Extended Essay New Beginning

Elizabeth Derstine

Ann Hostter

Creative Nonfiction

We never quite know how our parents died. Phoebe sometimes wants to start the story while her parents are still alive and trial through their death but that never interests Iona and me much. It wasn’t that Phoebe’s detailed back stories of her huddled unnoticed in the closet while her parents are stabbed in their sleep scares us. I had seen the torture machine in Princess Bride, I had memorized “remember remember the 5^th of November the gunpowder treason and plot” for my British second grade teacher, I know that evil exists. But, the exposition focuses too much on our parents and the point of our imaginary games is not that they are gone but that we are still here.

During recess a smattering of students play “the ground is lava” on the jungle gym, a gaggle of girls crack the acorns that fall from the great big tree in the center of the macadam and set the soft insides in a pile for squirrels, and our teacher referees several games of four square because they could get out of hand. Iona, Phoebe and I play orphans-- normally orphaned cats. We press into a corner of the court yard, sheltered by the brick walls of the school building, and crawl around on all fours, gravel sticking to our bare knees as our colorful stretchy shorts inching up our midriffs. As we crawl we talk out our story, which always follows a similar plot line—are parents are dead and we were trying to survive on our own. Sometimes a man adopts us but he always turns out to have sinister motives (such as feeding us to his shark or forcing us to clean for him using our cat fur as mops) so we run away and learn how to live by nothing but our own wits.

None of us had read Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Harry Potter, or Jane Eyre but we already knew that orphans were awarded main character. “When orphans succeed against all odds, their success ultimately becomes ours. We can look to orphans and say, ‘you see, there is hope for all of us if even this orphan child can overcome obstacles and succeed (Kimball 559).”  Since the orphan is the epitome of loneliness in literature it is through their own virtue and self- motivation that they overcome the obstacles they do.

***

Let’s say you and I are walking down a city street when a woman approaches you with a handful of ten dollar bills. She tells you that you can keep some of the money as long as you offer some to me and I accept it. The amount you offer me is up to you but if I don’t accept what you offer, then neither of us gets to keep any of the money.  When you offer me a 60-40 split, $60 for you $40 for me, we would both walk away richer than we had been but I feel a strong sense of unfairness. I refuse and the woman walks away with the money.

This scenario, also called the Ultimatum game, is an economic experiment. It led to the discovery of inequity aversion. Even primates demonstrate something resembling inequity aversion. Researchers experimented with brown capuchin monkeys. They would ask the trained monkeys to perform certain tasks and the monkeys, after observing a companion of similar social rank receive a juicy grape for performing the same task, would become uncooperative if offered a cucumber.

                               

David Housman – fairness and equity research

The Hazing of Swans

Suzanne Paola

Tell it Slant

Quality of Voice? “The boys found both self-preservation and swan- watching equally unworthy.” The voice is’nt lacking humor but even in sections such as this there is a certain scholarly quality.

What are some of the specific words or phrases that bring this essay into focus for you?  “I can imagine that we would seem strange, fetishistic to that age, crowding in whale watching trawlers to chase orcas and whatever, blackening out eyes with binoculars.” This drew to mind for me the way people travel in order to see certain animals and natural happenings in the wild and through that process, travel, pollution, are eliminating them.

Where does this writer create images and or scenes? “When swans walk it’s like seeing a piece of your grandmother’s ceramic collection rise and waddle.”

Where does this writer “tell?” “if time fluctuated just a little, these babies, scrunched and out of it, might wear trumpeter swan-skin onesies, be rubbed with ambergris.” This is more of a thought but in it she is telling how she views the fluidity of time and change.

What kinds of sentence variety, phrasing, etc. add to the quality of this piece? Towards the end she includes a scene with dialogue which gives the piece energy. The inclusion of the conversation in a paper heavy on description and fact kept it lively.

Questions:

Was it ever discovered why only some birds in family groups were dying if they all fed together?

What separate threads did you actively create when writing this piece?

A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay
Brenda Miller
Tell it Slant

This essay beyond being about the braided form was a "how to" guide in itself. The braid that wound through the piece felt very obvious in an instructional way.

Quality of Voice? “and his email reply said (in a voice so much like the rabbis of my youth! Slightly contemptuous, a little annoyed…) that the Sabbath bread…” This phrase really shows the style of voice the author uses. The parentheses, exclamation point, and ellipses, I think all lead to a very laid back, causal interpretation of her writing.

What are some of the specific words or phrases that bring this essay into focus for you? “the fragmentation, however, allowed me—almost forced me – not to approach the essay head-on but to search for a more circuitous way into the essay.” I also thought her advice on focusing on the silences, the caesuras was descriptive of the essay itself.

Where does this writer create images and or scenes? “ You take the sticky dough in your hands and knead, folding the dough toward you, then pushing away with the heel of your hand, turning and repeating, working and working your entire body—your legs, your abdomen, your strong heart.”

Where does this writer “tell?” “I love the fact their separate parts intersecting, creating the illusion of wholeness but with the oh-so-pleasurable texture of separation.”

What kinds of sentence variety, phrasing, etc. add to the quality of this piece? “Bread had always been a miracle. As has poetry, and language itself, this tremendous urge to communicate.” The incredibly informal attitude of the piece opens it up to creative sentence structure such as beginning with “and”.

