Essays Made Easy

Learning from Sherlock Holmes: An Analytical, Argumentative, and Process Analysis Essay, All Rolled into One

2025-09-03T11:37:00.000-07:00

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In detective stories, red herrings (false leads or false clues) often take the form of mistaken or false identities or mistakes concerning the manner, time, or place of death; the motive for the murder; or several of these errors. Sometimes, however, red herrings result from errors in reasoning itself, that is, because of fallacies or due to misapplications of logical procedures.

A good number of errors in reasoning result from fallacies, especially those characterized by confirmation bias, hasty generalization, post hoc ergo propter hoc, and circular reasoning. These particular types of fallacies might be called errors in thinking that result from the manner in which reasoning is applied; others types of faulty thinking––those that are the subject of this study––result from errors in the misapplication of the processes of thinking.

Basically, there are two processes of thinking: deduction and induction. Abduction is a special, refined form of the latter. As David Baggett points out, in “Sherlock Holmes as Epistemologist,” “abduction . . . is an inference to the best explanation.” This form of reasoning is accomplished by “identifying a pool of candidates to account for some state of affairs [such as a murder], then narrowing down the list by a principled set of criteria, [and] then inferring to it as the likely true explanation.”

In a murder mystery, three questions can guide the application of the process:

1. What are the possible causes of the murder?

2. Which of these possible causes of the murder fit the entire set of criteria?

3. Which of these resulting possible causes [those that fit all the criteria] is likely the best likely explanation of the murder?

Both Holmes and Baggett remind readers that the best possible cause of the “particular state of affairs,” in Baggett’s words, or the means of the murder, for Holmes’s purposes, must fit as many as possible, if not, indeed, all the criteria that have been determined by the logician (detective). Only the one that does so or comes closest to doing so should be considered as probably conclusive.

But what are the criteria? How are they determined? From whence do they come?

In detective fiction, the criteria come from the evidence collected at the crime scene, from interrogations of witnesses, from the facts of the case, and any other relevant sources of information at the detective’s disposal that may be helpful in the solving of the murder (or, in some cases, another crime).

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For example, to solve the mystery of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” Holmes must first determine the possible causes of the murder of Helen Stoner’s sister twin Julia. His interview with Helen provides an account of Julia’s demise and a list of possible suspects:

· Julia dies shortly before her pending marriage;

· Julia had heard an odd metallic sound and a shrill whistle before dying;

· Julia had seemed terrified;

· Julia had warned Julia not to sleep in her own bedroom because of the strange noises;

· Julia appeared to have died of fright or due to an attack of an unseen assailant.

· Possible suspects are Dr. Roylott, a band of Gypsies, and the wild cheetah and baboon that have the run of the estate. It seems unlikely that Helen is a suspect because it is she who consults Holmes about her sister’s death.

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During his investigation of the crime scene, which occurs during several visits, Holmes discovers (on his first visit):

· a ventilator in the ceiling of the room;

· the location of Julia’s bed, which is bolted to the floor, directly below the ventilator grille;

· a bell chord that is not connected to a bell;

On his second visit, Holmes discovers a safe and a bowl of milk in Dr. Roylott’s bedroom and surmises that the safe contains a snake.

On his third visit, Holmes sees the snake exit the ventilator and attack him.

He suspects that the snake was the murder weapon used by Dr. Roylott, who’d inserted the snake into the ventilator duct and trained it to crawl down the bell rope and attack its victim and then to return to Roylott’s room for its reward, a bowl of milk, before it was again locked inside Roylott’s safe.

Therefore, probable criteria, in the form of questions, would consist of:

1. Was the date of Julia’s death significant? If so, why?

2. What caused the whistling that Julia heard shortly before her death? Was this sound significant? If so, how and why?

3. What caused the odd metallic sound that Julia heard shortly before her death? Was this sound significant? If so, how and why?

4. Why did Julia seem terrified?

5. Why did the strange sounds that Julia had heard prompt her to warn Helen not to sleep in her (Helen’s) own bedroom?

6. What makes Julia believe that Helen appeared to have died of fright or due to an attack by an unseen assailant?

7. Why are Dr. Roylott, a band of Gypsies, and the wild cheetah and baboon that have the run of the estate suspects in Helen’s death?

8. Why is there a ventilator in the ceiling of Julia’s room ?

9. Why is Julia’s bed location where it is, and why is her bed bolted to the floor, directly below the ventilator grille”

10. Why is the bell chord near Julian’s bed not connected to a bell?

11. Why is there a safe and a bowl of milk in Dr. Roylott’s room?

12. Why might the safe contain a snake?

13. Why does Holmes see a snake exit the ventilator in Julia’s room and attack him?

The best possible solution to the mystery of Helen’s death is one that best answers as many as possible, if not all, of these questions, i. e., fits the criteria upon which these questions are based.

Despite Holmes’s knowing this, he does not initially select the correct potential explanation as to how the crime was committed, as he himself admits to Watson: “I had . . . come to an entirely erroneous conclusion, which shows . . . how dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data.” What threw him off, or misdirected him, from the correct solution to the mystery, he says, was his confusion, caused by Julia’s description to Helen, of a band of “gipsies” known for their wearing of “spotted handkerchiefs. . . over their heads,” as the “speckled band.”

Holmes realized that his initial solution to the mystery was wrong, he explains, because it did not accord with all the facts about the crime, two facts pertaining to which, “the ventilator . . . and the bell rope [hanging] down to the bed,” he later inferred, indicated that the rope might be intended “as a bridge, for something passing through the hole, and coming to the bed,” namely a venomous snake. This realization led him to connect the snake to the whistle, which might have been used to train the snake. His third visit to Dr. Roylott’s room had confirmed his new suspicions: a chair showing signs of having been stood upon, which provided Dr. Roylott with the means of reaching the ventilator; the saucer of milk; and the looped whipcord.

Although Holmes attributes his initial failure to solve the mystery of Helen’s murder to a lack of sufficient data, several other possible reasons for his original lack of success include:

· Incomplete or Ambiguous Evidence: When the evidence is limited or open to multiple interpretations, Holmes might select an explanation that, while plausible, isn't the actual cause—leading to a reasoning error.

· Bias in Candidate Selection: Holmes may focus on certain candidates over others based on prior assumptions or biases, potentially overlooking a better explanation.

· Criteria for Narrowing Down Candidates: Holmes applies certain principles or criteria to eliminate explanations. If these criteria are misapplied or based on incorrect premises, he might dismiss the true explanation prematurely.

· Complexity and Deception in the Case: The case’s intricate setup, with deliberate misdirection by Roylott, can cause Holmes to favor explanations that fit the misleading clues rather than the actual facts.

· Heuristics and Cognitive Limitations: Even with logical reasoning, human cognition (including Holmes's) relies on heuristics—rules of thumb that simplify complex reasoning but can sometimes lead to errors. Holmes could use inappropriate heuristics.

Ultimately, Holmes does succeed in properly applying the abductive method and selecting the most likely explanation for the criteria pertaining to the case that he is investigating, although he may attribute the cause of his initial failure to only one possible cause when, in fact, there seem to be multiple causes. In doing so, he commits yet another misapplication of the abductive reasoning process.

“The Adventure of the Speckled Band” is a model of how other writers of detective fiction can use not only red herrings (false leads or false clues), but also results from errors in the very application of abductive reasoning itself, that is, fallacies due to misapplications of the logical procedures themselves (deduction and induction) associated with the special form of induction known as abduction.

Writing Effective Sentences

2019-04-16T09:53:00.000-07:00

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

To write an effective sentence—a sentence that communicates exactly what you mean—you should practice the follow these principles:

Use active voice. (Active voice results from using an active subject and an action verb. Often, the verb is transitive: in other words, it has a direct object.)
Use the third person. (All nouns, all indefinite pronouns, and all third-person personal pronouns are in the third person.)
Be concise. (Use only the words that are necessary to communicate your precise meaning.)
Write with purpose and deliberation, with a specific intention, or aim.
Start with a kernel sentence. (A kernel sentence is the shortest possible sentence that you can construct about a topic. Often, a kernel sentence consists of only an active subject and an action verb.)
After writing a kernel sentence about your topic, consider what information you need to add to communicate the exact meaning you have in mind. Also consider what additional information, if any, your reader is likely to need to know about the topic as you are writing about it in this particular sentence.) According to philosopher and rhetorician Kenneth Burke, all communication addresses only one or more of these questions: Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? How many or how much? Knowing this about communication can help you to decide what information is necessary to include in any sentence concerning any topic.

Let's practice this approach.

Suppose you are writing about the topic of sharks' attacks.

Start your sentence with these words. “Sharks” is your subject; “attack” is your action verb:

Sharks attack.

Ask yourself, WHAT about shark attacks? (What point do you intend to communicate about a shark attack?)

Sharks attack rarely.

What else do you intend to say about shark attacks?

Sharks attack rarely, and these attacks are seldom fatal.

What is your purpose in communicating these facts? What do you intend to communicate? Perhaps you intend to correct a misconception, such as:

Media reports suggest that sharks attack people frequently.

If this is the case, relate your goal (correcting a misconception about shark attacks) to the sentence you have already written (about the rarity and relative non-lethal number of shark attacks):

Media reports suggest that sharks attack people frequently, but sharks attack rarely, and these attacks are seldom fatal.

To emphasize your point, you can add a phrase such as “in reality”:

Media reports suggest that sharks attack people frequently, but, in reality, sharks attack rarely, and these attacks are seldom fatal.

Let's review what intentions motivated you to construct each new, expanded version of this kernel sentence.

You started with a kernel sentence about a specific topic: “Sharks attack.”

You identified the first point you wanted to communicate about the topic of your sentence: “rarely.”

You decided to add a pertinent fact to the sentence: “and these attacks are seldom fatal.”

You identified your purpose in writing these facts, which was to correct a misconception: “Media reports suggest that sharks attack people frequently.”

You related your purpose to the facts that you had already communicated: “Media reports suggest that sharks attack people frequently, but sharks attack rarely, and these attacks are seldom fatal.”

Finally, you used a phrase to emphasize your point: “in reality.”

As a result of this process, using your intent to determine the content of your sentence, you went from the kernel sentence “Sharks attack” to its final, expanded, complete version: “Media reports suggest that sharks attack people frequently, but, in reality, sharks attack rarely, and these attacks are seldom fatal.”

This approach can work for any sentence concerning any topic.

Five Ideas for Research Reports

2018-08-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

1. Fonts

I use Open office, a free word processor that works as well as the Microsoft Office word processor. Open office provides hundreds of fonts, including a few fancy or exotic ones, such as Ar Decode, Ar Delaney, Blackladder ITC, Chiller, Comic Sans MS, Curlz MT, Edwardian Script ITC, Goudy Stout, Matura MT Script Capitals, Jokerman, Kristen ITC, MS Outlook, Ravie, and Wingdings (Wingdings).

One day, while searching for a topic for a Listverse article, I thought there might be one at my fingertips. Literally, there was one: what is the origin of ten unusual fonts? (Listverse requires a list of 10 related items.) The result was that, with a bit of research, I earned $100 for my article, “Top 10 Origins of Famous Fonts” (http://listverse.com/2017/05/23/top-10-origins-of-famous-fonts/). (See? Research can pay!)

2. U. S. State Boundaries

We've all seen political maps of the United States. We've noticed how bizarre state boundaries are. There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why the states have the shapes and sizes they do. Texas is HUGE, Rhode Island is tiny. Michigan resembles a mitten; Virginia, a lopsided triangle; Oklahoma, a cooking pot; and Colorado, a giant rectangle.

The boundaries of the states look as though they were determined by a madman or madwoman.

I thought, somebody should write a book about this!

Somebody (Mark Unger) did: How the States Got Their Shapes: https://amzn.to/2nR0fjp

He even turned it into a television show broadcast on the History channel.

There's even a website about the book: https://www.history.com/shows/how-the-states-got-their-shapes

3. Mythological Creatures

Centaurs. Cyclopes. Gorgons. Lamia. Mermaids. Minotaurs. Satyrs. How did they come to be? What made someone imagine such combinations as humans and horses, one-eye giants, women with snakes for hair, snake women, fish women, men and bulls, and goat men?

Scientists and historians claim to know—about some of the origins of these fantastic mythological creatures, at least. Centaurs were created by people who'd never seen mounted horsemen; cyclopes were invented to account for a mastodon skull; and mermaids were inspired by manatees. Or so they say. But what about the other fantastic creatures of Greek and Roman, Teutonic, and other mythologies?

4. Maps That Show Monsters

I have also long been intrigued by the monsters that appear on ancient and medieval maps. Why this creature and not another? Why is the wind (personified as a man blowing air) blowing on this area of the world and not another? How did the cartographers, or mapmakers, know the coordinates of this mysterious island or this particular sea monster?

Once again, someone else (Edward Brooke-Hitching) wondered the same thing, did some research, and wrote The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders of Maps: https://amzn.to/2w01zEX

5. Sketchy Dinosaurs

Originally, paleontologists believed that dinosaurs were dim-witted, cold-blooded, slow-moving creatures. A few decades later, these same dinosaur doctors reconsidered. Now, the same dinosaurs were thought to be intelligent, warm-blooded, fast-moving creatures. Oh! And, the new school opinion was that dinosaurs descended from birds; previously, paleontologists had supposed them to have evolved from reptiles.

These weren't just changes of thought; they were completely opposite views. If dinosaur doctors could change their minds completely about such “facts” as these, how sound were their theories, overall? How sketchy were dinosaurs, anyway?

As it turns out, very. One only has to take note of the multitude of qualifications in The Scientific American's Book of Dinosaurs: The Best Minds in Paleontology Create a Portrait of the Prehistoric Era, edited by Gregory S. Paul (https://amzn.to/2nOSMRM), to get an idea just how shaky the whole “scientific” construct of dinosaurs' appearances, behaviors, and, well, reality truly is. As Mark Twain observed, “There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”

What worked for me (and Mark Unger and Edward Brooke-Hitching and “the best minds in paleontology”) can work for you, too, if you're writing a report based on research:

Think about a topic of interest to you that contains a mystery.
Using a variety of reliable sources, investigate the mystery.
Report your findings in a clear, well-organized, grammatically correct, and readable fashion, citing your sources, and providing plenty of substantiating details.

Constructing Sentences

2018-06-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

Pre-sentence and Sentence-level Grammatical Elements

Oxford Dictionaries: English defines sentence to mean “a set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation, or command, and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clauses.”

To understand this definition, we must know the meanings of “subject, “predicate,” “main clause” and “subordinate clause.”

A subject is “a noun or noun phrase functioning as one of the main components of a clause, being the element about which the rest of the clause is predicated.” (A noun phrase is simply a group of words that acts as a noun, naming a person, place, thing, or abstraction, such as quality”: “White House” is a noun phrase.)

A predicate is “the part of a sentence or clause containing a verb and stating something about the subject (e. g., “went home” in “John went home”; “John” is the subject). A predicate can consist of either single verb or a phrase that acts as a verb. (A verb expresses action or a state of existence.)

A main clause, also called an independent clause or a simple sentence, is a group of words that has a subject, a verb, and expresses a complete thought.

A subordinate clause, a type of dependent clause, is a group of words that has both a subject and a predicate but does not express a complete thought. “Which was fun” is a subordinate clause: “which” is the subject; “was fun” is the predicate, but “which was fun” does not express a complete thought.

Although our definition of “sentence” doesn't mention the word “phrase,” we also need to know what a phrase is to understand a sentence. A phrase is a group of words that has neither a subject nor a predicate; therefore, it cannot express a complete thought. “Under the table” is a phrase. Many phrases act as adjectives, describing nous or pronouns, or as adverbs, describing verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Many adverbs end in the letters “ly.”

There are eight parts of speech (the building blocks of language): nouns (name persons, places, things, and abstractions), pronouns (take the place of nouns), verbs (name actions or states of existence), adjectives (describe nouns or pronouns), adverbs (describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs), prepositions (words which relate one word or phrase to another word or phrase, over through a reference to space), conjunctions (words that connect other words, phrases, or clauses in a sentence), and interjections (words that express strong emotion). In addition, phrases and dependent clauses may act as equivalents of adjectives, adverbs, or other parts of speech.

The Seven Elements of Linguistic Communication

Language, as it relates to communication, has seven functions:

To identify agents, agencies (organizations), or other actors.
To identify deeds (actions) or objects.
To identify time, duration (how long something takes or acts), or frequency (how often something occurs).
To identify location or position.
To identify manner, method, or technique.
To identify cause, function, motive, purpose, or use.
To identify quantity.

These seven functions are associated with questions and are accomplished by the parts of speech and by groups of words (phrases or dependent clauses) that function as parts of speech:

Linguistic Element	Associated Question	Part of Speech or Common Equivalent	Example(s)
	Who?	Noun, pronoun, dependent clause	Tom (noun), Jane (noun), he (pronoun), she (pronoun), it (pronoun), The man in the blue suit (dependent clause)
Agent (Actor)	What?	Verb (predicate)	Danced (action), went dancing (action), ball (object): He kicked the ball.
Deed (Action) or Object	When?	Adverb, adverbial prepositional phrase	Yesterday (adverb), Two-hour-long (compound adjective), twice weekly (adverbial phrase), at five o'clock (adverbial prepositional phrase)
Time, Duration, or Frequency	Where?	Adverbial prepositional phrase	Under the table
Location or Position	How?	Adverb, adverbial prepositional phrase	Slowly (adverb), with great care (adverbial prepositional phrase)
Manner, Method, or Technique	Why?	Adverbial infinitive phrase, dependent clause	To ensure integrity (infinitive phrase), who used it to conduct surveillance (adverbial dependent clause)
Cause, function, motive, purpose, or use	How many? Or How much?	Adjective, adjectival infinitive phrase, adverbial prepositional phrase	Three (adjective), one-pound (compound adjective), to fill a bushel basket (adjectival infinitive phrase), under a gallon (adverbial prepositional phrase)

Building Sentences

We need to define one more term before we can consider how to build sentences. A kernel sentence is “a simple, active, declarative sentence containing no modifiers or connectives that may be used in making more elaborate sentences.”

Let's break this definition down. “Simple” means that the sentence consists of only a subject and a predicate: “John slept,” “Jose eats,” “Maria will graduate.” A kernel sentence does not include any modifiers (adjectives, adverbs or grammatically equivalent phrases or dependent clauses). “Active” means that the subject is acting (doing something), so the verb will be an action verb: “John slept,” “Jose eats,” “Maria will graduate.” “Declarative” means the sentence makes a statement, or indicates that a certain state of affairs existed, exists, or will exist. If we write “John slept,” we are declaring that he was performing a particular action at a previous time: he was sleeping. If we write “John eats,” we are declaring that he is performing a particular action right now: he is eating. If we write “Maria will graduate,” we are indicating that she will perform a particular action in the future: she will graduate. A modifier is a word, such as an adjective, an adverb, or an equivalent phrase or dependent clause that describes, limits, or otherwise changes the meaning of a noun, pronoun, or other part of speech, so, basically, in other words, a kernel sentence doesn't contain any adjectives or adverbs. “Connectives” refers to words that connect each other or connect words with phrases, dependent clauses, or independent clauses, so, basically, in other words, kernel sentences don't contain any conjunctions or prepositions. Let's rephrase our original definition to read:

A kernel sentence is “a simple, active, declarative sentence” without any adjectives, adverbs, or conjunctions, or propositions. A kernel sentence can help us write longer, more detailed, more involved sentences.

Using the chart that shows the seven functions of language, as it relates to communication, the questions to which these functions are associated, and the related parts of speech and their common phrase and clause equivalents and the information about kernel sentences, we can easily control our the writing of our sentences. As a result, we'll be able to write rhetorically effective, grammatically correct sentences.

Let's try a few examples. Let's say we are writing about a movie that changed the way we thought about something. First, let's collect our thoughts. Which movie do we have in mind? Let's start with its title, in italics (because the title of long works are italicized):

Tombstone

(See? That was easy!)

We've identified the subject of our sentence. Now, in one word—an action verb—what is the main idea we want to express about Tombstone? If our thought about the topic includes the idea that Tombstone does something to someone or something else, we will also need to add a direct object after the verb at some point. If that's the case, keep the object in mind. However, begin with a kernel sentence consisting of nothing more than the subject and the action verb. Lets' list some action verbs that could express our idea about our subject, Tombstone:

addresses

celebrates

embellishes

exaggerates

falsifies

highlights

presents

reflects

shows

Suppose we selected “celebrates” from our list:

Tombstone celebrates.

Celebrates what? we think. “What” is on our chart!

Linguistic Element	Associated Question	Part of Speech or Common Equivalent	Example(s)
Deed (Action) or Object	What?	Verb (predicate)	Danced (action), went dancing (action), ball (object): He kicked the ball.

According to our chart, the question “What?” is associated with the linguistic element of deed (action) or object. If we ask “celebrate what?” we know we are thinking of an object, because an object receives the action of a verb. What is the movie Tombstone celebrating?

