who could not feed her family because she accidentally spent her money on a year’s worth of Crisco to the man who could not get home due to a combination of car troubles and his unable read the signs around him, illiterates are portrayed as those who are helpless and frozen by the fear of not knowing. He also uses his own personal dream to emphasize the emotional hardships these people face.

However the presentation of a problem without any inclination of a viable solution is distracting from Kozol’s purpose. While he is describing the hardships of illiterates, I was wondering why don’t they learn how to read or how come they were not taught to read. Why aren’t these people trying to better their lives by becoming literate? Also, the author’s diction implies that there is a substantial number of Americans who are currently illiterate. Our country has one of the highest literacy rates in the word, so it does not make any sense. The title and the introductory paragraphs also state that in order to have a “true democracy” everyone must be literate. The U.S. is not a true democracy; it is a republic. There is no society in the world that everyone will be literate. There are always one or two outliers. By not addressing these major topics, the emotional appeal is diminished. I would be much more sympathetic if there were less questionable implications.

Narrative Essay

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Personal Choice

Personal Choice Blog:

With college rapidly approaching, I am constantly thinking about the benefits and substantial costs of going to a university. There is always a debate raging in my head; is a degree worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and over four years without any work experience in my intended field? Most of the time I think that college is absolute necessity but I am curious to know who, throughout the entire scope of humanity, was successful by going through an unconventional academic process.

One of the most famous and influential – also my personal favorite – scientist throughout history was Isaac Newton.  Unlike most academics in the 1600s, Newton was born to a poor farming family in England. The combination of his overall poor farming skills, a hoard of physically capable siblings and his enthusiasm for education enabled his parents to send Newton to Cambridge with the intent to become a preacher. While at Cambridge, Newton mainly studied mathematics instead of the clergy, much to his parents’ disappointment. Strongly influenced by Euclid and by the Baconian and Cartesian philosophies, Newton was fascinated be the simple mechanisms of the world.

Disaster struck when Newton was forced to leave Cambridge due to the recent outbreak of the plague that swept across Europe. Newton went back to his family farm, unable to continue his formal education for over two years. However, it was during this leave from school that Newton formulated his groundbreaking new ideas. He created the basis for the modern sciences of mechanics, optics and calculus, which became the critical components of Newton’s iconic mathematics book The Principia.

From understanding a mundane aspect of life, gravity, to grasping the intangible, the nature of light, and continuing an age long subject, calculus, Newton derived these ideas while watching fruit fall from his family’s apple tree. He was able to calculate the circumference of the earth, the exact orbital of Hailey’s comet, and predict the upcoming solar eclipse without ever leaving his family farm. In collaboration with other renowned scientists such as Robert Hooke and Flamsteed, Newton made huge improvements in our understanding of the mechanics of the earth and, concomitantly, the astronomical interactions.

I find it surprising that Newton was enabled by the lack of traditional schooling, rather than a total emersion in an academic culture, to discover the mechanics, optics and calculus. Is a purely academic culture productive for scientific innovation or stifling due people’s fear of being wrong? Newton definitely took an unusual route to achieve academic fame with his interruption of school because of the dreaded plague. I wonder if it is helpful for modern college students to take a year or two off to pursue their own interests. Maybe one student will achieve their own Newtonian notions.

Greasy Lake

Kathryn Johnson

September 7, 2012

In T. C. Boyle’s short story Greasy Lake, the mock-serious tone points out the ridiculous nature of the boys’ attempts to be bad characters. At first glance, the author’s descriptions of the teenage boy’s cars, alcohol and actions seem to be questionable. However, it emphasizes that by trying too hard to appear dangerous characters, they end up looking like a silly wannabe bad boys. These ivy-league nerds who live in suburbia with their parents end up making fool of themselves because of their absurd attempts to be bad.

These teenage boys, in order to appear be bad characters, mention their alcohol consumption numerous times. However there is nothing rebellious about the fruity drinks of “gin and grape juice, Tango, Thunderbird and Bali Hai.” Even when they go up to Greasy Lake they only bring “a bottle of lemon-flavored gin.” By adding the fruity qualifiers to their descriptions of their drinks these teenagers dramatically diminish the rebellious aspects of their supposedly dangerous ventures.

Besides their alcohol consumption the description of the boy’s cars indicates the extent to which sheltered and dependent these teenagers were. The picture of the “robin‘s egg [color] of Tony’s car,” and their “parents’ whining station wagons” indicates a lack of danger and rebellion. The portrayal of the beat up car with, “no windshield, the headlights were staved in and the body looked as if it had been sledge-hammered for a quarter a shot at the county fair but the tires were inflated to regulation pressure,” ridiculous the boy’s attempt to fight off a true “bad greasy character.”

The teenagers’ attempts to appear dangerous characters further emphasize the ludicrous nature of their actions. From their “elaborate poses to show that [they] didn’t give a shit,” to allowing “his father to pay this tuition at Cornell” and claim that the narrator “hadn’t been involved in a fight since sixth grade,” or “touched the iron exactly twice,” these boys are sheltered ivy-league geeks. Not even their “torn-up leather jackets slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths” and wearing “mirror shades at breakfast and dinner in the shower, in closets and caves,” would convince anyone that they are bad boys. Digby’s anecdote of phys-ed martial arts is humorously contrasted with his inability to even punch a random biker, nevertheless a trained fighter.

However, these wannabe bad boys start to regret their attempts to be viewed as dangerous characters after they were obliterated by three ogre-like greasy characters. “A wedge of feldspar the size of a cue ball,” and a flailing tire iron was enough to convince Digby, Jeff and the narrator to abandon their humorously bad attempts to be greasy characters. These events go to show these geeks should stay content with their character instead of trying to appear cool without accepting the truly detrimental consequences.

Description Essay

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