Questions:

How obvious to like your thread to be?

How does using or not using headings for different sections effect a piece?

Happiness is divided into three segments pre--activity, activity, and post-activity.

ANTICIPATION: One third of the enjoyment reaped from a certain situation is anticipation. Looking forward to an event is exciting, playing around with the possibilities in your mind awards possibilities hard to glean in reality. Especially if it is a first. There is a power in firsts. I haven't ever kissed anyone and people tell it me it won’t be as a good as I imagine it to me. But that’s the thing, until I have it will be, and right now, in my mind, there are freaking fireworks

ACTUALITY: This is the part people focus on-- the doing. I am bad at planning ahead. On a Thursday I have trouble making plans for Friday, I feel I am at the time in my life that I can truly let the chips fall where they may. I am responsible to no one but me. Due to that, I chose to live as much in the moment as I can. "No Obstacles" is a game my friends and I play. We go outside pick a direction and walk that way for as long as feasibly possible. And we push "feasibly" past its dictionary definition. We shoulder each other over fences, we climb up than down the only tree in a 30 feet vicinity, we trip through streams.

RETROSPECTION: Laughter happens after the fact. It is reminiscing that side stitches and cackles come in. Rosy retrospection my AP Psych teacher called it. I love those who can tell a compelling story, I have a friend whose stories crackle with passion and even the ones that involve negative experiences cause her to sparkle. She told us about the time a dog she was pet sitting felt the call of the wild and trapped her in the bathroom slamming itself against the door over and over again. It caused shivers to run down my arms even as she laughed and laughed describing in too specific humorous detail how the dog would wind up before leaping at the door. Reliving an event can shift it into something more exciting or desirable then it ever had the capability of being in the present. The world takes on a glossy finish.

Three Spheres
Lauren Slater
Creative NonFiction Journal

Quality of Voice? The voice is very reminiscent of a journal entry, very informal and at times meandering. “Of all the hundreds of hospitals in Massachusetts, why did it have to be that one?” I can see this in a journal with the word “that” written all in capitals and underlined several times.

What are some of the specific words or phrases that bring this essay into focus for you? “ I am now a psychologist who, over the years, has learned to give up her Indian print sundresses and bulky smocks for tailored skirts, who carries a black Coach leather briefcase.” The amount of importance placed on appearance when grouping people is acknowledged by Slater. Because she now appears in control she is given the respect people reserve for those who have everything together. Slater’s piece attacks this way of viewing things.

Where does this writer create images and or scenes? “our house swells with raw and echoing sounds, with crashing crescendos and wails that shiver up inside mu skin, lodging there a fear…” “the way night looked as it fell behind the bars and the stars were sliced into even segments.”

Where does this writer “tell?” “Sometimes I wish time stayed solid, in separable chunks as distinct as the sound of the ticking clock on my mantle right now.” “Wound’s, I think, are never confined to a single skin.”

What kinds of sentence variety, phrasing, etc. add to the quality of this piece? “Safe again. Trapped again. Safe again. Trapped aga—“ “ I am standing on the other side of that door—the wrong, I mean this right, side of the door—and I ring the buzzer.” Lines such as these add to the immediacy of the piece.

Questions:

How did she achieve such a easy blending of past, present, and processing?

Where was she career-wise was she when this piece was published? Did she feel exposed? 

Love Letters
Megan Foss
Creative Nonfiction Journal

The first time Foss used "mighta" I was taken aback and intrigued by the linguistic choice. The story is compelling through her use of tension. The line "I never mailed a single one," was chilling in its simplicity at upsetting the status quo from the get go. Foss leads her reader through the story as she slowly reveals who she is. The story itself is part of the story, which creates even more tension. As a reader I was drawn into how she got to the place where she was writing this piece. She creates a camaraderie with the reader when she mentions pieces written for her English teachers as though she expects the reader to have already read them and understand there purpose.

The final section, section 3, was very powerful. My initial feelings of the piece were explained to me, as Foss explained how everything is purposeful. the way she weaves the words together is a expression of where she came from and a blending of lives that society is determined to keep separate and uncomfortable at blending "language was the biggest con of all," Foss says, it is the way one says something not the content that she felt was being considered. "I think I understand that to accept that the drug-addicted hooker that I was could have possessed intelligence and critical thinking somehow speaks to a societal failure as well as my own."

Questions
What is her current attitude on the power of language? Thoughts as a published author?
Does she see her style transforming as she does or is she attached to the blending of languages?

A Possible Beginning 

.Let’s say you and I are walking down a city street when a woman approaches you with a handful of ten dollar bills. She tells you that you can keep some of the money as long as you offer some to me and I accept it. The amount you offer me is up to you but if I don’t accept what you offer, then neither of us gets to keep any of the money.  When you offer me a 60-40 spilt I feel a strong sense of unfairness, so I refuse. The woman walks away with the money.

This scenario, also called the Ultimatum game, is an economic experiment. It led to the discovers of inequity aversion. Even primates demonstrate something resembling inequity aversion. Researchers experimented with brown capuchin monkeys. They would ask the trained monkeys to perform certain tasks and the monkeys, after observing a companion of similar social rank receive a juicy grape for  performing the same task, would become uncooperative if offered a cucumber.