Maybe our first thought is gun fighting, since many of the characters, including the protagonist, Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and their friend, Doc Holliday, are gunfighters. However, as we think further about it, we remember that the movie's antagonists, the outlaw gang led by Curly Bill Brocius, are also gunfighters. However, Curly Bill and his gang, the Cowboys, use their guns to kill innocent people, to threaten and intimidate the townspeople, and to otherwise break the law. They shot and killed almost an entire wedding party, including the priest, and Curly Bill shot and killed the town's marshal, Fred White. According to the movie, Wyatt has killed only one outlaw in his life, and, although Doc has used his gun to rob people and is a notorious gunfighter, he usually obeys Wyatt, who keeps him mostly in check. Wyatt's brother Virgil, is, like Wyatt, a former lawman, and he is concerned about how the Cowboys run roughshod over the townspeople, endangering their lives. The youngest brother, Morgan, has joined Virgil o enforce the law in Tombstone. As the movie portrays them, the Earps and, to a lesser extent, Doc, are law-abiding men who use their gun-fighting skills to enforce the law and protect others. It's not gun fighting that the movie celebrates, but the courage that the Earps and Holliday display. Now, our sentence reads:

Tombstone celebrates courage.

That's a start, but does it celebrate anything more? The Earps and Holliday are willing to risk their lives to protect other people who lack the skills they have as gunfighters. In other words, they put the welfare of other people above their own. They are willing to sacrifice their own safety and their own lives, if necessary, to enforce the law and protect the citizens of Tombstone. With this in mind, we can extend our sentence to read:

Tombstone celebrates courage and altruism.

(“Altruism” means “unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others.”)

The simple question “What?” has helped us think our way through a good deal of the content, or action, of the movie to identify specifically and exactly what we want to address in our essay. Refining our thinking has helped us to think about the events of the movie and the implications of the characters' actions. Many of the ideas we have considered might be used to help support and develop our thesis, once we have written it.

(By the way, a question can be repeated as often as repeating it may prove effective. As we move from one thought to another, it may be beneficial to us to repeat one or more questions about emerging aspects of our topic or implications arising from it we hadn't seen or considered before.)

Referring to our chart, we answer the other questions:

WHO? Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday; Curly Bill Brocius, Johnny Ringo, Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, and Frank McLaury.

WHAT? Shootout at the O.K. Corral; Vendetta Ride

WHEN? 1888.

WHERE? Tombstone, Arizona, and its environs;

HOW?: Gunfights

WHY?

HOW MANY or HOW MUCH: Not relevant to this particular topic

“Why?” can be a difficult question to answer, but, once again, our chart helps us. Since our topic concerns human behavior, we will focus on motive, rather than cause, function, purpose, or use. In other words, we will concern ourselves with why Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday are willing to risk their own lives to protect the citizens of Tombstone. As we think about the movie, we remember scenes in which some of the characters showed how they felt about the Cowboys' treatment of others. Virgil was disgusted when he saw a Cowboy nearly run down a child in the street and saw the scar on the cheek of the boy's mother, which may have been caused by the gang's abuse of her. He also told Wyatt that he felt ashamed to stand idly by while the Cowboys terrorized the townspeople. He said he was a lawman. Morgan became a deputy because he respected Virgil, probably because of his older brother's views. Doc said he fought alongside Wyatt because Wyatt was his friend and Doc didn't have “lots of friends,” like others. He seems to risk his life not for strangers as much as for Wyatt. Although Doc is himself something of an outlaw, his longstanding friendship with Wyatt motivates him to join forces with the Earps against the Cowboys. Wyatt seems to join the others because his brothers are kin and because Doc is his friend. However, like Virgil, he is also a former lawman, as he demonstrates in arresting Curly Bill after the outlaw leader kills Fred White. They respect the law, which implies they believe in justice. Wow! In considering the “WHY?” question, we have not only refined our ideas about our topic, but we have also generated a lot of material that may be helpful in writing our paper. With our answers to the questions WHEN?, WHERE?, HOW?, and WHY? in mind, we can now further add to our sentence:

Oops! Defeat WHAT?

No need to panic. “What?” is on our chart. It directs our thoughts to deeds. What deeds do the Earps and Holliday “defeat” or stop? To what types of actions do they put a halt? We know they fight Curly Bill, Johnny Ringo, Ike Clanton, Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury, and Frank McLaury. What kinds of deeds have these outlaws performed? Thinking again of individual scenes involving the actions of these characters, we can generate a list:

retaliatory murders of a wedding party and a priest (Cowboys)
dangerous gun play while under the influence of opium (Curly Bill)
shooting of Tombstone's Marshal Fred White (Curly Bill)
shooting up a theater during a performance (Curly Bill and his men)
menacing Doc Holliday in a saloon
menacing the Earps and Holliday on the street
nearly running down a boy in the street (one of the Cowboys)
refusing to turn in their guns upon entering Tombstone (Clantons and McLaurys)

We have eight examples now. If we watch the movie again, chances are we can add more examples.

Next, we can characterize these actions, grouping our examples, as appropriate:

retributive murders (wedding party and a priest) (Cowboys)
dangerous or fatal disregard for the safety of others: dangerous gun play while under the influence of opium (Curly Bill), shooting up a theater during a performance (Curly Bill and his men), accidental shooting of Tombstone's Marshal Fred White while under the influence of opium (Curly Bill), and menacing Doc Holliday in a saloon and menacing the Earps and Holliday on the street
violations of local law: refusing to turn in their guns upon entering Tombstone (Clantons and McLaurys)

With these more general categories of the Cowboys' actions in mind, we can finish our sentence:

Set in Tombstone, Arizona [WHERE], in 1888 [WHEN], the movie Tombstone [TOPIC] celebrates courage [WHAT] and altruism [WHAT], showing that devotion to justice [WHY], admiration for one's kin [WHY], and respect for friendship [WHY] can defeat outlaws [WHO] who commit retributive murders [WHAT], show a dangerous or fatal disregard for the safety of others [WHAT], and violate a local law [WHAT].

Further reflection on the thesis may make us realize that we're not writing as much about the values that certain men have as we are writing about the men themselves who hold these values. This important distinction can be made by adding a couple of words to our sentence:

Set in Tombstone, Arizona [WHERE], in 1888 [WHEN], the movie Tombstone [TOPIC] celebrates altruistic men [WHO] of courage [WHAT], showing that their devotion to justice [WHY], admiration for one's kin [WHY], and respect for friendship [WHY] can defeat outlaws [WHO] who commit retributive murders [WHAT], show a dangerous or fatal disregard for the safety of others [WHAT], and violate a local law [WHAT].

For topics concerning which quantity is an important element to consider, we would also ask ourselves one more question: HOW MANY? or HOW MUCH? For Tombstone, we found this is not a relevant issue, so we did not ask this question about this topic.

The questions on our chart helped us to think purposefully about our topic, considering specific scenes and characters with a point in mind, and select details useful to the development of a thesis sentence and its support and development. Our sentence is clear, specific, explicit, has a plan of development, makes a claim of our own about the topic, and is grammatically correct. Understanding what a sentence is, what it does, and how to construct one, starting with a kernel sentence to which we apply the seven linguistic elements (or as many as apply to the topic in hand), can help us to write purposeful, well-planned sentences. It is a process applicable to not only thesis sentences and topic sentences, but each sentence we writer. Using it, we will develop meaningful sentences, paragraphs, and entire essays that are rhetorically effective and grammatically accurate, one word, phrase, and clause at a time.

Now, let's try the process again, using the same movie, but with a different topic in mind. Let's say, this time, we are responding to a writing prompt provided by the instructor:

Is Wyatt Earp morally justified in leaving his common-law wife, Mattie, for the actress Josephine Marcus? Why or why not. Give reasons, and provide examples from the plot of the movie Tombstone to support and develop your thesis.

As we carefully consider the writing prompt, we realize that it suggests we need to focus on WHAT—Wyatt's act of leaving Mattie for Josephine—and we must decide WHY his action is morally justified or not. Therefore, we should answer these questions first, since they will shape our sentence.

We start with our kernel sentence. This time, the instructor has assigned us our topic:

Wyatt Earp feels.

Feels WHAT? Justified.

Wyatt Earp feels justified.

Feels justified about WHAT?

Wyatt Earp feels justified in leaving Mattie.

WHO is Mattie? we may further ask. (The same question can be applied as many times as appropriate.) Our answer: Wyatt's common-law wife.

Wyatt Earp feels justified in leaving Mattie, his common-law wife.

We have already answered two of our questions:

WHO? Wyatt Earp; Mattie Earp; Josephine Marcus

WHAT? Justification for leaving Mattie for Josephine Marcus

Now, we answer the rest of our them:

WHEN? 1888.

WHERE? Tombstone, Arizona

HOW? Wyatt runs away with Josephine.

WHY? Wyatt believes that Mattie will never change, preferring her addiction to laudanum to the excitement, romance, and adventure that Josephine Marcus offers him.

We continue to build our sentence, expanding it as we add the answers to our questions:

In 1888, while living in Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt Earp leaves Mattie, his common-law wife, running away with Josephine Marcus, because he believes that Mattie will never change, preferring her addiction to laudanum to the excitement, romance, and adventure that Josephine Marcus offers him.

As we reflect on our sentence, we realize that the way it is stated does not address the question in the instructor's writing prompt. The prompt asks us to answer the question as to whether Wyatt is mortally justified in leaving Mattie; it does not ask us what Wyatt believes. His belief may or may not be valid. That's what we must decide. Reading the prompt again, we see the words “Why or why not.” Thinking about this question may make us realize something else: If we agree with Wyatt, we agree that his action (leaving Mattie) is justified, for the same reasons Wyatt himself does. All we need to do is to revise our thesis slightly so it indicates our point of view, rather than Wyatt's perspective:

In 1888, while living in Tombstone, Arizona, Wyatt Earp leaves Mattie, his common-law wife, running away with Josephine Marcus, believes, rightly, that his action is morally justifiable, because Mattie will never change, preferring her addiction to laudanum to the excitement, romance, and adventure that Josephine Marcus offers him.

By adding “rightly,” we imply that we agree with Wyatt's belief that his action in leaving Mattie is morally justified and for the same reasons he offers: Mattie will never change, preferring her addiction to laudanum to the excitement, romance, and adventure that Josephine Marcus offers him. Now, the sentence is about what we believe, not just what Wyatt believes.

Maybe we wonder whether the time and place of the movie is all that important to the topic we're concerned about—whether or not Wyatt's leaving Mattie for Josephine? If not, we should revise our sentence, omitting these elements and changing the sentence structure to maintain grammatical accuracy:

Wyatt Earp, who leaves Mattie, his common-law wife, running away with Josephine Marcus, believes, rightly, that his action is morally justifiable, because Mattie will never change, preferring her addiction to laudanum to the excitement, romance, and adventure that Josephine Marcus offers him.

Once again, our technique has helped us think through our topic, address all its pertinent and significant aspects, and develop a sentence that is clear, specific, explicit, has a plan of development, makes a claim of our own about the topic, and is grammatically correct. Our approach may also help us to zero in on specific scenes in the movie that we can use as examples to support our own reasons for our claim that Wyatt is morally justified in leaving Mattie for Josephine. We might jot down the scenes on which we want to focus. maybe watching them a second and third time, as we take notes:

Mattie asks for, and receives, laudanum from Morgan's wife, after having drunk all of her own
Mattie refuses to seek help for her addiction after Wyatt encourages her to do so, saying she does not have a problem with the drugs (alcohol and opium)
Mattie often seems to be in a drug-induced stupor and behaves at times in an inappropriate manner, as she does when she laughs at Wyatt in their hotel room when he is in earnest as he speaks to her
Josephine and Wyatt are strongly attracted to each other from the moment they first see one another
Josephine wants adventure, excitement, and romance, and she seeks a man with whom she can share her pursuits no longer only for “a while,” but for life (this comes across clearly in the scene in which she and Wyatt ride their horses down a steep hillside)
When Wyatt asks Mattie whether she would like to “live on room service,” as Josephine had characterized her own desire for adventure, excitement, and romance, Josephine has no idea what he means and is obviously intoxicated—again; Wyatt seems to know there is no longer any hope for their relationship

Again, our approach has helped us to pinpoint specific parts of the movie to revisit, consider in detail, and mine for examples to support our thesis. Whether we are generating our own thesis, based on our own interests and ideas, or we are writing in response to a particular writing prompt provided by the instructor, this method of using the chart that shows the seven functions of language, as it relates to communication, the questions to which these functions are associated, and the related parts of speech and their common phrase and clause equivalents and the information about kernel sentences pays big dividends in helping us both to think about our topic and to write sentences that are well thought out, precise, detailed, and on topic. Our constant revisions and reflections on not only what we have written, but also why we wrote it and how it might be improved results in well-written sentences, paragraphs, and papers and is useful in the development of any type of paper for any type of topic.

Sneak Peek: Here's the cover to my urban fantasy novel

2016-07-26T13:32:00.002-07:00

Here's the cover to my urban fantasy novel, which will be published on Nov. 11, 2016, in both print and digital formats by The Wild Rose Press:

2016-02-01T17:28:00.001-08:00

According to Jib Fowles, to sell products and services, advertisers appeal to one or more of fifteen emotions:

1 The need for sex
2. The need for affiliation
3. The need to nurture
4. The need for guidance
5. The need to aggress
6. The need to achieve
7. The need to dominate
8. The need for prominence
9. The need for attention
10. The need for autonomy
11. The need to escape
12. The need to feel safe
13. The need for aesthetic sensations
14. The need to satisfy curiosity
15. Physiological needs: food, drink, sleep, etc.

In addition, I have found, most advertisements also use a visual metaphor, texts which often involve a play on words and suggests the visual metaphor, and, of course, various visual design elements (such as models, props, color, size, shape, and texture). In fact, in an assignment that I give my freshman composition students, I ask them to use the following sentence to structure their advertising analysis essay:

The name of product advertisement in Title of Magazine uses a metaphor to equate the product to an object or experience to which the advertised product is equated and uses such visual design elements as identify specific elements (colors, shapes, props) to sell the product.

To provide a model, I then offer this sample five-paragraph essay, first identifying the thesis sentence and the topic sentences, which I underline in the essay itself:

THESIS: To sell a men's magazine, the Ché advertisement in Commuter World magazine uses a metaphor to equate the product to a “better” dream world and shows a promiscuous young woman approaching a trolley station.

TOPIC SENTENCE 1: The advertisement’s text, “Let’s keep dreaming of a better world,” equates Ché magazine to a place in which beautiful, promiscuous young women are readily available to any man.

TOPIC SENTENCE 2: The female model is shown from behind, so that the viewer is encouraged to see her as an object rather than as a person.

TOPIC SENTENCE 3: The model approaches a trolley station, which symbolizes the connection that she intends to make with the train that will take her to her destination.

I also include a picture of the advertisement. Here’s the result:

INTRODUCTORY PARAGRAPH: Men’s magazines feature articles concerning topics of interest to their subscribers: alcoholic beverages, sporty automobiles, hunting and fishing, politics, scientific and technological breakthroughs, workplace guidance, travel and tourism, and, of course, dating. Some, such as Playboy, also boast of interviews with the rich and famous and of short stories by popular or even renown writers. There are apt to be jokes and cartoons, too, mostly about sexual matters. The mainstay of such magazines, however, isn’t the news, advice, humor, or fiction, but the photographs of beautiful young women wearing little or no clothing. It makes sense, then, that an advertisement for a men’s magazine, whether foreign or domestic, would appeal to such periodicals’ strongest selling point. If humor can be used to make the sales pitch, so much the better, but, when it comes to promoting men’s magazines, nothing sells as well as sex, as marketers for the European men‘s magazine Ché are well aware. To sell a men's magazine, the Ché advertisement in Commuter World magazine uses a metaphor to equate the product to a “better” dream world and shows a promiscuous young woman approaching a trolley station.

BODY PARAGRAPH 1: The Ché advertisement in Commuter World magazine uses a metaphor to equate the product to a “better” dream world. The accompanying text at the bottom of the advertisement, which is printed in smaller font than the message on the model’s skirt, indicates that the image that the advertisement creates--of a nubile young woman who is available to anyone who is interested in calling her--is a fantasy: “Let us keep on dreaming of a better world.” The advertisement has a playful tone, suggesting that the “better world” to which it alludes would be a fun place to be, and the fun would be of a physically intimate variety. Following this fine print, as it were, is the logo that identifies the product that the advertisement is selling, Ché, a “men’s magazine.” The model seems to represent the sort of fantasy girl that the magazine is apt to feature on a routine basis. By purchasing or subscribing to this magazine, customers gain admittance to the “better world” of fun-loving, available dream girls.

BODY PARAGRAPH 2: The female model is shown from behind, so that the viewer is encouraged to see her as an object rather than as a person. Her face is not shown. Therefore, the emphasis of the picture is on her body, rather than her face, on the physical rather than the personal. She is an object, rather than a person. She wears a simple, green top that exposes her midriff, a charm bracelet, and a white mini-skirt. A small, simple, black purse is slung over her right shoulder. She is the largest object in the picture, and she is the closest to the image’s center, her positioning within the advertisement, like her size, emphasizing her over everything else that is depicted in the advertisement. Next to the figure of the young woman herself, the most outstanding prop in the picture is her skirt. It is short enough to reveal the lower portions of her buttocks, which are bare, suggesting that she either wears a thong or no underwear at all. The exposure of these parts of her anatomy draws the eye, as does the apparent fringe that adorns the bottom of her skirt, some of the tassels of which are missing, revealing the parts of her buttocks that show. There is something else odd about the fringe: the tassels, which are short, rectangular strips, bear printed text that is too small to read. However, on the seat of her skirt, in red cursive lettering, below which is an arrowhead, pointing downward, is the message, “My number.” This message makes it clear to the advertisement’s viewer that the text printed on the tassels identifies her telephone number. Her skirt is itself an advertisement of the sort that includes, along its bottom edge, a series of tags that are printed with a telephone number to which those who are interested in the product or the service that the advertisement promotes may respond. Essentially, the model is saying, to all interested parties, “Call me.” It is based upon a play on words, alluding to the common phrase, “I have your number.”

BODY PARAGRAPH 3: The model approaches a trolley station, which symbolizes the connection that she intends to make with the train that will take her to her destination. The train represents opportunity. The model is approaching the station. If the viewer were present, he might meet her, and, if he were to join her on the trolley, the train might convey him--or, rather, him and the young woman--to a common destination. The silent text of the advertisement seems to be. “Don’t miss the train!” and represents a call to action, or, in the language of the trade, the closing sales pitch. From a Freudian point of view, the train is also a phallic symbol, which suggests, even more clearly, the sexual nature of the destination to which the young woman and her date will travel, if he calls her and arranges to meet her at the station.

CONCLUDING PARAGRAPH: If advertisements are any indicator of such matters, it seems safe to say that men and women are interested in vastly different types of pursuits. Advertisements in women’s magazines indicate that women are interested in spotless kitchens, a healthy, well-fed family, a clean home, fashionable clothing and accessories, travel, interior design, furniture, and business careers. Men’s magazines’ advertisements suggest that their readers’ interests are fewer by far and simpler: food, sex, and cars. An advertisement for Ché men’s magazine, in fact, makes it clear that many men would welcome as “a better world” one in which women are not only readily available sexually but travel to one’s doorstep, in answer to a telephone call. For most men, the advertisement suggests, life just doesn’t get any better than that!

Congress Moves to Repeal Presidents Day

2015-02-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

Note: News parodies have become popular in recent years, as the Internet has allowed any and all to try their hands at the type of satire that, in the past, only a few, such as Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and Art Buchwald could inflict upon the public. While not claiming for myself a place among such august company, I thought I'd give the genre a try myself, with this parody piece. After all, not all essays about serious matters have to be serious in tone.

If the U. S. Congress has its way, this year's Presidents Day may have been America's last.

“Maybe George Washington and Abraham Lincoln deserve a holiday in their honor, but more recent presidents sure as hell don't,” Senator Nanny Pelosi bitched.

“I couldn't agree more,” her colleague, Senate minority leader Hairy Reed groused.

This is one issue, it appears, that has bilateral support.

“Like the good senators from Californicate and Nirvana, I'm all for doing away with Presidents Day,” Speaker of the House John Boner complained.

“Me, too,” Senate majority leader Bitch McConner pouted. “Let's scrub it.”

The disgruntled Congressmen (and woman) listed a long string of presidential “abuses,” including Dick Nixon's lying about the Watergate break-in, Bill Clinton's soiling of Monica (“The Mouth”) Lewinsky's blue dress (and the Oval Orifice) with his presidential spermatozoa, and Barack Obummer's “countless half-truths and complete falsehoods” over the past seven years, which, to both Boner and McConner “seem like seventeen—or seventy,” Boner whined.

Obummer, Senator John McCane charged, should be denied the holiday on his mispronunciation, as commander in chief, of “corps,” which Obummer pronounced as “copse-men.” The mispronunciation, in McCane's view, was “not accidental” and “suggested the president's disdain for American military personnel.”

Many of the nation's other chief executives' actions have brought disgrace on the country they serviced, the Congressmen (and woman) claim.

Presidents Day was originally Washington's Birthday, Pelosi pointed out, but the name of the holiday was changed, to steal the first president's thunder, when the Presidents Day was made a federal holiday so that “all presidents would be honored, whether they deserved it or not,” Boner explained.

Before and since the hijacking of Washington's Birthday, presidential misconduct has embarrassed and humiliated the American people multiple times:

Ulysses S. Grant's tenure as president was rife with the Black Friday scandal, corruption in the Department of the Interior, and the Whiskey Ring.
In addition to his involvement in numerous extramarital affairs, Warren G. Harding gave his countrymen the Teapot Some Scandal, among others.
The Pentagon Papers proved that LBJ and JFK “systematically lied” to the American people as they secretly escalated the Vietnam War by illegally bombing Laos and Cambodia.
Under Clinton, in the Filegate Scandal, the FBI provided secret dossiers on Republicans against whom administrative officials sought political advantages.
During W's administration, hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars were forked over to private right-wing media to promote the president's unpopular policies. W also eroded individual liberty by signing the so-called Patriot Act, which, among other tings, has resulted in airport strip searched of American travelers, including infants and elderly, wheelchair-bound men and women.

One of the most-scandal-ridden administrations in the nation's history, however, is that of the current president, Barack Insane Obummer, who is associated with, among many others:

The Veterans Administration scandal, the Benghazi fiasco, numerous lies concerning the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obummercare)
The ATF Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal
The Terrence Flynn scandal
The all-expenses-taxpayer-paid Government Services Administration's four-day gambling spree in Las Vegas
The IRS' illegal investigations of conservative political groups
The Justice Department's unauthorized collection of Associated Press phone records and persecution of Fox News reporter James Rosen
Attorney General Eric Holder's contempt of Congress charges
The Pigford Scandal
The Veterans Affairs two all-expenses-taxpayer-paid trips to Disney World
Health and Human Services chief Kathleen Sibelius' violation of the Hatch Act
The government-funding of the private company Solyndra (which later went bankrupt, costing taxpayers millions of dollars)
Environmental Protection Agency official Lisa Jackson posing as “Richard Windsor” in writing secret emails
Failing to prosecute the New Black Panthers for intimidating white voters during the 2008 presidential election
Attacking Libya without Congressional approval
Making questionable end-runs around Congress on many occasions.

“I'm half blind,” Reed said, “but it's clear, even to me, that presidents don't deserve to be honored by a special holiday.”

Reed has joined his colleagues in support of a bill to eliminate Presidents Day and to replace it with Congress Day, “ a day,” Pelosi says, “that will live in infamy.”

Writing the Reader's Response

2014-07-12T07:40:00.001-07:00

Your reader's response consists of two parts: (1) a paraphrased summary, in your own words, of the writer's argument (or the argument that his or her article implies) and (2) your reasons for agreeing and/or disagreeing with the writer's argument.

Your summary should provide only the information essential to the writer's argument; should be fair and objective; should be written in the third person; and should begin with a signal phrase that provides an in-text citation of the source (article) you are summarizing.

Here is an example; the original article is 1,182 words; the paraphrased summary below is 163 words, or about fourteen percent as long as the original:

In “Jenna Talackova, transgendered Miss Universe Canada contestant,shines in spotlight,” an online article that appeared in the Toronto Star, Nancy J. White reports on the publicity that was generated when one of the beauty pageant's competitors was “disqualified for not being a 'naturally born female.'” A “blogger “ informed Miss Universe Organization officials that Talackova had participated in a “transsexual beauty contest in Thailand,” and the Organization forbade her from competing in the Miss Universe pageant. Although “born male and named Walter,” Talackova claims that she realized from an early age that she was transgender, wore her “mother's shoes” in private and “feminine clothes” when she entered eighth grade, began to take female hormones at age fourteen, underwent sex-reassignment surgery at age nineteen, and is considered beautiful by many, and she has hired attorney Gloria Allred to represent her, alleging that the Miss Universe Organization illegally discriminated against her by disqualifying her from its competition on the basis of her transgender status.

To the summary, add, as part two of your reader's response the reasons for your agreement and/or disagreement with the writer's argument or with the argument that it implies. For example, White's article implies that either Talackova should have been “disqualified for not being a 'naturally born female'” or that Talackova should not have been “disqualified for not being a 'naturally born female.'” Therefore, you should select one of these arguments and then provide your reasons for agreeing or disagreeing with it. In this second part of the reader's response, you may use either third person or first person. Be careful to stick to the actual points that the writer of the article makes; do not digress, and do not misrepresent the writer's information or argument. It may be helpful to make a three-column table, labeling one column “Agree,” another “Disagree,” and the third “Reasons” as a way of recording your responses and reasons for these responses:

Agree	Disagree	Reasons

Questioning Claims to Generate Details of Support and Development

2014-06-19T07:34:00.000-07:00

An effective approach to generating material to support and develop a topic sentence is to make a claim and then ask yourself questions about the implications of your claim. This approach is demonstrated in this post.

Write in the simple present tense unless you are referring to an incident that happened in the past events as they are referred to in the episodes' plot. After identifying a character by his or her complete name (for example, “Buffy Summers”) the first time he or she is mentioned, refer to him or her, thereafter, only by his or her last name (for example, “Summers”). If two characters share the same name, for example “Buffy Summers” and “Joyce Summers,” distinguish between them by a phrase rather than by name (for example, “Summers and her mother argue about Summer's revelation that she is a vampire slayer.”)

Summers' approach to acquiring knowledge both hinders and helps her performance of her duties as a vampire slayer.

[What is her approach to acquiring knowledge? How does her approach hinder her performance? How does her approach help her performance?]

Summers often relies on her mentor, Watcher Rupert Giles, and her friends, Willow Rosenberg, Xander Harris, and Cordelia Chase, to research supernatural and paranormal topics for her and relay the results of their studies to her.

[What effect does this approach have concerning her own acquisition of knowledge through their efforts?]

Therefore, her acquisition of knowledge is mediated through others.

[What effect does such mediation have on the knowledge that is obtained in this fashion?]

Because Summers' knowledge is indirect, it is only as reliable as its mediators. Her friends are fellow high school classmates. Like Summers, they are immature, they prefer to engage in pleasant social or personal activities rather than to study, and they are likely to lack the expertise to make sound determinations about the scope, completeness, and reliability of the information they discover. Moreover, since Summers learns through the efforts of others, rather than through her own efforts, she is dependent on others for the information she receives. These conditions may hinder Summers in her performance of her duties as a vampire slayer because she may be provided with limited or partial, incorrect or misleading, or otherwise unreliable information that could put her or others at risk or jeopardize her mission.

[What are some examples in which Summers receives faulty information from her friends?]

Harris' lack of maturity is demonstrated by the inappropriate jokes that he tells during study sessions concerning topics of life-or-death consequence. Several such instances occur in “What's My Line, Part I.” While such studies demand focus, Harris jokes about the name of the artifact, “the du lac cross,” that Giles and Summers have recovered from the du Lac's mausoleum: “Why go to all the trouble of inventing something and then give a weak name like that? I'd have gone with 'Cross-o-matic!' or 'The Amazing Mr. Cross!'” Likewise, when Summer's friends are researching the Order of Taraka, Harris quips, “Didn't they [the Order of Taraka] beat the Elks last year in the Sunnydale Adult Bowling League Championship?” and adds, “Bowling is a vicious game.” When Summers skips out of a study session to go ice skating with her boyfriend, the vampire Angel (thereby exhibiting both her own immaturity and poor judgment), Harris remarks that she “totally contributes” to their research since she goes “for snacks,” and “Ho Ho's are a vital part” of his “cognitive process.” Although such comments may be amusing, they are also distracting, interfering with the concentration of others, as Gile's reprimand to Harris (“That's enough, Xander!”) after Harris' joke about bowling being a “vicious game” suggests. The material they study is difficult and complex, and it concerns life-or-death matters. Jokes on such an occasion are not only immature, but they are also distracting and, therefore, potentially dangerous. Summers did not bother to pursue the scholarly vampire Dalton after he escaped with the du Lac cross because she was ignorant of the danger it represents. However, Giles is able to recognize the threat immediately when he sees the name carved into the mausoleum, above the vault into which Dalton broke. He knows that “Jospehus du Lac is buried here,” and, far from his having been the “saint” Summers suggests he might have been, du Lac was a member of “a sect of priests who were excommunicated by the Vatican” and it was he who wrote the “book that was stolen from the [Sunnydale High School] library by a vampire a few weeks back”--a book of “rituals and spells that reap unspeakable evil.” Summers was not only negligent in not pursuing Dalton, but she, like Harris, is also flip; she makes jokes during serious moments, suggesting, for example, that the book Giles mentions is probably “not a taste of the Vatican cookbook.” As she herself admits, she is, like her friends, immature: “I'm a teen! I've yet to mature!” When their studies do not reveal the information they seek, Summer's friends seem to lack the ability to further their research. They are at a loss as to how to proceed once their research fails. For example, in “What's My Line, Part II,” Harris appears ready to give up when his examination of a book does not reveal any information about two of the Order of Taraka's assassins: “We got demons. We got monsters. But no bug dude or Police Lady.” However, other potentially pertinent volumes exist, as Giles demonstrates when he gives Harris another book with “a section devoted entirely to the Order of Taraka.”

[What are some examples in which Summers benefits from her approach to learning?]

Despite the limitations of Summer's approach to learning, the presence of her mentor enables her learning by proxy to succeed because of the mature supervision, guidance, and expertise he brings to their joint study sessions. Giles keeps Summer's friends on track, despite their immaturity and restlessness. He chastises Harris for making jokes at inappropriate moments. He provides contexts for their research, explaining how and why the du Lac cross is significant, and he is able to additional volumes for study when one line or research proves insufficient. In addition, as the high school librarian, Giles is able to use his position to order the rare and arcane books on occult lore that Summer's calling as a vampire slayer require, and he is able to bring order to their contents. For example, he indexes “the Watcher Diaries,” a tedious process: “I've been indexing the watcher Diaries covering the past two centuries. You'd be amazed at how numbingly long-winded some of these watchers were” (“What's My Line, Part I”). Under Giles' direction, Summers' friends can work effectively as a team, thus researching more sources of a greater variety and at a faster, often more efficient rate than Summers could by herself, while Giles ensures that their research discoveries are both complete, relevant, and reliable.

As a result of this question-answer strategy, you have generated a lot of pertinent material that you can bring together in one paragraph to support one of the claims that you make in your thesis' plan of development:

Because Summers' knowledge is indirect, it is only as reliable as its mediators. Her friends are fellow high school classmates. Like Summers, they are immature, they prefer to engage in pleasant social or personal activities rather than to study, and they are likely to lack the expertise to make sound determinations about the scope, completeness, and reliability of the information they discover. Moreover, since Summers learns through the efforts of others, rather than through her own efforts, she is dependent on others for the information she receives. These conditions may hinder Summers in her performance of her duties as a vampire slayer because she may be provided with limited or partial, incorrect or misleading, or otherwise unreliable information that could put her or others at risk or jeopardize her mission. Harris' lack of maturity is demonstrated by the inappropriate jokes that he tells during study sessions concerning topics of life-or-death consequence. Several such instances occur in “What's My Line, Part I.” While such studies demand focus, Harris jokes about the name of the artifact, “the du lac cross,” that Giles and Summers have recovered from the du Lac's mausoleum: “Why go to all the trouble of inventing something and then give a weak name like that? I'd have gone with 'Cross-o-matic!' or 'The Amazing Mr. Cross!'” Likewise, when Summer's friends are researching the Order of Taraka, Harris quips, “Didn't they [the Order of Taraka] beat the Elks last year in the Sunnydale Adult Bowling League Championship?” and adds, “Bowling is a vicious game.” When Summers skips out of a study session to go ice skating with her boyfriend, the vampire Angel (thereby exhibiting both her own immaturity and poor judgment), Harris remarks that she “totally contributes” to their research since she goes “for snacks,” and “Ho Ho's are a vital part” of his “cognitive process.” Although such comments may be amusing, they are also distracting, interfering with the concentration of others, as Giles' reprimand to Harris (“That's enough, Xander!”) after Harris' joke about bowling being a “vicious game” suggests. The material they study is difficult and complex, and it concerns life-or-death matters. Jokes on such an occasion are not only immature, but they are also distracting and, therefore, potentially dangerous. Summers did not bother to pursue the scholarly vampire Dalton after he escaped with the du Lac cross because she was ignorant of the danger it represents. However, Giles is able to recognize the threat immediately when he sees the name carved into the mausoleum, above the vault into which Dalton broke. He knows that “Jospehus du Lac is buried here,” and, far from his having been the “saint” Summers suggests he might have been, du Lac was a member of “a sect of priests who were excommunicated by the Vatican” and it was he who wrote the “book that was stolen from the [Sunnydale High School] library by a vampire a few weeks back”--a book of “rituals and spells that reap unspeakable evil.” Summers was not only negligent in not pursuing Dalton, but she, like Harris, is also flip; she makes jokes during serious moments, suggesting, for example, that the book Giles mentions is probably “not a taste of the Vatican cookbook.” As she herself admits, she is, like her friends, immature: “I'm a teen! I've yet to mature!” When their studies do not reveal the information they seek, Summer's friends seem to lack the ability to further their research. They are at a loss as to how to proceed once their research fails. For example, in “What's My Line, Part II,” Harris appears ready to give up when his examination of a book does not reveal any information about two of the Order of Taraka's assassins: “We got demons. We got monsters. But no bug dude or Police Lady.” However, other potentially pertinent volumes exist, as Giles demonstrates when he gives Harris another book with “a section devoted entirely to the Order of Taraka.” Despite the limitations of Summer's approach to learning, the presence of her mentor enables her learning by proxy to succeed because of the mature supervision, guidance, and expertise he brings to their joint study sessions. Giles keeps Summer's friends on track, despite their immaturity and restlessness. He chastises Harris for making jokes at inappropriate moments. He provides contexts for their research, explaining how and why the du Lac cross is significant, and he is able to additional volumes for study when one line or research proves insufficient. In addition, as the high school librarian, Giles is able to use his position to order the rare and arcane books on occult lore that Summer's calling as a vampire slayer require, and he is able to bring order to their contents. For example, he indexes “the Watcher Diaries,” a tedious process: “I've been indexing the Watcher Diaries covering the past two centuries. You'd be amazed at how numbingly long-winded some of these watchers were” (“What's My Line, Part I”). Under Giles' direction, Summers' friends can work effectively as a team, thus researching more sources of a greater variety and at a faster, often more efficient rate than Summers could by herself, while Giles ensures that their research discoveries are both complete, relevant, and reliable.

You could continue this same strategy with reference to the other characteristics and conditions related to Summer's approach to acquiring knowledge (see the table on Essays Made Easy for a list of these characteristics and conditions), although the paragraph above may be long enough if the topic sentence that introduces it is qualified so that it reads, for example:

Although there are several strengths and weaknesses regarding Summer's method of acquiring knowledge, the more important ones, perhaps, concern the limitations of her friends as researchers and the benefits of her mentor's expert supervision and guidance of their research.

NOTE: The shooting scripts for the episodes we watched in class are available at http://www.buffyworld.com/buffy/season2.php#ep021

Using a Table to Generate Material for the Support and Development of an Evaluation Essay

2014-06-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, teachers ask students to evaluate one or more persons, places, or things. When such a task is assigned, a handy way to gather the material that is needed to support and develop one's evaluation is a table or a series of tables that specify details concerning the various criteria or standards that are to be used to evaluate the persons (or persons), place (or places), or thing (or things).

For example, if you were evaluating either Buffy Summers or Kendra Young (or, for that matter, both characters) to assess how effective she (or they) is (or are) in performing her (or their) role (or roles) as a vampire slayer (or slayers), based upon their actions in the second season's episodes "What's My Line?, Part I, "What's My Line?, Part II," "Becoming, Part I," and "Becoming, Part II," you might create tables like those below. (If you were evaluating only one of these characters, you would have to create only the tables that correspond to your choice.) These tables allow you to compare and contrast the slayers in order to determine which is more effective in the performance of her duties than the other, if your assignment requires you to compare and contrast two characters rather than to assess the effectiveness of only one or the other of the characters. Then, you need only add specific examples, from the episodes themselves, to support your observations and claims and any additional explanations that might be needed for clarification or to create a context for your evaluation. By labeling the tables with the names of the episodes, you can more easily find such examples by watching the episodes again or referring to other sources (if the use of other sources is allowed.)

These tables also help you to develop a thesis. For example, you might write something like--

Buffy's attitude hinders her performance as a vampire slayer, but her fighting ability and her social support system compensate for this deficiency, making her a fairly effective vampire slayer whose performance could, nevertheless, benefit from improvement.

Here, then, are the sample tables:

The following two tables are based on “What's My Line, Part I”

SLAYER	ATTITUDE	FIGHTING ABILITY	KNOWLEDGE
Buffy Summers	Buffy is annoyed by Angel's mention of “grave danger.” She does not follow up on why Dalton was stealing from the mausoleum. She is insolent to Giles and challenges his authority. She shirks her studies to go ice skating with Angel. By her own admission, Buffy is “immature.” Buffy jokes while Rupert Giles investigates Dalton's theft of a dangerous artifact (the cross of du Lac). Buffy jokes about the Order of Taraka assassin's ring. Buffy is a modern, liberated young woman who challenges masculine authority. Buffy wants to live a “normal life.”	Buffy is able to defeat several foes at the same time. Buffy is an innovative fighter: she uses her ice skate blade as a knife against the Order of Taraka's first assassin. Buffy fights Kendra to a standstill. Buffy is able to compromise when doing so seems to be in her best interest (she accepts Kendra's truce and agrees to let Giles sort out the problem of the existence of two slayers.) Buffy is aware that her emotions give her “power,” helping her to fight more effectively.	Buffy's knowledge is mediated through others, who gather facts for her. Buffy is largely dependent on others for recorded knowledge. Much of Buffy's knowledge is based on her personal experience (she is an empiricist). Buffy's knowledge is flexible and situation-based. Buffy's knowledge is group-based. Buffy is supported by an entire library of books on the supernatural and the paranormal as well as ordinary subjects.

Observations

Buffy's attitude is often flippant (frivolously disrespectful and lacking in seriousness), which suggests that she does not value learning or study, an attitude that is reinforced by her avoidance of research in favor of keeping a date with her boyfriend Angel—a vampire.

Buffy is a superb fighter. She is skilled, employing a mixed martial arts style that includes gymnastics; she is innovative and resourceful; and she is able to defeat several enemies at the same time. She believes that her feelings empower her, or give her “fire.”

Mediated knowledge is only as reliable as its mediators. Giles is an expert in the occult, but Buffy's friends are not.

SLAYER	ATTITUDE	FIGHTING ABILITY	KNOWLEDGE
Kendra Young	Kendra considers her role as a vampire slayer to be a sacred “calling,” and her culture takes her calling seriously. Kendra refuses to go home, as Buffy suggests, saying that she was sent to stop a “dark power” from “rising” in Sunnydale. Kendra is respectful of both her own Watcher, Mr. Zabuto, and Buffy's Watcher, Rupert Giles. Kendra puts duty above everything else, including friends and family. Kendra accepts her role and does her best to fulfill it as completely and faithfully as possible. Kendra is a traditional young woman who defers to masculine authority.	Kendra fights Buffy to a standstill. Kendra is able to propose a compromise when doing so seems to be in her best interest and to accept compromise (she proposes a truce with Buffy and suggests that they let Giles sort out the problem of the existence of two slayers.) Kendra is unaware that her emotions give her “power,” helping her to fight more effectively.	Kendra learns much of her knowledge directly, through her own study; she is diligent about studying. Kendra is somewhat dependent on others for knowledge. Kendra's knowledge is obtained almost entirely from books and other external sources, rather than from personal experience. Kendra's knowledge is inflexible and theoretical. Kendra's knowledge is largely individual, rather than communal (group) in nature. Kendra knows that sunlight will kill a vampire. Kendra has books as resources.

Observations

Because Kendra is respectful of masculine authority, she and male authority figures get along well, and she is able to benefit from her own and Buffy's Watchers' expertise and guidance, but she may also be, at times, too dependent on sources and experts. She tends to lack flexibility and the ability to think for herself or to think fast on her feet.

This episode does not show Kendra's fighting ability to the same degree and in the same variety as Buffy's is shown, but other episodes do. Therefore, both this episode and other episodes must be examined to get a true perspective of Kendra's fighting ability.

The following two tables are based on “What's My Line, Part II”

SLAYER	ATTITUDE	FIGHTING ABILITY	KNOWLEDGE
Buffy Summers	Buffy considers letting Kendra take over as the slayer while Buffy “retires.” Kendra tells Buffy that she (Kendra) learned that being a slayer is her (a slayer's) identity from Buffy, suggesting that, despite her flippancy and bravado, Buffy does, in fact, take her role as a slayer seriously. Buffy accepts Kendra as a friend rather than rejecting her as a rival. Buffy says she doesn't take orders, but does things her own way. Buffy neglects to make sure that Spike and Drusilla are no longer a threat.	Buffy benefits from Kendra's assistance, in fending off the policewoman assassin and again, later, in fighting Spike and other vampires and assassins in the church. Buffy and Kendra are so evenly matched that they can “switch” in fighting the same enemies. Buffy is again innovative in her use of an aspergillum (a container used to sprinkle holy water) as a weapon (bolo) in her attack on Spike.	Giles explains the cause of the existence of two slayers, and he warns that Spike intends to kill Angel to restore Drusilla. It is unlikely that Buffy would have learned this information by herself. Buffy does not have a slayer's handbook.

Observations

The fact that Buffy and Kendra need Giles' help with regard to the problem of the existence of two slayers shows that Buffy must depend on her Watcher's expertise and guidance even if she believes that she does not and would prefer not to do so.

Both Buffy and Kendra undergo changes in their characters: Buffy comes to regard Kendra as a friend and to respect her as a slayer, despite the clear differences between them.

SLAYER	ATTITUDE	FIGHTING ABILITY	KNOWLEDGE
Kendra Young	Kendra suggests that doing things one's own way, rather than following standing operating procedures and following orders could cause a slayer's death. Because of her scholarly demeanor, Giles finds it easy to bond with Kendra. Kendra neglects to make sure that Spike and Drusilla are no longer a threat. Kendra keeps the secret of Buffy's romance with Angel a secret from her Watcher, Mr. Zabuto.	Kendra is able to fight several foes at the same time. Kendra is able to back up another fighter, but she is also able to lead a fight. Kendra and Buffy are so evenly matched that they can “switch” in fighting the same enemies.	Kendra shows that, from her studies, she knows of Angel's history as a “monster.” She knows, from personal experience, that “when a vampire combusts, he leaves ashes.” Kendra's knowledge is detailed: she reads even difficult passages of books—and footnotes. Kendra has a slayer's handbook.

Observations

The fact that Buffy and Kendra need Giles' help with regard to the problem of the existence of two slayers shows that, despite her independence in conducting her studies and her devotion to them, Kendra must depend on Giles' expertise and guidance at times.

Kendra's attitude seems to be corrupted by Buffy's cavalier approach to her duties; Kendra is willing to deceive her mentor (not telling him about Angel), which could erode her relationship with Mr. Zabuto and his trust in her, if her deceit were discovered by him.

The following two tables are based on “What's My Line, Part I” and “What's My Line, Part II”

SLAYER	Social Support	Training	Weaponry
Buffy Summers	Buffy lives at home with her mother Joyce; has a Watcher, Rupert Giles; has a boyfriend Angel; and has several school friends: Xander Harris, Willow Rosenberg, Cordelia Chase, and “Oz” Osbourne. She also attends high school, where she was once a cheerleader.	Giles insists that Buffy train daily after school.	Buffy shows herself to be proficient at martial arts and the use of a wooden stake as a makeshift knife. As someone who is innovative, she is also able to use ordinary objects, such as an ice skate blade or an aspergillium, as a weapon.

Observations

Although Buffy's friends often help her by studying, fighting, and providing emotional and other support, her friendship with them endangers their lives and sometimes hinders her performance of her duties as a slayer.

Her innovative use of ordinary objects as weapons—as well as her body itself—suggests that Buffy will probably seldom, if ever, be caught defenseless.

SLAYER	Social Support	Training	Weaponry
Kendra Young	When she was young, Kendra's family gave her to her Watcher, Mr. Zabuto, to raise; she remembers only pictures of her parents. She is forbidden to date or to have friends and must keep her identity as a slayer a secret from others.	Kendra claims to have expertise with regard to all weapons (but she admits that she is not knowledgable about a crossbow's firing mechanism, which she says is “new.”)	Kendra's weaponry suggests that she is normally equipped with a simple weapon, such as a wooden stake, although she seems to be aware of other weapons, such as the crossbow and revolvers.

Observations

Kendra's mishap with the crossbow suggests that she was exaggerating about the extent of her knowledge concerning weapons and that, in fact, her knowledge of them is limited.

The following two tables are based on “Becoming, Part I”

SLAYER	ATTITUDE	FIGHTING ABILITY	KNOWLEDGE
Buffy Summers	Kendra claims that Buffy's love for Angel “clouds' Buffy's judgment, an opinion that seems to be supported by Xander's contention that Buffy is willing to forgive Angel for killing Giles' girlfriend, teacher Jenny Calender, just so she can get her “boyfriend back. Because of her love for Angel, she is easily deceived by him when he lures her away from the high school library during Drusilla's attack on Kendra and the others.	Buffy is shown to be a consummate fighter, although her abilities are sometimes hindered by her emotions and by her unwise alliances with vampires such as Angel and Spike.	Buffy's reliance on Giles' expert knowledge of the demon Acathla, on Calender's spell, and on Kendra's knight's sword shows, again, how dependent she is on others for information.

Observations

Although hindered at times by her unwise alliances with Angel and Spike and by her emotions, Buffy puts her duty above everything else she values, including her family, her boyfriend, and her friends, all of whom she loses as a result of defeating Acathla.

SLAYER	ATTITUDE	FIGHTING ABILITY	KNOWLEDGE
Kendra Young	Kendra's attitude seems much the same as it was shown to be in the “What's My Line” episodes, except that she is more willing to allow her emotions to influence her thoughts and actions.	Kendra is prepared to leave Giles, Xander, Willow, and Cordelia unprotected in order to help Buffy fight Angel and the other vampires. Although Kendra is unable to defeat Drusilla and is, in fact, hypnotized and killed by Drusilla, Buffy also died in a similar manner at the end of the series' first season, when Buffy was hypnotized by the Master, a vampire, who drowned Buffy.	Although Kendra must depend on Giles' expert knowledge of the demon Acathla, it is she who provides both the sword of the knight that killed Acathla and the knowledge that the weapon exists. Therefore, she is not as dependent on others as Buffy is.

Observations

Kendra's affection for Buffy endangers Buffy's friends' lives, whom Kendra is willing to leave unprotected in order to back up Buffy during her fight with Angel and the other vampires.

The following two tables are based on “Becoming, Part II”

(Kendra does NOT appear in this episode.)

SLAYER	ATTITUDE	FIGHTING SKILLS	KNOWLEDGE
Buffy Summers	Buffy's attitude seems more serious than it has been in the past. She is willing to fulfill her duty, no matter the personal cost.	Buffy uses a sword to fight Angel and other vampires.	Buffy also receives instruction from Whistler concerning Acathla's purpose and how Buffy can stop the demon by sacrificing Angel.

Observations

Buffy's willingness to ally herself with a vampire (Spike) and a demon (Whistler) seem both to benefit and to hinder her in her fulfillment of her duties.

SLAYER	SOCIAL SUPPORT	TRAINING	WEAPONRY
Buffy Summers	Willow's spell restores Angel's soul, but too late to prevent Buffy from having to dispatch him to hell. Although Buffy enjoys abundant social support (family, mentor, boyfriend, friends, schoolmates), she sacrifices all this support to perform her duty.	Buffy has obviously practiced with a sword.	Buffy is adept with a sword.

Observations

The theme of this episode suggests that it is the person him- or herself who matters most. “In the end,” Whistler says, “all we have is ourselves,” and, when her friends and weapons are taken from her and Angel asks Buffy what she has left, she says, “Me.”

Application of the Evaluation Template

2014-06-12T13:28:00.003-07:00

In "Evaluation Essay Template," we shared a technique for developing the thesis for an evaluation essay. It is recommended that you read this earlier post before you read the current post.

Use these notes and guidelines to write your evaluation essay. Remember that your essay is to be five paragraphs: an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. The last sentence of the introductory paragraph is to end with the thesis sentenced, underlined. Each of the body paragraphs is to begin with a topic sentence, underlined. The concluding paragraph should restate the thesis sentence—in different words than the thesis sentence was originally expressed in the introductory paragraph.

We watched two two-part episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: “What's My Line, Part I,” “What's My Line, Part II,” “Becoming, Part I,” and “Becoming, Part II.” In the process, we rated both Buffy Summers and Kendra Young in regard to these criteria, or standards:

Attitude
Knowledge
Training
Fighting ability
Weaponry
Social support

From the six listed above, pick any three personality traits or skills that you believe are most appropriate to the mission of the vampire slayer and explain why these traits and skills make Buffy an effective vampire slayer or why these traits and skills make Kendra an effective vampire slayer. (Note: Pick either Buffy OR Kendra, NOT both.)

A modification of the template for the evaluation essay shown on http://essaysmadeeasy.blogspot.com/2008/05/evaluation-development-template.html can help you to focus your essay:

Any combination of any of these six traits and skills allows you many possible combinations, as the (partial) list below indicates:

Slayer	Standard 1	Standard 2	Standard 3
Buffy (or Kendra)	Attitude	Knowledge	Training

Buffy (or Kendra)	Attitude	Knowledge	Fighting ability
Buffy (or Kendra)	Attitude	Knowledge	Weaponry
Buffy (or Kendra)	Attitude	Knowledge	Social support
Buffy (or Kendra)	Knowledge	Training	Fighting ability
Buffy (or Kendra)	Knowledge	Training	Weaponry
Buffy (or Kendra)	Knowledge	Training	Social support
Buffy (or Kendra)	Training	Fighting ability	Weaponry
Buffy (or Kendra)	Training	Weaponry	Social support
Buffy (or Kendra)	Fighting ability	Weaponry	Social support
Buffy (or Kendra)	Fighting ability	Social support	Attitude
Buffy (or Kendra)	Fighting ability	Social support	Knowledge
Buffy (or Kendra)	Fighting ability	Social support	Training

From your list, generate a thesis sentence. Here are a couple of examples:

THESIS 1: Despite her deficient knowledge of the supernatural and the paranormal, Buffy's aggressive attitude and excellent training make he an effective vampire slayer.

THESIS 2: Her humble attitude, detailed knowledge of the supernatural and the paranormal, and her superb fighting ability make Kendra Young an effective vampire slayer.

(Many other thesis sentences are possible.)

Use your thesis sentence to generate your essay body paragraph's topic sentences. Here are examples:

TOPIC SENTENCE 1 (for THESIS 1): Buffy's knowledge of the supernatural and paranormal threats she routinely faces leaves a lot to be desired.

TOPIC SENTENCE 2 (for THESIS 1): Buff's aggressive attitude serves her well in her battle with the undead.

TOPIC SENTENCE 3 (for THESIS 1): Due to her excellent training, Buffy is able to improvise in her use of tactics and weapons.

TOPIC SENTENCE 1 (for THESIS 2): Because she has a humble attitude, Kendra is able to learn from her mentor and other authorities.

TOPIC SENTENCE 2 (for THESIS 2): Her detailed knowledge of the supernatural and paranormal villains she must battle every day is an asset for Kendra.

TOPIC SENTENCE 3 (for THESIS 2): Kendra's superb fighting skills make her more than a match for any adversary she must fight.

To support and develop your topic sentences, use specific examples (usually, descriptions of the character in action, showing her traits or skills as they are demonstrated by her performance) from the episodes of the series.

Note: As mentioned, many thesis sentences are possible, including those that claim the character is an ineffective slayer or a somewhat effective slayer whose performance could be improved. For example:

THESIS 3: Because of her inappropriately casual attitude, her lack of knowledge concerning the threats she faces, and her uncritical social support, Buffy is, at best, a marginally effective vampire slayer whose performance needs drastic improvement.

THESIS 4: Although Kendra has great potential to become a truly effective vampire slayer, her fighting ability is too predictable, her knowledge too dependent upon others, and her weaponry too primitive for her to excel in the accomplishment of her mission.

Application of the Analysis Essay Template

2014-06-12T13:20:00.002-07:00

In "Analysis Development Template," we share a technique for developing a thesis for an analysis essay. It is recommended that you read this earlier post before you read the current one.

Use these notes and guidelines to write your magazine advertisement or movie poster analysis essay. Remember that your essay is to be five paragraphs: an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph. The last sentence of the introductory paragraph is to end with the thesis sentenced, underlined. Each of the body paragraphs is to begin with a topic sentence, underlined. The concluding paragraph should restate the thesis sentence—in different words than the thesis sentence was originally expressed in the introductory paragraph.

Identify the advertisement's or poster's emotional appeal or appeals:

Needs For: sex, affiliation, guidance, prominence, attention, autonomy, aesthetic sensations
Needs To: nurture, aggress, achieve, dominate, escape, feel safe, satisfy curiosity
Physiological Needs: food, drink, shelter

Remember that, in the Western world, eye movement is from left to right and from top to bottom.

Consider the advertisement's or poster's visual elements: model (sex, age, class, ethnicity, marital status [if indicated], position in advertisement), background, foreground, size, shape, color, intensity, texture. (Remember that female models typically appeal to potential female customers, and male models typically appeal to potential male customers.)

Consider the advertisement's or poster's textual and rhetorical elements: metaphor, allusion, symbolism, personification, pun.

Remember that everything in the advertisement or poster is there for a reason; nothing is accidental. Ask, What is the advertiser's purpose in including this element?

Remember that the key to unlocking the figurative significance of the advertisement or poster is usually a pun or play on words in the text of the advertisement or poster.

Consider the type of product or service that is being advertised.

Remember that the product's color (and maybe other features, such as its shape) is associated with the advertisement's or poster's main theme or message.

Remember your task in analyzing the magazine advertisement or poster is to show how and why each element works together to produce a unified effect.

Example: Cujo Movie Poster

Part (Visual or Textual Element)	Emotional Appeal(s)	Pun	Purpose or Effect
Caption (above poster's visual elements)	Feel safe; escape	“chilling” contrasts with “summer” and “horrible evil” and “dead” suggest horror; “New England town” specifies movie's setting	“Stephen King” identifies movie's genre as horror; color of his name makes it resemble fire and stand out—trial by fire? Fires of hell?
Sky (dark and threatening)	Feel safe; escape	None	Dark storm clouds symbolize divine or moral judgment; if Cujo is agent of this judgment, he is a scourge, an avenger
Isolated house	Feel safe, escape. nurture	None	Size of house suggests owner has money; it is isolated: residents are on their own; help is unavailable
Picket fence	Feel safe, nurture	None	Condition of fence (symbol of domestic bliss) is neglected (as is family who lives in house)
“Cujo” in red paint or blood	Feel safe, escape	Cujo's name is synonymous with “terror”; his is “ a new name for terror”	“Cujo” a mysterious word; Cujo symbolizes unfaithfulness; paint resembles—could actually be—blood; dripping = fresh blood – recent kill (maybe Cujo is still near)

It might be helpful to use a table like this to identify and analyze each element:

Part (Visual or Textual Element)	Emotional Appeal(s)	Pun	Purpose or Effect

Use the results of your analysis to plug in the blanks of the following thesis sentence:

To persuade potential customers to buy _________________________ (name of the product or the movie), the visual and textual elements of the advertisement (or poster) for the product (or the movie) appeal to potential customers' need (or needs) for (or to) _________________________ .

Here is an example:

Thesis Sentence: To persuade potential customers to buy tickets for Cujo, the visual and textual elements of the poster for the movie appeal to potential customers' needs to feel safe, to escape, and to nurture.

After writing your thesis, use it to generate a topic sentence for each body paragraph. Follow the same order as that in which you listed the three points in your thesis. Be more specific, if appropriate, when writing your topic sentences, but based each topic sentence on its corresponding point in the thesis sentence.

Here are examples:

Topic Sentence 1: The poster for the movie contains such visual elements as a dark, stormy sky; an isolated house; a neglected picket fence; and untrimmed grass.

Topic Sentence 2: In addition to these visual elements, the movie poster features two captions, one superimposed upon the sky, the other on the dark lawn below the picket fence.

Topic Sentence 3: Together, the visual and the textual elements of the movie poster appeal to potential customers' needs to feel safe, to escape, and to nurture.

The Topic Sentence

2014-06-03T17:00:00.001-07:00

A well-written topic sentence has the following characteristics:

It is one sentence long
It is a declarative sentence (makes a claim for which evidence can be provided; it is not a fact or an opinion concerning personal taste)
It is explicit (directly stated)
It is specific (not vague or general)
It is concise (not needlessly wordy)
It is clear (easily understood)
It is significant (important for and appropriate to the intended audience)
It can be expanded with evidence (for example, analyses, classifications, comparisons, contrasts, definitions, descriptions, examples, explanations, facts, process analyses [step-by-step explanations as to how something happens or is produced] reasons, quotations, statistics)
It usually appears as the first sentence of its body paragraph. To make sure you don't forget to include a topic sentence for your paragraph, underline it.

For each of the sentences that are effective topic sentences, place an “X” in the blank before it. If a sentence is NOT an effective topic sentence, explain why it is not.

_____ Chocolate is better than vanilla.

_____ Champagne is more expensive than most other types of wine.

_____ Imported beer tastes better than domestic beer.

_____ Smoking is hazardous to one's health.

_____ Miley Cyrus is a poor role model for young girls.

_____ Justin Bieber should be deported.

_____ Surfing the web can become addictive.

_____ Hillary Clinton will make a better president than Barack Obama.

_____ Is it true that blondes have more fun than either redheads or brunettes?

_____ Canada's healthcare system is better than that of the United States.

_____ Buddhism is easier to practice than Christianity.

_____ Atheism is true, religion false.

_____ Soccer is harder to learn than baseball. Football is harder to learn than either soccer or baseball.

_____ Tiger Woods is the best athlete of all time.

_____ Computer-generated imagery sometimes helps make impossible acts seem likely.

_____ Sean Connery is more believable as James Bond than other actors who have played this character.

To develop a topic sentence, follow these steps:

Select a broad, general subject of personal interest: for example, recycling
Narrow the broad, general subject to a specific, manageable topic: for example, encouraging children to recycle
Write a tentative topic sentence that has all the characteristics mentioned (above): for example: “To encourage children to recycle, explain why recycling is important and give the children a personal stake in the recycling process.”
Decide what genre or genres of essay is most appropriate to your topic: for example, how-to (process analysis and persuasion): how-to (process analysis) and persuasion

One way to accomplish these four steps is to—

Ask, “In general, what do I want to write about?” (Answer: recycling)
Ask, “What do I want to say about recycling?” (Answer: how to encourage children to recycle).
Ask, “How would I get children to recycle?” (Answer: (educate them as to why recycling is important and (2) give them a personal stake in recycling
Ask, “Which essay genre or genres would best help me to express my idea (topic sentence)? (Answer: how-to [process analysis] and persuasion).

Now, you have your topic sentence: “To encourage children to recycle, explain why recycling is important and give the children a personal stake in the recycling process” AND the essay genres (process analysis and persuasion) you plan to use to develop your topic sentence.

Remember the question technique:

Who or what are you writing about? What do you have to say about your topic: what is your point (claim)? What evidence or support will you provide for your topic? What genre or genres will you use?

When and where did the incidents related to your topic take place?

How are you going to write about your topic? How do you plan to get your readers to agree with you or to gain their respect if they disagree with your point of view?

Why should your readers believe you? If you ask them to take some sort of action, why should they? What's in it for them? Why is your topic important?

Also ask yourself whether your topic sentence meets ALL the qualifications of a well-written topic sentence:

Richard Norquist's Grammar & Composition provides practice in generating topic sentences:

http://grammar.about.com/od/developingparagraphs/a/practicetopic.htm

What Is a Sentence?

2014-05-29T07:54:00.000-07:00

What is a sentence?

Before we can answer that question, we need to know what a sentence is not.

A sentence is not a phrase.

A phrase is a group of words that has neither a subject nor a verb. Therefore, it cannot express a complete thought. (The subject is the word, or, sometimes, group of words about which the rest of the sentence, its predicate, makes a point.) Many phrases work as adverbs or adjectives. These are phrases: “under the table,” “in the blue suit.”

A sentence is also not a dependent clause. (A dependent clause is a group of words that has both a subject and a verb but does not express a complete thought.) Many dependent clauses also work as adverbs or adjectives. These are also dependent clauses: “which was fun” (“which” is the subject; “was fun” is the verb), “that explains everything” (“that” is the subject; “explains” is the verb).

Let's review what we have learned:

A phrase = a group of words with neither a subject nor a verb
A dependent clause = a group of words with both a subject and a verb.
Neither a phrase nor a dependent clause expresses a complete thought.
Many phrases and dependent clauses act as adverbs or adjectives.

Now, we can answer our original question: what is a sentence?

A sentence is an independent clause. (An independent clause has both a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought.) An independent clause is also known as a simple sentence. How do dependent and independent clauses differ? Let's review:

A dependent clause has neither a subject nor a verb.
An independent clause has both a subject and a verb.
A dependent clause does not express a complete thought.
An independent clause does express a complete thought.

In English, the natural word order, or syntax, is subject-verb-object. (A direct object is a word that receives the action expressed by a verb.)

Some verbs express action; they are known as action verbs. Other verbs express a state of existence, or being; they are known as verbs of being. A third group of verbs link the subject of the sentence to another word in the rest of the sentence (the predicate). The verbs in this third group of verbs are called linking verbs. Here is an example of each:

John ate cake. (action verb)
John is old. (verb of being)
John became an athlete. (linking verb)

An action verb may or may not have a direct object. If an action verb does have a direct object, the action verb is said to be transitive; in other words, transitive verbs have objects. If an action verb does not have a direct object, the action verb is said to be intransitive. (The prefix “-in” means “not”: therefore, an independent clause is not a dependent clause, and an intransitive verb is not a transitive verb.) Remember: if an action verb has a direct object, it is transitive; if it does not, it is intransitive. Here is an example of a transitive and an intransitive verb:

John ate cake. (transitive verb)
John ate quickly. (intransitive verb).

To test whether a verb is transitive or intransitive, ask the question “what?” immediately after the verb. If there is an answer to this question, the verb is transitive, and the word that answers the question is the object of the transitive verb. NOTE: You must ask “what?,” not “how?”

John ate WHAT? cake. (transitive verb; “cake” = direct object)
John ate WHAT? quickly. (intransitive verb; “quickly tells HOW, not WHAT).

Remember, the natural word order, or syntax, of the English language is subject-verb-object (if there is an object).

Sentences can be grouped in two ways. Sentences can be according to how they are constructed, or built, and sentences can be grouped according to how they function, or what they do.

When grouped by how they are constructed, or built, there are four types of sentences:

Simple = one independent clause: “John ate cake.”
Compound = two independent clauses, joined by a comma and a conjunction or by a semicolon: “John ate cake, but Nancy ate pie” (or “John ate cake; Nancy ate pie”).
Complex = one (or more) dependent clause(s) and one independent clause: “We went dancing, which was fun”: “We went dancing” is an independent clause; “which was fun” is a dependent clause.
Compound-complex = one (or more) dependent clause(s) and two independent clause: “We had dinner, and we went dancing, which was fun”: “We went dancing” is an independent clause; “which was fun” is a dependent clause.

When grouped by their function, or what they do, there are also four types of sentences:

Declarative = a sentence that states a fact or expresses an opinion (claim): both “George Washington was the first U. S. president” (a statement of fact) and “George Washington was an effective president” (an expression of an opinion) are declarative sentences. (A declarative sentence ends with a period.)
Interrogative = a sentence that asks a question: “Who was the first U. S. president?” is an interrogative sentence. (An interrogative sentence ends with a question mark.)
Imperative = a sentence that makes a request or issues an order: “Pass the salt” and “All hands on deck!” are both imperative sentences. (An imperative sentence may end with a period or an exclamation point.)
Exclamatory = a sentence that expresses strong emotion: “He hit her!” (An exclamatory sentence ends with an exclamation point.)

As we mentioned before, many phrases and dependent clauses are used as adjectives or adverbs. Here are a couple examples:

The cat ran under the table (the phrase “under the table” is used as an adverb, telling where the cat “ran”).
The man in the blue suit is my uncle (the phrase “in the blue suit” is used as an adjective, explaining which “man” is the uncle.)
We went dancing, which was fun (the dependent clause, “which was fun,” is used as an adverb, telling what action--”went dancing”—was fun.)
The book that I read was exciting (the dependent clause, “that I read,” describes the “book.”)

We mentioned two words that are sometimes thought to be the same (and can be), but are not necessarily the same: “verb” and “predicate.” Remember, a verb is a word, or a group of words, that names an action, expresses a state of being, or links the subject of the sentence with another word or group of words in the sentence. A predicate consists of all the words to the right of the subject of the sentence, including the verb and any other words. In each of these sentences, the predicate is highlighted in bold:

John ate.
John ate cake.
John ate quickly.
John ate the cake quickly.
John ate the chocolate cake quickly.
John ate the chocolate cake quickly, before Brenda could have any.

A predicate can be a single word, when the predicate consists of only an intransitive verb, or a predicate can be several, or even many, words.

A longer sentence can be thought of as having three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end (although not all longer sentences have all three of these parts):

“Seven people were injured” might be the main idea.

You might decide to explain when this incident happened:

During the recent tornado, seven people were injured. (Now, the sentence has two parts, a beginning and an end). The phrase “During the tornado” introduces the main idea that ends the sentence; therefore, it might be called an introductory phrase.

Maybe you decide to also clarify the point that “no one was killed” by adding what might be called an afterthought:

During the tornado, seven people were injured, but no one was killed.

Now, your sentence has three parts: an introduction, or beginning “During the tornado”), a middle, the main idea (“seven people were injured”), and an afterthought, at the end (“but no one was killed”).

Tips on Writing Sentences

Remember that, at a minimum, a sentence has a subject and a verb and expresses

a complete thought.
Remember that the natural syntax of the English language is subject-verb-object.
Use active voice (that is, employ an active verb, a verb that expresses an action).
Start by expressing your main idea.
Add phrases and dependent clauses to add details to your main idea. Most will explain answer or apply to one of these questions: Who?, Whom?, What?, When?, Where?, How?, Why?, How many? How much?
Vary sentence length and type. Include both shorter, longer, and medium-length sentences. Include declarative, interrogative, imperative, and emphatic sentences (as appropriate).
Think about what you want to say and how to say it before, during, and after you write each sentence.
Read each sentence as you go, to be sure that it says what you want to say, how you want to say it. Also ask yourself whether you can say it better or want to add (or subtract) details.

Table Showing the Relationships between Types of Information to Relate and Related Parts of Speech

TYPE of INFORMATION (QUESTION)	PART OF SPEECH
WHO? and WHAT?; WHOM?	Subject, direct object
WHEN? and WHERE?	Adverb, adverbial phrase, adverbial clause
HOW?	Adverb, adverbial phrase, adverbial clause
WHY?	Infinitive phrase, dependent clause used as an introduction or an afterthought
HOW MANY? or HOW MUCH?	Adjective, adjectival phrase, adjectival clause

The building burned. (SUBJECT = WHAT?)
John runs. (SUBJECT = WHO?)

They painted the building. (OBJECT = WHAT?)
Bill hit John. (OBJECT = WHOM?)

The building burned yesterday. (ADVERB = WHEN?)
John runs daily. (ADVER = WHEN?)
The building burned during the night. (ADVERBIAL PHRASE = WHEN?)
John runs after breakfast. (ADVERBIAL PHRASE = WHEN?)
The building burned after lightning struck it. (ADVERBIAL CLAUSE = WHEN?)
John runs well now that he has been coached. (ADVERBIAL CLAUSE = WHEN?)

The building burned quickly. (ADVERB = HOW?)
John runs well. (ADVERB = HOW?)
The building burned to the ground. (ADVERBIAL PHRASE = HOW?)
John runs like the wind. (ADVERBIAL PHRASE = HOW?)
The building burned when lightning struck its roof. (ADVERBIAL CLAUSE = HOW?)
John runs after he does his stretching exercises. (ADVERBIAL CLAUSE = HOW?)

To demolish the building, the crew set it afire. (INFINITIVE PHRASE = WHY?)
Because the building is unsafe, the town council ordered it to be demolished (INTRODUCTORY DEPENDENT CLAUSE = WHY?)
The town council ordered the building to be demolished, because it is unsafe. (DEPENDENT CLAUSE USED AS AN AFTERTHOUGHT = WHY?)

There are six chairs at the dining room table. (ADJECTIVE = HOW MANY?)
The aquarium holds fifty gallons of water. (ADJECTIVE + HOW MUCH?)
Pick any of the four alternatives. (ADJECTIVAL PHRASE = HOW MANY?)
We should finish the task in three hours. (ADJECTIVAL PHRASE = HOW MUCH?)
After he chopped down the two trees, he planted four others. (ADJECTIVAL CLAUSE = HOW MANY?)
A ton of water falls over the spillway during every half hour. (ADJECTIVAL CLAUSE = HOW MANY?)

Example of an Evaluation Essay Regarding the Marketing of a Foreign Export to a U. S. Market

2014-02-08T07:24:00.000-08:00

John Smith

Professor Pullman

English 101F, Section 1002

10 February 2014

Out of Africa: Nubian Heritage's African Black Soap

In the United States, in times past, bathing was an arduous task. There was no indoor plumbing, and there were no water heaters, so water would have to be hauled from wells or creeks, heated in large pans atop wood-burning stoves, and carried, in wooden buckets or pails to free-standing bathtubs. After the bath, emptying the tub of the used water was no less laborious a task. Often, due to such constraints, water was a scarce commodity, and it was needed for much more than bathing. People depended upon limited supplies of fresh water for cleaning, cooking, and watering their livestock. Consequently, bathing was, at most, a weekly event, and some took a bath far less frequently. Today, in the U. S., water heaters and indoor plumbing are commonplace, and, thanks to river dams, reservoirs, and municipal water tanks, men, women, and children tend to bathe daily, and few people would question the need for soap, a product which sells well with little or no encouragement from advertisers. Indeed, to compete with one another, U. S. soap makers have found innovation a necessity, and many a creative soap product vies with others that are equally original: novelty and seasonal soaps shaped like cookies, Christmas trees, and footballs; Soap-on-a-Rope; scented soaps that smell like roses, rum, or vanilla; monogrammed soaps; herbal soaps; soaps impregnated with lotion; deodorant soaps—the list goes on—and on. Nowadays, it seems, it is gauche to lather one's body with anything so plain as ordinary bath soap. The time is perfect, therefore, it would seem, for Nubian Heritage's African Black Soap, especially since it not only accords with U. S. consumers' cultural values, but it is also both healthful and environmentally friendly.

Western culture, of which the U. S. is a part, originated in Egypt as well as in Arab lands, Greece, and Rome, so, despite the U. S.'s relatively late entrance to Western culture, it shares a rich history with Egypt no less than it does with Europe. Nubian Heritage's African Black Soap explicitly cites this shared history, or “heritage,” with the U. S. and, indeed, European nations in its website's “Product Information,” while identifying the soap's benefits to consumers' health: “The Nubian Heritage African Black Soap combines the ancient medicinal properties of black soap with the hydrating properties of Shea Butter to balance problem skin.” The shared culture represented by the product's Nubian origin is emphasized by the company's use of such terms as “traditional” and “traditionally,” as it is by the company's contending that the product is not so much an altogether new product as it is an “update” of the “traditional” soap. (It doesn't hurt the success of the soap's marketing approach that the text on the elegant black box in which the soap is packaged for export to the U. S. and other English-speaking countries appears in English.) This product, available to all today, was once used exclusively by Egyptian royalty, including Cleopatra herself! Obviously, if this soap was good enough for a queen, it should please any lesser mortal who is privileged to use it. Indeed, an inscription upon the very bar itself insists that those who use it are “Never Spoiled Enough,” perhaps, because, like Cleopatra, they can never be spoiled too much.

Moreover, Nubian Heritage's African Black Soap is chock full of natural, healthful ingredients that not only cleanse the skin but also balances “skin tone” and improves “skin texture,” qualities upon which many U. S. consumers insist in regard to any product they might buy:

This traditional African Black Soap recipe contains palm ash, plantain peel extract and rosemary extract. This powerful combination has traditionally been used to treat eczema, acne, oily skin, psoriasis, and other skin ailments. In the apothecary tradition, Nubian Heritage updates African Black Soap with active botanical extracts and salicylic acid to more effectively treat acne, balance skin tone and improves skin texture. Daily use will result in cleaner, clearer, healthier skin.

The website also spells out the benefits of the product to consumers: “Benefits: Effective Skin Care Targets Trouble Skin Without Over Drying,” and its use is effective against “Oily Skin, Combination Problem Skin,” and “Acne.”

Both the website and the box in which the soap is packaged testify of the product's environmentally safe ingredients, which is apt to appeal to the many U. S. consumers who demand that products be environmentally friendly. According to the website, the soap's ingredients are both natural and gentle: “Key Ingredients: “Shea Butter, Palm Ash, Plantain Peel Extract.” Likewise, the information on the box supports the environmental friendliness of the soap's contents: it is a “100% Vegetable Soap,” consisting of “African Black Soap Base, Coconut Oil* and/or Palm Oil, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter)*, Avina Sativa (Oat) Kernel Meal, Aloe Barbadensis Leaf Juice, Plantain Extract, Tocopherol (Vitamin E), Vegetable Glycerin, Mineral Pigment or Vegetable Color, and Essential Oil Blend.” The company is considerate enough of its consumers' sensitivity to environmental friendliness to ensure that terms that might be unfamiliar to them are clarified: the somewhat intimidating-sounding “Butyrospermum Parkii” is nothing more than “Shea Butter”; “Avina Sativa” is “Oat”; and “Tocopherol” is “Vitamin E.” Nubian Heritage African Black Soap has nothing to hide, and even its list of ingredients is absolutely transparent. Moreover, the company assures consumers that those ingredients that are marked with an asterisk (i. e., “Coconut Oil” and “Butyrospermum Parkii [Shea Butter]” are “Certified Organic Ingredient[s].” In other words, these ingredients originate from organic farming methods, including the use of organic ingredients, without the use of synthetic or chemical products or processes, such as pesticides, fertilizers, or irradiation. Likewise, the product neither contains animal products nor engages in animal testing. Once again, for environmentally conscious consumers, Nubian Heritage African Black Soap fills the bill.

Nubian Heritage African Black Soap looks different from the other soap products with which most U. S. consumers are familiar. It looks different even than the more unusual soaps sold in novelty shops. Rectangular, with rounded corners and edges, it is a lustrous black bar, emblazoned with a crown, the base of which is formed by an abbreviation of the product's full name: “Nubian Heritage”; the soap's slogan, “Never Spoiled Enough,” appears inside the crown, in small, light gray letters as elegant as the product itself. It is an attractive bar of soap, but it is one that also embraces its common heritage with the U. S., Europe, and other members of Western culture; benefits consumers' health; and respects the environment, both by its use of natural ingredients and its avoidance of the use of both animal products and animal testing. With Nubian Heritage African Black Soap, everyone, everywhere can spoil him- or herself as much as Cleopatra did when, thousands of years ago, the queen of Egypt lathered and rinsed with what is essentially the same product that the company continues to offer today.

Untangling "Tangled's" Domestic and International Trailers

2014-02-02T10:48:00.005-08:00

In this post, we will look at how two movie trailers can be contrasted to identify, analyze, and explain how one trailer appeals to the cultural interests of potential U. S. audiences, while the other trailer, developed to promote the same film to a foreign market, appeals to the cultural interests of potential audiences in The Netherlands.

First, the prewriting process will be considered, from a process-analysis, or "how-to," perspective, bold red font providing step-by-step instructions as to how to proceed.

Then, the final draft of the essay, in blue font, is presented.

So that the other three drafts can be reviewed, they are also supplied, the third draft following the final draft, the second draft following the third draft, and the first draft following the second draft, with indications of the revisions made and the reasons for making them. Each draft is identified as "Final Draft," "Third Draft," "Second Draft," or "First Draft."

Occasionally, to clarify issues, brief notes are included wherever appropriate, beginning with the word"Note," in bold purple, underlined.

Tangled Trailer for U. S. Audiences

Video clip URL = http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ip_0CFKTO9E#t=40

To analyze the U. S. trailer, watch it, pausing frequently to describe each incident of the action; the appearance of the text on the screen can be used to divide the trailer into parts:

Shown from behind, a young man, in manacles, is escorted by armored guards, one on either side of him, into a dungeon.
The young man's face and upper body, and that of the helmeted guards, are shown; the guards' hands hold the young man's upper arms.
As they continue to walk forward, the young man glances sideways, at first one guard and then the other.
The young man attempts to flee, and a fight ensues between him and the guards.
The young man butts one of the guards with his head before leaping over his manacles, which he brings up and under his feet as he leaps.

Text: He's Fearless

The young man rides a galloping, saddled white horse.
Mounted soldiers pursue him through a forest.
The young man passes a wanted poster bearing his likeness. The poster is shot full of arrows; its caption reads, “WANTED. DEAD OR ALIVE.”
The young man removes the wanted poster and reads it; another is tacked to the same tree; presumably, this other poster was under the one of himself that he has removed.
The young man holds the poster up: it shows a seemingly different, but similar-looking, fugitive, and, in addition to the words “DEAD OR ALIVE,” which appear below the word “WANTED,” the fugitive's name, “Flynn Rider,” appears. The young man, Flynn," looks shocked. He mutters about the artist never managing to get his nose "right."

Text: He's Dangerous

Two large men open a saddlebag. Finding it empty, they look up.
In a branch, overhead, Flynn, grinning, twirls a tiara on his fingertip.
One of the large men stands upon the other man's shoulders.
On foot, Flynn flees through the forest.
Flynn leaps from a rock, back onto the trail he follows.

Text: But the Kingdom's Greatest Thief

A fist jams an arrow into the side of a tower.
Flynn climbs the side of the tower; he is already quite high. The house atop the tower is round.

Text: Just Picked The Wrong Place to Hide

Flynn stands before heavy double wood doors braced with wrought-iron, flowers on either side of him.
Flynn pushes the doors open.
The towering tower with the house on its top is shown from a distance.
Flynn opens his saddlebag.
A frying pan swings behind Flynn, striking him in the back of his head; he falls.
Lying on the floor, Flynn opens his eyes.
A tendril of hair ascends into the air.
Flynn rises from the floor.
Shown from high above, Flynn picks up a candlestick from a table.
Flynn holds the candlestick aloft; Rapunzel (not shown) snares it with a strand of her hair and yanks it from Flynn's grasp; he stares at his empty left hand, as her hair snakes first around the wrist of his right hand and then around his left wrist; another strand of her hair wraps his neck; he pushes her hair aside.
Rapunzel (still not shown) pulls Flynn, upside-down, toward the ceiling, her hair wrapped around his lower leg.
Flynn's boot is pulled off, and he falls.
Flynn seizes Rapunzel's hair.
Flynn's boot, held by a strand of Rapunzel's hair—she herself still has not been shown—kicks him in the back of his head.
Flynn is dragged backward by a strand of Rapunzel's hair.
Flynn stares, eyes wide.
Flynn is shocked to find himself bound, by the princess' hair, to a sturdy chair.
Flynn gazes down at a length of hair on the floor, following it with his eyes, to a woman's feet.
The princess, Rapunzel, seen for the first time, at a distance, stands across the room, in profile, facing her captive.
Rapunzel approaches Flynn.
Flynn flirts with Rapunzel.
Rapunzel acts as if she may strike Flynn with the frying pan she holds.
Rapunzel seems to reconsider hitting Flynn.
A lizard, perched on Rapunzel's shoulder, makes a suggestion to her.
Flynn, still tied to the chair by his captor's hair, hurtles toward the ground, far below; his chair is attached to Rapunzel's hair.

Text: He's Seen It All

In a tree branch, Flynn kneels besides his white horse.
The limb shakes, and leaves fall.
The branch, which grows over the edge of a sheer cliff, gives way, Flynn and his horse falling.
Flynn and his horse look terrified as the wind rushes past their faces.

Text: She's Been Grounded

Text: Like. . . FOREVER

Flynn climbs the wall of the tower.
Rapunzel tosses her hair out the window of her house.
Rapunzel swing down, past Flynn.
Rapunzel's foot touches the grass.
Flynn stands before the base of a great, wide tree.
Rapunzel swings around the tree, on her hair.
The lizard sticks its tongue into Flynn's and snaps it back, surprising him.
Rapunzel laughs.

Test: This Fall

Text: It Takes Two To Get. . .

Flynn, his horse beside him, stands at the bottom of the tower, appealing to Rapunzel to let down her hair.
Flynn is buried in an avalanche of Rapunzel's hair. His horse looks astonished, then laughs (a horse laugh).

Text: Disney's Tangled

Text: Get Tangled Up in DISNEY DIGITAL 3D – IN SELECT THEATERS

The letters of the text revolve and are transformed:

Text: Get Tangled Up in real D 3D

Text: Coming Soon – disney.com/Tangled

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip_0CFKTO9E

Rapunzel Trailer for The Netherlands Audiences

Video clip URL = http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ip_0CFKTO9E#t=3

Use the same approach to analyze the international trailer: watch it, pausing frequently to describe each incident of the action; the appearance of the text on the screen can be used to divide the trailer into parts:

1. A castle is shown perched atop a tall, narrow, ivy-covered tower in a valley enclosed by tall, massive mountains; trees and a waterfall are present.

Text: In een ver koninkrijk. . .

Note: Use Google Translate to translate the text, which is Dutch, the language of The Netherlands, into English:

Text (translated): In a distant realm. . .

A close-up is shown of a young man.
A fist jams an arrow into the side of the tower.
The young man climbs the side of the tower; he is already quite high. The house atop the tower is round.
The young man stands before heavy double wood doors braced with wrought-iron, flowers on either side of him.
The young man pushes the doors open.
The young man stands in the doorway of a dimly lit, large, sparsely furnished room.
A golden hairbrush sits atop a rough table of coarse-grained wood.
The young man examines the hairbrush, before placing it inside his saddlebag.
The young man also steals a book that is on the same table.
A tendril of hair ascends into the air.

Text: Leeft een Prinses. . .

Text (translated); Lives a Princess. . .

The young man holds a candlestick aloft; Rapunzel (not shown) snares it with a strand of her hair and yanks it from the young man;'s grasp; he stares at his empty left hand, as her hair snakes first around the wrist of his right hand and then around his left wrist; another strand of her hair wraps his neck; he pushes her hair aside.
Rapunzel (still not shown) pulls the young man, upside-down, toward the ceiling, her hair wrapped around his lower leg.
The young man's boot is pulled off, and he falls.
The young man seizes Rapunzel's hair.
His boot, held by a strand of Rapunzel's hair—she herself still has not been shown—kicks the young man in the back of his head.
The fallen young man is dragged backward by a strand of Rapunzel's hair.

Text: Anders dan aldie anderes. . .

Text (translated): Unlike any other. . .

The young man is shocked to find himself bound, by the princess' hair, to a sturdy chair.
The young man gazes down at a length of hair on the floor, following it with his eyes, to a woman's feet.
The princess, Rapunzel, seen for the first time, at a distance, stands across the room, in profile, facing her captive.
Rapunzel approaches the young man.
The young man flirts with her.
Rapunzel acts as if she may strike the young man with the frying pan she holds.
A lizard, perched on her shoulder, makes a suggestion to her.
The youth, still tied to the chair by his captor's hair, hurtles toward the ground, far below; his chair is attached to Rapunzel's hair.

Text: Walt Disney presenteert. . .

Text (translated): Walt Disney presents. . .

The young man, his horse beside him, stands at the bottom of the tower, appealing to Rapunzel to let down her hair.
The young man is buried in an avalanche of her hair. The horse looks astonished, then laughs (a horse laugh).

Text: Disney – Rapunzel

The young man stands before the base of a great, wide tree.
Rapunzel swings around the tree, on her hair.

Text: Binnenkort in de bioscoop – Ook in Disney 3D

Text (translated: Coming soon – In Disney 3D

http://www.slashfilm.com/international-teaser-for-disneys-tangled-has-some-extended-footage/

Identify the emphasis of each trailer; both the graphics and the text are important to consider, but the text, especially, indicates the significance of the overall patterns of suggestions and themes.

Here is a consideration of the U. S. trailer:

In the U. S., the movie was released under the title Tangled.
The U. S. trailer begins by emphasizing the young man's character (“Fearless,” “Dangerous,” “Greatest Thief,” “Seen It All”) while the action provides a context for his appearance: he escapes prison guards, whom he flees, coming upon Rapunzel's tower in the forest's valley.
The dimly lit interior of the house is somewhat disorienting and suggests mystery.
The flowers outside the house atop the tower could be intended to suggest that the house's occupant is a woman.
The text then identifies Rapunzel's plight: “She's Been Grounded Like. . . FOREVER.”
The test also implies that the young man and Rapunzel will develop a relationship with one another, becoming entangled; the same text also suggests that they are likely to become lovers, since the word “tangled,” which, in the U. S. release of the film, is the movie's title, is a metaphor that suggests sexual relations, as, indeed, the shape of the strands of Rapunzel's hair, as shown in some of the promotional posters for the movie, indicates:

Pay particular attention to any group of words that begins with “but,” because “but” indicates a contrast; often, in the synopsis of a narrative or a drama, “but” is used to introduce the major complication of the conflict. In the U. S. trailer, “but” introduces the clause, “But the Kingdom's Greatest Thief/ Just Picked The Wrong Place to Hide.” Not only does this text characterize the young man as an accomplished thief, but it also suggests that he will encounter difficulty as the result of his having chosen the tower in which to hide from his pursuers—and, sure enough, difficulty soon appears in the person of the princess, Rapunzel, who lives in the tower. How, exactly, she will be troublesome is unknown to viewers, so the text creates suspense.

Here is a consideration of The Netherlands' version of the international trailer:

Internationally, the movie was released under the title Rapunzel.
The trailer begins in media res (in the middle of the action), without any preliminary exposition, so the viewer has no context in which to interpret the action.
Again, the flowers outside the house atop the tower could be intended to suggest that the house's occupant is a woman.
The dimly lit interior of the house is somewhat disorienting and suggests mystery.
The young man is shown to be a thief when he steals the hairbrush and the book.
The remainder of the international trailer is much like the U. S. trailer, with such differences as the omission of the such playful sequences of action as the incidents that show the young man and his horse falling with the tree limb; the explanation as to why Rapunzel is in the tower (“She's Been Grounded”); the young man's return to the tower; Rapunzel's joining him, as she escapes from the tower using her hair to swing herself to the ground; and the lizard's sticking its tongue in the young man's ear and snaps it back, surprising him and causing Rapunzel to laugh.

Now, use these insights to detect and explain the differences between the two trailers:

Unlike the U. S. trailer, which begins by emphasizing the young man's character, the international trailer emphasizes the story's action, thrusting the viewer right into the middle of the film's story.
The dimly lit interior of the house is somewhat disorienting and suggests mystery.
Characterization is more implicit and more briefly suggested in the international trailer than it is in the U. S. trailer; in the latter, characterization is explicit, repeated, and almost heavy-handed.
The remainder of the international trailer is much like the U. S. trailer, with such The emphasis of the international trailer is upon action and friendship, while the emphasis of the U. S. trailer is upon character and sex. In addition, much of the humor in the U. S. trailer does not appear in the international trailer, which takes a more serious tone.
It seems that Disney executives rely upon European viewers' familiarity with the fairy tale of Rapunzel and marketed the movie with this title to appeal to their fondness of the story, whereas, it seems, the executives did not rely upon U. S. viewers' familiarity with the folktale and opted to give it a title which focuses, instead, upon the relationship, social and sexual, that is implied by the term “tangled”: to become “entangled” romantically with another person is to become involved in a relationship with him or her that has both social and sexual connotations.

Use the results of your analyses to write a thesis-driven essay in which you explain how and why the company—in this example, Walt Disney—uses different movie trailers to promote the same film—in this example, Tangled—to a domestic (U. S.) market and an international (The Netherlands) market.

Here is an example of such an essay:

FINAL DRAFT OF ESSAY

Untangling Tangled's Domestic and International Trailers

by Gary Pullman

To promote its feature-length animated film, Tangled, the Walt Disney Company uses a different trailer in the United States than the trailers that it employs in overseas markets. The differences in the structure, contents, and emphases of these trailers align with the variations that the company's executives perceive concerning the backgrounds and interests of the film's domestic and foreign audiences, which the respective trailers target. These differences in anticipated audience response are attributable to the differences in the audience's respective national cultures. Two such trailers, one directed at a U. S. audience and the other at an overseas audience, illustrate the cultural differences between these audiences with respect, in particular, to their dominant dramatic interests, narrative structure, and emotional responses.

Both Disney trailers use text to divide the action into parts, thereby creating the sense that the trailers are themselves unified stories, rather than merely images which preview the film the trailers represent. The U. S. trailer has what might be labeled a prologue, five acts, and an epilogue. The text which divides each part appears after, rather than before, the action that the text characterizes, as if the text were summarizing the gist of the action.

The U. S. trailer exhibits several characteristics that relate to U. S. citizens' cultural values. In the U. S., the movie was released under the title Tangled. The U. S. trailer begins by emphasizing the young man's character (“Fearless,” “Dangerous,” “Greatest Thief,” “Seen It All”), while the action provides a context for his appearance: he escapes prison guards, whom he flees, coming upon Rapunzel's tower in the forest's valley. The emphasis upon character is important to the U. S. audience because, both historically and culturally, American moviegoers have long displayed an interest in the subjective experiences of fictional personages, intrigued by their thoughts, beliefs, and feelings as much as by their more overt actions. In addition, the thief's "bad boy" qualities are emphasized in the U. S. trailer because some girls and young women are attracted by aggressive, virile men of questionable integrity whom, they feel they can domesticate or change. The dimly lit interior of the house is somewhat disorienting and suggests mystery. The flowers outside the house atop the tower could be intended to suggest that the house's occupant is a woman. Although such a point of view may be considered to be sexist by some, it is grounded in the perspective that considers the beautification of one's domicile to be more of a feminine concern than a masculine one. Aware of this view, audience members are apt to expect that the thief will encounter a female, rather than a male, resident. This anticipation, on the part of adult members of the film's potential audience, suggests the possibility of a romantic relationship between the trespasser and the tower's resident. The text then identifies Rapunzel's plight: “She's Been Grounded Like. . . FOREVER.” The term "Grounded," obviously, is addressed to young viewers, for it is only adolescents and younger children who are "grounded" by authorities; adults would be fined or imprisoned for violating laws. The U. S. trailer appeals to both children and adults, the latter of whom are likely to be the former's parents, who would take them to see the movie.The text also implies that the young man and Rapunzel will develop a relationship with one another, becoming entangled; the same text also suggests that they are likely to become lovers, since the word “tangled” may be used as a metaphor for sexual relations. The text that begins with “but” introduces the major complication of the conflict: “But the Kingdom's Greatest Thief/ Just Picked The Wrong Place to Hide.” Not only does this text characterize the young man as an accomplished thief, but it also suggests that he will encounter difficulty as the result of his having chosen the tower in which to hide from his pursuers—and, sure enough, difficulty soon appears in the person of the princess, Rapunzel, who lives in the tower. How, exactly, she will be troublesome is unknown to viewers, so the text creates suspense.

The differences between the U. S. trailer and the trailer that was shown in The Netherlands are significant. After a long shot (called an “establishing shot” in cinematic terms) of the tower in the mountain-ringed valley, the trailer that was shown to audiences in The Netherlands begins with the action that is presented in part three of the U. S. trailer. With minor, but important differences, the sequence of incidents is otherwise nearly identical. Therefore, only these differences need to be pointed out. The establishing shot ends with a display of elliptical text, in Dutch”: “In een ver koninkrijk. . .,” which means “In a distant realm. . . .”

Upon trespassing upon the princess' abode, the thief spies a golden hairbrush on a rough table of coarse-grained wood, and, after examining it, he places the hairbrush inside his saddlebag, before stealing a container from the same table. Text appears on the screen, supplying the predicate that completes the meaning of the previously displayed text: “Leeft een Prinses. . .” (“Lives a Princess. . .”).

The same struggle as occurs in the U. S. trailer between the tower's resident and her trespasser now takes, in The Netherlands trailer, between Rapunzel and her intruder, after which, victorious, the princess uses her hair to drag the fallen young man backward, across the floor. As usual, text closes this segment of action, commenting, this time, upon the previously displayed captions: “Anders dan aldie anderes. . .” (“Unlike any other. . .”). Together, this text and the previous texts form a running sentence, which, combined, reads, “In a distant realm lives a princess unlike any other.”

The action now proceeds as it does in the U. S. trailer, and the youth, still tied to the chair by his captor's hair, hurtles toward the ground, far below, his chair attached to Rapunzel's hair. More text appears on the screen: “Walt Disney presenteert. . . (“Walt Disney presents. . .”).

The Netherlands trailer then ends with the sequence of action which shows the thief standing beside his horse, appealing to Rapunzel, who is in the house atop the tower; he is buried in an avalanche of hair, and the horse, looking astonished, laughs. Thus, The Netherlands' trailer skips all the action after the fall of the chair that the U. S. trailer includes, ending with the display of the film's title, which is not Tangled, but Rapunzel, which, further text announces, is “Binnenkort in de bioscoop – Ook in Disney 3D” (“Coming soon – In Disney 3D”).

Some of the major differences between the U. S. trailer and the trailer that was shown to audiences in The Netherlands are the film's title (Tangled in the U. S., Rapunzel overseas); a lengthy prologue, in the U. S. trailer, preceding the thief's arrival at Rapunzel's tower, but the beginning of the action in the foreign trailer in media res (in the middle of the action), without any preliminary exposition, so that the viewer has no context by which to interpret the action; and the showing, several times, in the U. S. trailer, the fact that the young man is a criminal, before the text itself announces, explicitly, that he is a thief, but, in The Netherlands' trailer, the indication that the young man is a thief only when he steals the hairbrush and the container. The remainder of The Netherlands' trailer is much like the U. S. trailer, with such differences, in the former, as the omission, in the U. S. trailer, of such playful sequences of action as the incidents that show the young man and his horse falling with the tree limb; the explanation as to why Rapunzel is in the tower (“She's Been Grounded”); the young man's return to the tower; Rapunzel's joining him, as she escapes from the tower by using her hair to swing herself to the ground; and the lizard's sticking its tongue into the young man's ear and snapping it back, which surprises him and causes Rapunzel to laugh.

What can be learned from analyzing these differences between the ways in which the U. S. trailer and the foreign trailer promote the same film? Unlike the U. S. trailer, which begins by emphasizing the young man's character, the international trailer emphasizes the story's action, thrusting the viewer right into the middle of the film's story. Characterization is more implicit and more briefly suggested in the international trailer than it is in the U. S. trailer; in the latter, characterization is explicit, repeated, and almost heavy-handed. The emphasis of the international trailer is upon action and friendship, while the emphasis of the U. S. trailer is upon character and romance. In addition, much of the humor in the U. S. trailer does not appear in the international trailer, which takes a more serious tone. It seems that Disney executives, relying upon European viewers' familiarity with the fairy tale of “Rapunzel,” marketed the movie with this title to appeal to their fondness for the story, whereas, these executives did not rely upon U. S. viewers' familiarity with the folktale and opted to give it a title which focuses, instead, upon the relationship, social and romantic, between the thief and the princess that is implied by the term “tangled”: to become “entangled” romantically with another person is to become involved in a relationship with him or her that has both social and sexual connotations. In short, in The Netherlands, the film is sold as an adventure story with folkloric elements; in the U. S., it is promoted as an adventurous, but humorous, love story, or “romcom.” The different treatments, as exhibited in these two trailers, reflect the perceptions of the Disney Company's executives as to which sets of cultural values in the U. S. and abroad are likely to engage potential audiences for their animated film, Tangled—or is it Rapunzel?

THIRD DRAFT OF THE ESSAY

Note: The green text was added to explain the claims which were made immediately before the added green text.

Untangling Tangled's Domestic and International Trailers

by Gary Pullman

SECOND DRAFT OF THE ESSAY

Note: The ~~lined-out~~ text was was deleted because it was a summarization of the trailer's action that proved both too detailed and unnecessary to the thesis' claims--that is, the ~~lined-out~~ was irrelevant.

Untangling Tangled's Domestic and International Trailers

by Gary Pullman

~~In the prologue, a young man escapes the guards who lead him into a dungeon. After his escape, the text, “He's Fearless” appears on the screen.~~

Next, he rides a galloping white horse through a dense forest, mounted soldiers in close pursuit of him. As he approaches a tree, he sees a wanted poster bearing his likeness. The poster is shot full of arrows, and its caption reads, “WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE.” Plucking the poster from the tree, he reads it before holding it up, toward the audience. The poster bears the likeness of a different, but similar-looking, fugitive, and, at the bottom of the poster, under the words “DEAD OR ALIVE,” appears the name “Flynn Rider.” Text appears on the screen, dividing this part of the action from that which follows: “He's Dangerous.”

Two large men open a saddlebag. Finding it empty, they look up. In a branch, overhead, the young man, grinning, twirls a tiara on his fingertip. One of the large men stands upon the other man's shoulders, presumably in an effort to reach the young man whom they pursue. On foot, the young man flees through the forest. He leaps from a rock, back onto the trail he follows. The next text is elliptical, beginning a sentence which, the viewer anticipates, will be concluded later. In addition to identifying the young man as a thief, this text also begins with the conjunction “but,” introducing a contrast. Since the first part of the trailer shows the young man escaping his captors, “but” suggests that his escape may come to an untimely end as he is caught again: “But the Kingdom's Greatest Thief. . . .”

A fist jams an arrow into the side of a tower, and the young man climbs toward the round house at its top. Text, again, transitions between the previous and the next segment of action, as the elliptical statement, begun with the previous text, “But the Kingdom's Greatest Thief,” is now completed with the words, “Just Picked The Wrong Place to Hide.”

The “place to hide,” obviously is the house atop the tower. The young thief invades the house, gets his bearings, and, as he opens his saddlebag, is struck from behind by a frying pan and knocked unconscious. Lying on the floor, he opens his eyes. Unseen by him, a tendril of hair ascends into the air. The young man rises from the floor and seizes a candlestick from a table. As he holds it aloft; a strand of hair yanks it from his grasp. A struggle ensues during which, kicked in the head by his own boot, which is held in strands of hair, he is dragged backward by more strands of the same hair. He stares, eyes wide, shocked to find himself bound, by the hair that has attacked him, to a sturdy chair. He sees a length of the same hair lying on the floor and follows it with his eyes, to a woman's feet. His attacker, seen for the first time, at a distance, stands across the room, in profile, facing her captive. She approaches the thief, and he flirts with her. She is tempted to strike him with the frying pan she holds, but, instead, acting upon the advice of the lizard perched upon her shoulder, she seems to reconsider hitting the young man, and the thief, still tied to the chair, which she has apparently thrown from the tower, hurtles toward the ground, far below, his chair attached to still more of the woman's hair. This segment shows why the tower proved the “wrong place” for him to hide. The woman is more than his match. He has escaped guards and soldiers, but he was not able to defeat her. Next, text appears on the screen, suggesting that, despite the thief's youth, he is a man of experience who has “Seen It All.”

However, this contention seems ironic, because both the thief and his horse are terrified by what happens next. In a tree branch, the young man kneels besides his horse. The limb shakes, and leaves fall; then, the branch, which grows over the edge of a sheer cliff, gives way, the young man and his horse falling. Both look terrified as the wind rushes past their faces. Despite his past experiences, the thief has not been in as dangerous a predicament as the one into which the young woman in the tower has delivered him. The text now shifts its focus from the thief to the young woman, explaining that she is as much a prisoner of the house atop the tower as the young man was a prisoner of the guards who led him into a dungeon at the beginning of the trailer. However, her fate is worse than his: he has managed to escape his captors, while, the text informs viewers, her incarceration is lifelong: “She's Been Grounded Like. . . FOREVER.”

Following the appearance of this caption, the thief climbs back up the wall of the tower, but its occupant surprises him by swinging down, past him, on her hair, and, as the young man stands before the base of a huge tree, she swings around the him, using her hair as if it were a vine or a rope. Later, in the tower, the young woman's lizard sticks its tongue into the young man's ear and then snaps it back, surprising the youth, and the woman laughs. This segment of the movie shows that the thief has joined his fate to hers and suggests that they have developed a friendship with one another. “This Fall,” a new display of text reads, “It Takes Two To Get. . . Tangled.”

The young man, his horse beside him, stands at the bottom of the tower, appealing to its occupant. He is buried in an avalanche of her hair while his horse, astonished, laughs. The thief and the princess have become entangled in a friendship that seems likely to lead to intimacy.

Upon trespassing upon the princess' abode, the thief spies a golden hairbrush on a rough table of coarse-grained wood, and, after examining it, he places the hairbrush inside his saddlebag, before stealing a book from the same table. Text appears on the screen, supplying the predicate that completes the meaning of the previously displayed text: “Leeft een Prinses. . .” (“Lives a Princess. . .”).

Some of the major differences between the U. S. trailer and the trailer that was shown to audiences in The Netherlands are the film's title (Tangled in the U. S., Rapunzel overseas); a lengthy prologue, in the U. S. trailer, preceding the thief's arrival at Rapunzel's tower, but the beginning of the action in the foreign trailer in media res (in the middle of the action), without any preliminary exposition, so that the viewer has no context by which to interpret the action; and the showing, several times, in the U. S. trailer, the fact that the young man is a criminal, before the text itself announces, explicitly, that he is a thief, but, in The Netherlands' trailer, the indication that the young man is a thief only when he steals the hairbrush and the book. The remainder of The Netherlands' trailer is much like the U. S. trailer, with such differences, in the former, as the omission, in the U. S. trailer, of such playful sequences of action as the incidents that show the young man and his horse falling with the tree limb; the explanation as to why Rapunzel is in the tower (“She's Been Grounded”); the young man's return to the tower; Rapunzel's joining him, as she escapes from the tower by using her hair to swing herself to the ground; and the lizard's sticking its tongue into the young man's ear and snapping it back, which surprises him and causes Rapunzel to laugh.

What can be learned from analyzing these differences between the ways in which the U. S. trailer and the foreign trailer promote the same film? Unlike the U. S. trailer, which begins by emphasizing the young man's character, the international trailer emphasizes the story's action, thrusting the viewer right into the middle of the film's story. Characterization is more implicit and more briefly suggested in the international trailer than it is in the U. S. trailer; in the latter, characterization is explicit, repeated, and almost heavy-handed. The emphasis of the international trailer is upon action and friendship, while the emphasis of the U. S. trailer is upon character and romance. In addition, much of the humor in the U. S. trailer does not appear in the international trailer, which takes a more serious tone. It seems that Disney executives, relying upon European viewers' familiarity with the fairy tale of “Rapunzel,” marketed the movie with this title to appeal to their fondness of the story, whereas, these executives did not rely upon U. S. viewers' familiarity with the folktale and opted to give it a title which focuses, instead, upon the relationship, social and romantic, between the thief and the princess that is implied by the term “tangled”: to become “entangled” romantically with another person is to become involved in a relationship with him or her that has both social and sexual connotations. In short, in The Netherlands, the film is sold as an adventure story with folkloric elements; in the U. S., it is promoted as an adventurous, but humorous, love story, or “romcom.” The different treatments, as exhibited in these two trailers, reflect the perceptions of the Disney Company's executives as to which sets of cultural values in the U. S. and abroad are likely to engage potential audiences for their animated film, Tangled—or is it Rapunzel?

FIRST DRAFT OF THE ESSAY

Untangling Tangled's Domestic and International Trailers

by Gary Pullman

In the prologue, a young man escapes the guards who lead him into a dungeon. After his escape, the text, “He's Fearless” appears on the screen.

Upon trespassing upon the princess' abode, the thief spies a golden hairbrush on a rough table of coarse-grained wood, and, after examining it, he places the hairbrush inside his saddlebag, before stealing a book from the same table. Text appears on the screen, supplying the predicate that completes the meaning of the previously displayed text: “Leeft een Prinses. . .” (“Lives a Princess. . .”).

Some of the major differences between the U. S. trailer and the trailer that was shown to audiences in The Netherlands are the film's title (Tangled in the U. S., Rapunzel overseas); a lengthy prologue, in the U. S. trailer, preceding the thief's arrival at Rapunzel's tower, but the beginning of the action in the foreign trailer in media res (in the middle of the action), without any preliminary exposition, so that the viewer has no context by which to interpret the action; and the showing, several times, in the U. S. trailer, the fact that the young man is a criminal, before the text itself announces, explicitly, that he is a thief, but, in The Netherlands' trailer, the indication that the young man is a thief only when he steals the hairbrush and the book. The remainder of The Netherlands' trailer is much like the U. S. trailer, with such differences, in the former, as the omission, in the U. S. trailer, of such playful sequences of action as the incidents that show the young man and his horse falling with the tree limb; the explanation as to why Rapunzel is in the tower (“She's Been Grounded”); the young man's return to the tower; Rapunzel's joining him, as she escapes from the tower by using her hair to swing herself to the ground; and the lizard's sticking its tongue into the young man's ear and snapping it back, which surprises him and causes Rapunzel to laugh.

What can be learned from analyzing these differences between the ways in which the U. S. trailer and the foreign trailer promote the same film? Unlike the U. S. trailer, which begins by emphasizing the young man's character, the international trailer emphasizes the story's action, thrusting the viewer right into the middle of the film's story. Characterization is more implicit and more briefly suggested in the international trailer than it is in the U. S. trailer; in the latter, characterization is explicit, repeated, and almost heavy-handed. The emphasis of the international trailer is upon action and friendship, while the emphasis of the U. S. trailer is upon character and romance. In addition, much of the humor in the U. S. trailer does not appear in the international trailer, which takes a more serious tone. It seems that Disney executives, relying upon European viewers' familiarity with the fairy tale of “Rapunzel,” marketed the movie with this title to appeal to their fondness of the story, whereas, these executives did not rely upon U. S. viewers' familiarity with the folktale and opted to give it a title which focuses, instead, upon the relationship, social and romantic, between the thief and the princess that is implied by the term “tangled”: to become “entangled” romantically with another person is to become involved in a relationship with him or her that has both social and sexual connotations. In short, in The Netherlands, the film is sold as an adventure story with folkloric elements; in the U. S., it is promoted as an adventurous, but humorous, love story, or “romcom.” The different treatments, as exhibited in these two trailers, reflect the perceptions of the Disney Company's executives as to which sets of cultural values in the U. S. and abroad are likely to engage potential audiences for their animated film, Tangled—or is it Rapunzel?

How to Write a Parody the "Mad" Magazine Way

2013-11-22T08:47:00.000-08:00

The way that Mad magazine develops a parody is to use a set of conventions that is common to all their satires of motion pictures, television series, and programs associated with similar audiovisual media. Each of these conventions include the absurd, so that object of the parody is ridiculed at every opportunity and in a variety of ways. In the process, through text and imagery, the parody makes frequent allusions to other television shows or artifacts of popular culture, which, ironically, has the paradoxical effect of grounding the parodied program in reality while, at the same time, emphasizing its fictional nature. Finally, the parody also often purposely confuses the lives of the fictional characters with those of the actors who portray them, further maintaining, while simultaneously differentiating, fact and fiction.

The parody begins with an introduction to the program that is being parodied. This introduction typically identifies the program's basic theme, or concept, and relates it to an ostensible purpose that is implied by the effect that the program has had on its medium, audience, or some other objective element. Often, the program's basic storyline is ridiculed, and the main actor—or the character whom he or she plays—is misrepresented in some manner—for example, his or her intentions may be misstated. These conventions are discernible in the following introduction to the magazine's parody of Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series:

Every generation there is a Chosen One [concept]. A girl with three names whose destiny it is to revive a notorious box-office flop as a successful TV series [ostensible purpose]. Fort seven years she has rescued her supporting cast from melodramatic perils and lame plot twists [basic storyline]. But, now, in their time of greatest need, she will abandon them to pursue a feature film career of nauseating romantic comedies and abhorrent big-budget sequels [misrepresentation of main character's intent]. This girl is. . .

Using absurd surrogate names, the characters, lined up vertically, one after another, as if standing in a police line-up, then introduce themselves, speaking directly to the reader, as if each were soliloquizing before a camera; typically, their address identifies ironies or absurdities in their characters, their roles, or the series' conventions.

I'm Busty Bummers, and even though I'm 35, I'm still in my first year of college. I suffer from a rare aging disorder called “90210 syndrome!” [Buffy Summer's introduction pokes fun at the incongruity of a woman playing a character who is over twenty years younger than she, a convention common to television shows that feature supposedly teenage or young adult characters, such as 90210.]

I'm Pillow. I used to be a mousy computer nerd, but now I'm a mousy witch. [This quip ridicules the stereotypical nature of Willow Rosenberg as “mousy” and suggests that the show's assignment of a new persona to her, that of witch, has not made the character any less stereotypical: she remains as “mousy” as ever.]

I'm Busty's little sister YAWN. I get blamed for this show jumping the shark. But it's not my FAULT! Give me my own SPIN-OFF and I'll prove I'm a GREAT character! [This introduction includes fan criticism of the Dawn Summers character's ruination of the series—many fans considered her character not only unnecessary and unrealistic, even in a fantasy series, but supremely annoying as well; the introduction also alludes to the Buffy spinoff Angel, starring David Boreanaz.]

I'm Xanadu and I used to be the comic relief. Now I just sit around and get fatter every episode. [The character, Xander Harris, did provide much of the show's “comic relief” before writers sidelined him much of the time, as the show took on a darker tone, and the actor, Nicholas Brendon, who played him did gain some weight, a fact that the parody also addresses, suggesting that the character's relative idleness and the actor's weight gain are related o one another, the former causing the latter.]

I'm Spoke—I'm an edgy vampire [again, a cliché is savaged] who has a love/hate relationship with BUSTY [a melodramatic situation, involving a May-December, Romeo-and-Juliet relationship, is ridiculed]. After this show ends, at least I have a future in Vegas as a BILLY IDOL impersonator! [The character of Spike was consciously modeled, in physical appearance, on the singer whom “Spoke” references. Las Vegas has been called the place where performers go to earn a living after their careers have died—an implicit allusion that is particularly apt for one of the living dead.]

I'm Busty's Watcher, Gello. In the time I've been WATCHING her, Busty has shrunk from a size 4 to buying all her clothes at Kids “R” Us! Now she makes ALLY MCBEAL look fat! [This statement alludes to Sarah Michelle Gellar's noticeable weight loss during the series' seven-year tenure—and to another televisions series that stars an all-but-anorexic actress, Calista Flockhart.]

Usually, amusing images are included in this panel, as if they were props or the actions of character actors who were included among the regular cast to provide comic relief. For example, both Busty and Yawn hold wooden stakes, and Pillow, who becomes a lesbian as well as a witch, has her hand around Buffy's waist. In the background, a cemetery headstone, complete with cross, is visible between Busty's legs. Xanadu, as much a nerd as Pillow, wears a Star Trek T-shirt. As he speaks of his love affair with Busty, Spoke makes the sign for “I love you.” Gello holds the thick volume that the actual series has associated with vampire lore, as a vampire, holding a Martha Stewart Cooking book, sprinkles salt on his shoulder, seasoning him to taste.

Following the opening panel, which runs across the top of both pages of the two-page spread, a series of smaller panels continues to poke fun at the program that is being parodied, often by capitalizing upon the conventions that the parody has made explicit.

For example, Busty, with wooden stakes strapped along the side of the suitcase she grips, is pursued by Gello, as, in the background, a terrified young woman flees from a bat that chases her. “Busty,” Gello calls, “where are you going? We need you!” [Obviously, to survive, a television series needs its protagonist.] “Forget it, Gello,” Busty replied. “I've been poking VAMPIRES with STAKES for seven years, and I'm SICK of it. I'm ready to stretch as an actress.” [the “poking” of “VAMPIRES with STAKES” alludes to Buffy's rather promiscuous sexual liaisons with the undead, including both Angel and Spike, or “Spoke.” Allegedly, the show's creator, Joss Whedon, and the other actors wanted to produce the series for one more season, but Gellar insisted upon leaving, saying she was tired of the series and wanted to try other roles in motion pictures, so her explanation, although appropriate to the fictional situation that the parody has created, once again, echoes reality, a characteristic of any parody.] Gello asks, “So, where are you going?” His question, a transition, sets up her ironic response, “I'm going to do SCOOBY DOO 2, so I can hurt MONSTERS with TORCHES.” [The change of roles, the parody, suggests will not “stretch” Gellar's acting ability in any way, because it is essentially the same sort of role as that which she has played, as Buffy, or “Busty,” for the past seven years.]

Gello's plea to Busty, in the next panel, uses absurdity to exemplify what he calls “reason,” an ironic parallel that is possible only in the fantastic (and absurd) world of the series that the Mad strip parodies: “Please listen to reason! This town is a gateway to HELL known as the SMELLMOUTH! Whatever shall we do if you LEAVE us?” Busty's reply, while not particularly amusing, reinforces the absurdity of the series' concept: “Oh, Gello, if you want to shut that stinking SMELLMOUTH, just call a PLUMBER! Or a good DENTIST!”

In the next panel, a vampire rides piggyback aboard a victim while Xanadu, having unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a flabby, hairy chest and belly, seeks a romantic encounter with his one-time fiancee, Anya Jenkins (“Anyawn,” in the parody. Like Buffy and Willow, Xander also availed himself of several sexual partners during the show's seven seasons, a plot device that was itself both stereotypical of youth and melodramatic in terms of drama. “Hey, Anyawn, I know we broke up last season and all, but whenever things look grim, I like to sneak off and make out. Whadda ya say?” Anyawn, aghast, exclaims, “Ugh! Sorry, Xanadu, but it looks like you put on FIVE POUNDS for every ONE that Busty's lost! Now, for God's sake, button your shirt!” Again, the parody addresses (and reinforces) an element—Brendon's weight gain—in the introductory panel; in the process, it alludes to the melodramatic episode in which Xander abandons Anya at the altar on the day of their intended marriage.

Busty addresses Yawn, advising her that, “As my long-lost little SISTER, you may be required to carry out my LEGACY!” One of the points of frustration among the show's viewers was the abrupt appearance, after three seasons, of Dawn, as Buffy's sister, a “lame plot twist” that was too much for them, even in a series as melodramatic as Buffy. Alluding not to the television show itself, but to Gellar's actual personal life, Yawn asks, “Does that mean I'll have to marry a bad actor [Freddie Prinze, Jr.], drop down to 80 pounds [a reference to Gellar's dramatic weight loss, to which Gello has already alluded], and such movies as Scooby Doobie Doo 2, Simply Irresistible, and The Grudge, Grudge 2, The Return, and Southland Tales, to name but a few such stinkers. “All that,” Busty agrees, “and SHAMPOO COMMERCIALS, too!” [Gellar “starred” in commercials not for shampoo, but for Mabelline cosmetics.] Obviously, Yawn fears fulfilling such a prophecy; she does not want to follow in her “sister's” career footsteps.

Next, a histrionic Busty, holding her hand above her head and waving it in a circle as she addresses Pillow and Gello, states, “And I suppose Pillow is off somewhere performing a spell to keep me from leaving the show.”

The last panel identifies another complaint, among both the series' viewers and critics (the addition of the lesbian subplot involving Willow, or “Pillow”) and pokes fun at another series, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and at a role that the actor Alyson Hannigan, who plays Willow, undertakes, as “band geek,” Michelle Flaherty, in the film American Pie 2, which includes faux lesbian activity similar to the gratuitous lesbianism in Buffy. Busty, a silhouette standing in the open doorway to Pillow's bedroom, where the witch lies with her girlfriend, declares, “You know, that whole plot” (or “lame plot twist,” of which the parody's introduction warns readers is typical of the Buffy series) “about you turning gay is a desperate bid for ratings!” As she cuddles with her lover, Pillow replies, “And it worked! Now I'll cast a new spell to get SABRINA THE TEEN-AGE WITCH to make out with me!” Pillow then begins to cast her spell, the wording of the incantation suggesting the absurdity of the spells that Willow frequently casts on Buffy while alluding to Hannigan's role in American Pie 2: “Incartus Fake-latinus Make-outus One Time At Band Camp.”

By definition, a parody is an imitation of a work, the purpose of which is to mock the original by trivializing its content, tone, style, and other attributes. Therefore, a parody identifies the elements of a work that seem to be absurd, and, often by exaggeration, underscore the absurdity of these elements. The first task, then, that a parodist has is to identify the absurd elements in the work that is to be parodied. In the case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Mad parody focuses upon the series' fantastic concept, its “lame plot twists,” its melodramatic situations, its stereotypical characters, the ironic parallels between the fictional lives of the characters and the actual lives of the actors who portray them, the affinities between Buffy and other teen or young adult television series, and the reliance of sexual subplots, both covert and overt, heterosexual and homosexual alike, of the show to maintain its appeal among teen and young adult viewers. The appearance of the characters, as drawn by the Mad artists, are, as caricatures of the actors who portray these characters, itself parodic and complements, at times underscores, the text's verbal assaults upon the spoofed show's absurd excesses. The comic strip is, as Mad demonstrates, repeatedly in this and other parodies of movies and television series, particularly well-suited, as a linguistic-visual medium, for lampooning popular art forms.

A Second Example of an Evaluation Essay

2013-03-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

“The Adventure of the Speckled Band”: A Study in Detection, Deduction, and Fair Play

by Gary Pullman

According to S. S. Van Dine's “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories,” the first requirement for the writers of such fiction is that they play fair with their readers. In other words, writers of such stories must give their readers “equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery” by stating and describing “all clues. . . plainly.” The story's detective, Van Dine contends, detects by gathering “clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work” by “an analysis of” these “clues,” through logical and scientific methods, without benefit of paranormal or supernatural aid or the use of “pseudo-science.” As one of the most preeminent authors of detective stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of the famous literary detective, Sherlock Holmes, would be expected to follow this rule. In “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” Doyle plays fair with his readers providing them with the same set of clues from which Holmes himself deduces the murderer, his motive, and his method.

Indeed, Holmes reassures his confidant and assistant, Dr. Watson, that the physician has seen all the same clues that the detective has seen. “You have evidently seen more in these rooms than was visible to me,” Watson tells Holmes. “No,” the detective replies, “but I fancy that I might have deduced a little more. I imagine that you saw all that I did.” Since Watson narrates the story, sharing the clues with his readers as Holmes discovers them, the same may be said of the story's readers: they, like the doctor, see the same clues as the detective observes. The difference lies, then, according to Holmes in the deductions, or interpretations, of the clues that are identified, both as individual data and as an interrelated group of facts. Not only does Holmes identify the clues, but he also frequently reminds both Watson (and, therefore, the story's readers) of his findings. The detective forms his hypothesis concerning the means by which the murderer commits his crime on the basis of his detection of, and deductions concerning, twelve clues: the suspected killer, his client's stepfather, Dr. Roylott, fancies exotic Indian animals and keeps a cheetah and a baboon on the premises of his estate; he has a correspondent in India, where he once practiced medicine; he stands to lose two-thirds of his fortune should both his stepdaughters marry, and the first of them, Julia, has died under mysterious circumstances two weeks after she announced her engagement to be married; Julia's twin sister Helen has now announced her own engagement to be married; and several odd items have been found in the physician's manor house: a wooden chair in Dr. Roylott's bedroom, the seat of which Holmes finds suspicious; a looped lash, or “whipcord,” in the physician's bedroom; a saucer of milk upon the top of a safe in the doctor's bedroom, despite the fact that the family does not own a house cat; a ventilator that does not ventilate, opening into the bedroom adjacent to the doctor's, rather than outdoors; an inoperative bell-rope beside Julia's bed; Helen's relocation to Julia's bedroom when her stepfather orders needless construction to Helen's bedroom; Julia's bed having been clamped to the floor; and a whistle that is heard early in the morning on consecutive occasions, followed by a metallic sound.

Unlike Watson, who cannot understand the significance of the odd clues, Holmes is able to discern their meaning. The detective, aware of both Dr. Roylott's brilliance and his intention to kill Helen as he has murdered her sister Julia, to prevent them from marrying and inheriting their portions of their deceased mother's fortune, which has been entrusted to her surviving spouse, their stepfather, deduces that, collectively, the strange clues, indicate nothing less than the plan by which the doctor has killed Julia and intends to kill her sister, as he explains to Julia and Watson. Having secured a venomous Indian swamp adder from his correspondent in India, Dr. Roylott slipped the noose of the whipcord round the serpent's head. Holding the reptile away from his own body, he stepped onto the seat of the wooden chair, lifting the snake into the ventilator. The snake then crawled through the ventilator, thereby gaining access to Julia's bedroom, in which Helen now slept in the bed that was clamped to the floor so that it could not be moved and must remain beneath the ventilator and beside the bell-rope. Climbing down the bell-rope, the snake would crawl into the bed, where it would strike the sleeper. In his bedroom, the doctor, having used the whistle to condition the snake to expect a serving of milk, produced the stimulus, blowing the whistle, which prompted the serpent's response: it climbed the rope, crawled back through the ventilator, and was captured by Dr, Roylott, using the whipcord, and returned to the safe. The metallic clang that Julia and Helen heard was that of the safe's door closing.

Doyle supplies his readers with all the same clues that Holmes detects, well in advance of Holmes' statement of his solution to the mysterious murder. Holmes explains the crime on pages twenty-one and twenty-two of the story; he supplies the last clue, that of the clamped bed, on page eighteen. In addition, before the detective announces his solution to the murder, Holmes repeatedly alludes to several of the more important clues, often multiple times on the same pages. Helen tells Holmes, on page four of the story, “ He [Dr. Roylott] has a passion also for Indian animals, which are sent over to him by a correspondent, and he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon, which wander freely over his grounds.” The cheetah and the baboon are mentioned again on pages six, fifteen, and nineteen. The chair is mentioned on pages fourteen, fifteen, nineteen, and twenty. The lash, or whipcord, is mentioned on pages fifteen and twenty. The safe is alluded to on pages fourteen and fifteen, and the milk is mentioned on page fourteen. The ventilator is mentioned on pages fourteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen. The bell-rope is mentioned on pages thirteen and fourteen. The whistle is mentioned on pages five, six, and seven. The metallic clang is mentioned on pages six and nine. In his many reminders to his readers of these clues to the solution of the crime, Doyle does not merely play fair with his readers, providing them an “equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery,” but he is also generous in doing so.

According to Van Dine, the detective story writer must not only provide readers with all the clues that the detective detects, but the author must also describe the clues sufficiently for them to be seen as significant; he must present the clues “plainly.” On this score, too, with one exception, Doyle plays fair with his readers. The sole exception is the wooden chair upon which Dr. Roylott stands to reach the ventilator. In describing this clue, Doyle merely states that Holmes, squatting before the chair, inspects its seat carefully, through his magnifying glass:

He squatted down in front of the wooden chair and examined the seat of it with the greatest attention.

"Thank you. That is quite settled," said he, rising and putting his lens in his pocket. . . .

Holmes may be satisfied, but the readers, no doubt, are not. What did the detective see? He does not share his observations with the readers, either in this passage or later, when he offers his solution. As he explains how the physician killed Julia and attempted to murder Helen, all Holmes says, concerning the chair, is, “An inspection of his chair showed me that he had been in the habit of standing on it, which of course would be necessary in order that he should reach the ventilator.” How did he reach this conclusion? Did he see scuff marks on the seat? Were stains or scratches evident? If so, Holmes neglects to share this information with the readers and, in this instance, therefore, perhaps Doyle is not playing entirely fair with his readers. Nevertheless, this is but one of a dozen vital clues, and, with respect to the other eleven, Doyle's detective does share enough information with the readers for them to reach the same conclusions about their significance, both individually and collectively, that Holmes himself reaches. In the main, Doyle does, indeed, play fair with his readers, giving them “equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery” by stating and describing “all clues. . . plainly.” If readers understand the villainous physician's purpose, killing his stepdaughters to prevent their claiming of their inheritance, they, like Holmes, acquire the context in which the otherwise isolated clues become a meaningful set of interrelated facts that, together, show exactly how Dr. Roylott killed one stepdaughter and sought to murder her twin sister. One may well conclude that “The Adventure of the Speckled Band” is a study in detection, deduction, and fair play

Example of an Evaluation Essay

2013-02-18T08:03:00.002-08:00

Gary Pullman

ENG 101F, Section 1010

MW, 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM

April 20, 2013

Rules Were Made to be Broken (Sometimes)

by Gary Pullman

In “Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses,” Mark Twain accuses James Fenimore Cooper of having broken eighteen of the nineteen or so “rules” that govern “literary art in the domain of romantic fiction.” If breaking the rules were to enhance, rather than to frustrate, the author's purpose, Cooper's breaking them might be justified. What, then, is Cooper's purpose as a writer? According to Professor Lounsbury, of Yale University, Cooper aims to thrill his readers, and the element of his work that is intended to thrill them, Professor Matthews, of Columbia University, suggests, is the “extraordinary fullness of invention” with regard to “the craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper,” and “the delicate art of the forest” that Cooper's novels depict. However, Twain charges that, in breaking the rules, Cooper hinders, rather than helps, his purpose; Cooper's fiction does not “thrill,” Twain contends, because, among its other “offenses,” its “inaccuracy of details throw a sort of air of fictitiousness and general improbability over it.” How does one of Twain's own works, the short story “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning,” measure up against these rules? Does the great American humorist break, or keep, them, and, if he does break any, does he thereby help or hinder his own purpose as a writer? Although, in this story, Twain seems to violate rule eight, he actually violates only rule ten, and, in doing so, in both cases, he enhances, rather than hinders his purpose, which is to amuse his readers.

Twain seems to violate rule eight, playing “crass stupidities. . . upon the reader,” but he does not actually do so. The story certainly contains “crass stupidities,” but they are not “played. . . upon the reader”; rather, they represent the beliefs of the gullible, superstitious, irrational, and emotional Mrs. Evangeline McWilliams concerning the attraction, causes, and conduction of lightning. She believes that lying in bed during a thunderstorm may attract lightning, that standing “near a window in a thunder-storm” may attract lightning, that lighting a match during such a storm may cause lightning, that the donning of woolen clothing may attract lightning, that running water may attract lightning, that opening a door and causing a draft may attract lightning, and that cats may attract lightning because they are “full of electricity.” Mrs. McWilliams also believes that swearing may cause lightning; that acts of impiety, such as forgetting to say one's prayers, swearing, or blaspheming, may cause lightning; and that singing may cause lightning by producing “vibrations in the atmosphere which interrupt the flow of the electric fluid.” She believes, furthermore, that “an open fireplace” conducts lightning, as does a wall. Mrs. McWilliams' husband, Mortimer, does not agree with his wife that any of his actions or any of the conditions in their house attract, cause, or conduct lightning, as is clear by his rejection of her claims and by his own attempts to counter her beliefs with scientific explanations as to the cause of lightning. He denies that his swearing causes lightning, attempting to offer a scientific account as to the cause of this phenomenon: “I didn't swear. And that [a lightning bolt] wasn't a result of it, any way. It would have come just the same, if I hadn't said a word; and you know very well, Evangeline,—at least you ought to know,—that when the atmosphere is charged with electricity—.” When she chastises him for lighting a match, he responds, “Hang it, woman, where's the harm?” A match, he maintains, “don't [sic] cause lightning.” Likewise, when she orders him not to sing, he asks, “Now where's the harm?” He denies, too, that there is “harm” in opening a door. His rejections and attempted refutations of her claims concerning the attraction, cause, and conductuction of lightning show that he does not share her beliefs. Readers are free to join him in his disbelief of her claims. In fact, Twain counts upon his readers to do just this, for, should they believe as she does, there would be no humor, and no point, in his ridiculing her absurd ideas. The story's humor derives from Twain's ironic treatment of the gullible, superstitious, irrational, and emotional woman whose absurd beliefs reduce her to a state of hysteria.

Not only are Mrs. McWilliams' notions as to what attracts, causes, and conducts lightning absurd, but so are her ideas as to how to repel such an electrical charge. Taking her cues from an absurd book of German mysticism, which contains some sentences that neither she nor her husband can understand, she tells her husband that the way to protect himself from lightning is to stand upon a chair the feet of which have been placed inside “glass tumblers,” for insulation, while wearing his night-dress, a metallic fireman's helmet, a “militia sabre,” and a pair of spurs. He is also called upon to ring a “large dinner-bell.” Although he humors her by complying with her directions, it is clear that he does not believe that his strange garb and odd behavior are going to have any effect in deterring lightning. “I complied,” he tells the readers, when she asked him to “buckle on” the “militia sabre,” and he complies again, when she asks him to don his spurs, although “in silence,” keeping his “temper as well as” he can do so. Readers are justified in rejecting Mrs. McWilliams' beliefs about how to fend of lightning for the same reasons that they are justified in rejecting her beliefs about what attracts, causes, and conducts lightning: Mr. McWilliams rejects them and such a rejection is necessary in order for Twain's ironic humor to operate, which is his intention as a humorist. Therefore, in no way are the story's “crass stupidities. . . played upon the reader.” While it may seem that Twain violates rule eight, careful consideration of his use of the story's “crass stupidities” for humorous effect shows that, in fact, he does not do so.

Although he does not violate rule eight, Twain does violate rule ten; however, in doing so, he enhances his purpose, which is to amuse his readers. According to rule ten, “the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate.” The readers of “Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning” are unlikely to care much, if at all, about either the husband or the wife or any fate, fortunate or otherwise, that might befall him or her. The characters are not developed; rather, they are flat characters. Their personalities consist of only a few traits. Mrs. McWilliams is gullible, superstitious, irrational, and emotional. Her husband, who is her foil, is skeptical, empirical, rational, and relatively unemotional. Moreover, these characters are static; in the course of the story, neither of them undergoes a change in belief or behavior; each is the same at the end of the narrative as he or she was at the story's beginning. Rather than being individualized, life-like characters, both Mrs. McWilliams and Mr. McWilliams are mere types. It is difficult, indeed, if not impossible to care about a mere type of character and equally difficult to care what happens to him or her. However, this lack of sympathetic identification with these characters on the part of Twain's readers helps, rather than hinders, his purpose as a writer, because fondness and sympathy for literary characters works against humor. Most people do not laugh at people—or “the personages” of a “tale”—whom they like or admire. However, readers often laugh at characters for whom they have little or no affection or regard. Humor, especially when it is at the expense of a story's characters, depends upon emotional distance between the story's characters and its readers. Twain's use of flat, static characters provides the emotional distance necessary for his ironic humor, helping him to ridicule the absurd beliefs and behaviors of his characters. Therefore, in breaking rule ten, Twain assists his purpose as a writer; he does not hinder it.

Cooper's violations of the “rules governing literary art” work against his purpose as a writer, which is to thrill his readers with his protagonists' woodcraft, “tricks of the trapper,” and “delicate art of the forest,” because the “crass stupidities” and other “literary offenses” he commits detract from his goal, making his work unintentionally humorous, rather than thrilling. Therefore, his breaking of these rules is unjustified. Twain seems to break the rule prohibiting the playing of “crass stupidities” upon his readers, but these “stupidities” are merely the thoughts and deeds of the characters themselves, especially Mrs. McWilliams. Readers are not intended to believe them and, in fact, laugh at the absurdity of these “crass stupidities,” thanks to Twain's treatment of them in his story. Twain does breaks rule ten: his story's characters are not of “a deep interest” to his readers, and his readers, therefore, are unlikely to care about their fate. However, in doing so, Twain creates the emotional distance that is necessary to derive laughter from these same characters' absurd beliefs and behaviors. Therefore, both Twain's apparent and actual violations of these rules help, not hinder, his purpose as a humorist, aiding him in amusing his readers at the expense of his story's absurd characters, and his breaking of the rules is justified.

Writing About Poetry

2012-11-24T14:59:00.000-08:00

Poetry is not difficult to analyze if a writer keeps certain points in mind.

Although it usually expresses a theme, poetry is primarily about feelings. It projects an attitude, or a point of view, concerning its topic, but this perspective is based on emotions rather than reason.

Poetry communicates indirectly; it suggests, rather than states directly. To do so, it uses rhetorical and stylistic devices. Some of these many techniques include allusions, diction, hyperbole, image, irony, metaphor, parallelism, personification, simile, symbol, synecdoche, and syntax.

Let's consider one of Emily Dickinson's poems:

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

The verses are short (four lines) and simple (easy to read, if not to understand). The brevity and simplicity of the lines and stanzas suggest that the poem will present a simple idea about its topic. However, the opposite is true, so the poem's very simplicity is ironic.

The first figure of speech the reader encounters is personification: a snake (as it turns out) is described as a “fellow.” However, the “fellow” is being used ironically, because most people do not feel a sense of fellowship with regard to a snake. Many people are, in fact, afraid of snakes, regarding them as dangerous creatures that are about as unlike a human being as can be. The action verb “rides,” describing the snake's locomotion, suggests its undulating motion. The syntax of the last two lines of the first stanza is jumbled, as if the speaker, having been startled by her unexpected sight of the snake, has, in her shock, confused her words: “You may have met him, did you not,/ His notice sudden is.” Her fear at seeing the snake shows that it is not a “fellow” to her, despite her use of this term.

The snake crawls past her or near her, and she describes its appearance as it parts the grass, “as with a comb,” its “spotted shaft” appearing and vanishing as it does so, the grass closing at her “feet” before parting again, “further on.” Her continuous observation of the snake may suggest her fascination with the serpent.

She has encountered snakes earlier, as she'd walked “barefoot.” Seeing a snake sunning itself, she had even attempted to pick it up, or “secure it,” but the snake, which she had supposed “a whip-lash,” surprised her: “It wrinkled, and was gone.” The way in which she describes the snake's movement suggests how quickly it moves, as does her failure to capture it.

He describes animals as “nature's creatures,” and says that she feels a “cordiality” for them. She suggests that both she and “nature's people” have a relationship: “I know, and they know me.” However, the snake is a different kind of creature altogether. Its mere appearance is frightening; its presence takes her breath away, whether she is alone or with someone else (“attended or alone”):

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

By beginning her poem with the suggestion that the snake is like any of nature's other “people,” a “fellow” with whom she can have a “cordial” relationship, and then contradicting this initial characterization of the snake by describing its appearance, its behavior, and its disturbing effect upon her, the speaker suggests that, in fact, the snake is anything but a friendly “fellow” creature with whom she can have “cordial” relationship: it is something alien to her, something to respect, if not fear.

Let's try another, “The Snake,” by D. H. Lawrence:

A snake came to my water-trough

On a hot, hot day, and I in pajamas for the heat,

To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree

I came down the steps with my pitcher

And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom

And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough

And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,

And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,

He sipped with his straight mouth,

Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body,

Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,

And I, like a second comer, waiting.

He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,

And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,

And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,

And stooped and drank a little more,

Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth

On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me

He must be killed,

For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man

You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough

And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?

Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?

Was it humility, to feel so honored?

I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:

If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,

But even so, honoured still more

That he should seek my hospitality

From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough

And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,

And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,

Seeming to lick his lips,

And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,

And slowly turned his head,

And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream,

Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round

And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,

A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,

Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,

Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,

I picked up a clumsy log

And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,

But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,

Writhed like lightning, and was gone

Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,

At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.

I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!

I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross,

And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,

Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,

Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords

Of life.

And I have something to expiate;

A pettiness.

D. H. Lawrence based this poem on his encounter with a snake at his watering trough during his residence in Sicily in 1920. The speaker of the poem’s description of the snake is wonderfully evocative. The snake trails “his yellow-brown slackness softbellied down,” and sips “with his straight mouth,” drinking “through his straight gums, into his slack long body,” flickering “his two-forked tongue.” These descriptions convey the alien character of the snake. The speaker views the creature as a “he” rather than as an “it,” and, in fact, calls it a “god,” a “king,” and one of the “lords of life.” However, the serpent is no fellow creature; it is “a king in exile,” and it comes from another world, a subterranean realm which, unknown and strange to human beings, is both frightening and rather repulsive. Thus, the speaker has contradictory feelings about the serpent and what it represents. The conflict within himself between his admiration for the godlike serpent and his revulsion toward this creature that lives in the ground moves the poem to its climax, in which the speaker decides whether he will accept (or at least peacefully coexist with) the snake or reject it. Whichever course of action he takes will suggest something about his own character and, in general, humanity’s, since his actions are based, in part at least, on the “voices” of his “human education.”

There is something mesmerizing, if not frightening, about the snake, this creature from a subterranean world unknown and unseen by human beings. It is a creature that the “voices” within the speaker, the “voice of. . . [his] education” insist that he should kill, and a creature of which, the speaker freely admits, he is afraid:

On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.

The voice of my education said to me

He must be killed,

For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man

You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

However, mingled with the speaker’s fear of this alien creature from the underworld is his sense of the snake’s having somehow honored him by visiting his water trough. The snake is like an ambassador from the world of nature and an emissary from the world of the unknown. The speaker has ambivalent feelings toward this otherworldly, subterranean creature. He fears the snake, but he also “likes” it and feels “honored” by its presence, even to the point of wishing that he could communicate with this visitor from “the secret earth”:

But must I confess how I liked him,

How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough

And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,

Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?

Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him?

Was it humility, to feel so honoured?

I felt so honoured.

And yet those voices:

If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,

But even so, honoured still more

That he should seek my hospitality

From out the dark door of the secret earth.

The speaker’s admiration for this godlike creature turns to disgust, however, when the snake returns to its hole and begins to slither into the earth. Its utterly alien nature reasserts itself when it returns from whence it came, and the speaker is overcome with horror, now that the snake’s “back was turned”:

And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,

And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,

A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,

Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,

Overcame me now his back was turned.

Without the serpent’s unblinking gaze fixed upon him, the speaker is able to act, in a cowardly fashion, and throws “a clumsy log” in its direction, missing the snake. The serpent flees into the hole with “undignified haste,” leaving the speaker to regret his “paltry. . . vulgar. . . mean act” and to hate himself and the “voices” of his “accursed human education,” which had declared that killing the snake would demonstrate his manliness. Instead, his attempt to kill one of the “lords of life” made him feel “paltry,” “vulgar,” and “mean.”

Moreover, the sin of trying to kill the snake makes the speaker think of the “albatross,” an allusion to the seabird that the sailor in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" repented of having killed. Like the snake from the earth, the bird from the sea (another dimension that is largely unknown and strange to human beings) represents realities beyond human knowledge and understanding, represents, perhaps, the mysteries of life and death themselves. The attempt to kill the snake was as wanton an act of cruelty as the ancient mariner‘s slaying of the albatross, and the effect is similar. Whereas the sailor in Coleridge‘s poem is cursed to wander the world and tell his tale as an act of penance, the speaker of Lawrence‘s poem is punished by his realization that his cowardly and petty act has made him less human and less a man. It has made him a sinner against the hidden, mysterious aspects of life itself, giving him “something to expiate;/A pettiness.”

The phrase “lords of life” is an allusion to lines in Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Experience," in which Emerson writes of "The lords of life, the lords of life,” whom he has seen “pass/In their own guise" and of which, ironically, as a “little man,” he is puzzled, realizing that the mutable creatures of the “race” that he has founded is “least of all.”

Writing Sophisticated Essays, Part 2

2012-11-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

According to William Zinsser, author of “The Act of Writing: One Man’s Method,” there are as many ways to write as there are writers. “No two people go about it in exactly the same way,” he says, “and what works for one person many not work for anyone else.”

Zinsser’s statement raises a question: If there is no “right” way to write, how can writing be evaluated? The answer seems to be that writing is based upon principles and traditions that writers--and, indeed, society itself--have come to recognize as sound standards, or criteria, for determining what constitutes qualitative writing. Indeed, the concerns regarding his own writing that Zinsser shares with his readers suggest his own criteria as an author.

One of these concerns is that his writing not be “cold and sterile.” he is also concerned that his writing exhibit “a sense of continuity and flow.”
He expresses his concern for painstaking revision, confessing that “I have to get every paragraph as nearly right as possible before I go on to the next paragraph.”
He says that his writing is based on “design,” has “rhythm,” and exhibits “a pace that will invite the reader to keep reading,” the latter comment indicating his concern for his audience.
He says he edits his writing numerous times, “mostly. . . cutting” what he has written; his deletions typically include unnecessary prepositions, adverbs, adjectives, phrases, sentences, and any other “detail that is irrelevant.”
He also seeks to achieve “writing” that “is clear,” in which “words . . . convey the exact meaning” he intends them to convey.
In addition, he eliminates passive voice, replacing it with active voice, unifies his writing by ensuring that his writing is “consistent” in its use of tone, point of view, pronouns, and tenses, and includes transitions that “pull the reader along.”
He ensures “that every sentence is a logical sequel to the one that preceded it,” keeps his “sentences short,” and makes sure “that every sentence contains only one thought.”

For Zinssner, writing is largely a matter of making deliberate choices regarding these matters and concerning “What do I want to say next?” He compares the writing process to bricklaying: “I’m somewhat like a bricklayer: I build very slowly, not adding a new row until I feel that the foundation is solid enough to hold up the house.” His essay shows that he is concerned with the same principles and purposes as other writers: content, organization, clarity, purpose, credibility, persuasion, rhetoric, proofreading, editing, revision. There may be many ways to write, he suggests, but all good writing shares the same goals and is based upon the same principles, many of which he identifies and reflects in his own essay.

According to Northrop Frye, author of “Don’t You Think It’s Time to Start Thinking?,” illiteracy has such negative and unpleasant consequences as allowing or promoting unthinking obedience, social conformity, emotional manipulation, and social subjugation. His essay also contains practical advice for his readers who want to achieve personal literacy as writers: avoid the use of--\

Gobbledygook
Jargon
Cant
Clichés
Doublespeak
Groupthink
Weasel words.

He also suggests that illiteracy can apply as much to using not being able to understand or use images, analogies, and figures of speech. Illiteracy, in other words, is not limited only to understanding and using the written word effectively.

In “How to Write with Style,” Kurt Vonnegut shares some tips concerning how to write effectively. He suggests that a writer should:

Write about a “subject” that he or she “care[s] about.”
Not “ramble”
Use simple “language”
Eliminate irrelevant words and sentences
Ensure that their writing is clear, unambiguous, and intelligible
Use proper punctuation, syntax, and grammar.

In “How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Words,” Paul Roberts also provides tips for effective writing. He suggests that writers

Use anecdotes, examples, facts, and figures to support and develop their claims.
Ask questions about their topics and their own purposes and then explore the topic’s implications.
Avoid or eliminate euphemisms; jargon; pat expressions and clichés; purple prose, or “colorful words”; unintentional connotative language; and “colorless words,” such as slang and “nouns of very general meaning.”

An analysis of the essays in Text Messages indicates that many writers begin their essays with an anecdote. Many of these anecdotes are extended to one or more pages. This technique of introducing one’s topic is exhibited in such essays as Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “The Myth of the Latin Woman,” Brent Staples’ “Black men and Public Space,” Alice Walker’s “Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self,” Nancy Mairs’ “On Being a Cripple,” Sandra Cisneros’ “Only Daughter,” Caroline Hwang’s “The Good Daughter,” Marcus Mabry’s “Living in Two Worlds,” Semeen Issa’s and Laila Al-Marayati’s “An Identity Reduced to a Burka,” Thomas L. Friedman’s “The Whole World Is Watching,” Carol Tavris’ “In Groups We Shrink,” George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant,” Jeff Z. Klein’s “Watching My Back,” Deborah Tannen’s “Marked Women,” and many others.

However, other authors take other approaches to introducing their essays’ topics. After all, as Zinsser points out, “No two people go about it in exactly the same way,” he says, “and what works for one person many not work for anyone else.”

To capture readers’ interest, Tim Townsend begins his essay, “The First Hours,” in media res, or in the middle of the action, without first setting up a context for the horrifying incidents that he, as a first-person narrator, relates.
In “Ghosts & Echoes,” Robin Morgan relies upon the use of the oxymoron “abnormal normalcy” to capture readers’ interest and, indeed, to structure much of her essay.
Robert Ramirez describes a train’s arrival in a particular community to bring his readers almost literally along with him to his destination, “The Barrio,” describing the community’s physical, emotional, and social structure and significance in the rest of his essay.
Writing speeches instead of essays, both Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama begin their addresses with allusions to another president’s writing: Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, suggesting that more needs to be accomplished in order to make the goal of American democracy, the equality of all, as expressed in Jefferson’s document, a reality rather than merely a political ideal.
Another speech, “Three Ways of Meeting Oppression,” by Martin Luther King, Jr., analyzes the “three characteristic ways” that, he says, “oppressed people deal with their oppression,” structuring the rest of his essay according to these ways, so that the first section deals with “acquiescence”; the second, with “physical violence”; and the third, with “nonviolent resistance,” arranging his points climactically so that he writes last about the way of dealing with oppression that he himself recommends.
Both Garrison Keillor, author of “How the Crab Apple Grew,” and David Brooks, who wrote “The Outsourced Brain,” use humor to advance their ideas.
A few essays begin by outlining the arguments by other writers that they will refute in their own paragraphs. Rahul K. Parikh’s “Is There a Doctor in the Mouse?” takes this approach concerning his colleague Scott Haig’s “When the Patient is a Googler.” Whereas James Poniewozik’s “Why Reality TV Is Good For Us” argues in favor of such fare, Jeremy W. Peters asks what happens “When Reality TV Gets Too Real.” Clifford Stoll suggests, in “Makes Learning Fun,” that the attempt to make instruction entertaining is misguided and may be as inadvisable as it is improbable; Don Tapscott, author of “From Learning as Torture to Learning as Fun,” however, believes that making learning “fun” is both desirable and doable. Roger Ebert’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” offers a positive review of the film, contending that it is a movie that is faithful to the novel that it is based upon and does justice to the original story, whereas Elvis Mitchell provides a review that is more mixed, contending merely that the movie is competent, but contrived.

Most professional writers do not include an explicit, specific thesis sentence near the outset of (or, for that matter, anywhere else in) their essays that unifies their topic, indicates a structure for their essays, and previews the points that they will make in their essays. Instead, most professional writers provide implicit theses which are presented--or, more often, merely suggested--at various points throughout the essay, in piecemeal fashion, leaving it to their readers to infer the theses for themselves, assembling it, so to speak, as they discern first one part and then another of the essays’ underlying main ideas. Readers should keep this point in mind as they read, jotting down the writer’s points, point by point, and assembling for themselves explicit theses for such essays. For example, a thesis for “Ghosts & Echoes” might be: “The tragic attack upon the World Trade Center reveals both the diversity of America’s population and the everyday heroism of its people, which is a cause for faith in humanity.”

These essays indicate ways by which students can write more sophisticated essays. By using the same or similar techniques and principles as professional authors, students can develop styles that are less obvious, more indirect, and, perhaps, more persuasive, captivating, and memorable.

How to Write a Reader’s Response that Includes Both a Paraphrased Summary and a Rhetorical Analysis

2012-10-05T17:26:00.001-07:00

There are two types of reader’s responses. In one type, you identify and analyze the rhetorical techniques that an author uses in his or her essay and the effects that he or she accomplishes by using these techniques. In the other type, you explain why you agree with, disagree with, or partly agree and partly disagree with the writer’s argument or point of view.

This handout explains how to write the first type of such a response. Guidance is in red. Text that results from the application of this guidance is in blue. As additional new text is added in blue, previous text is retained, in black.

Assume that you are writing in response to this assignment:

Using a pen, in your own words, summarize "The First Hours" (pages 195-98 in your textbook). Start your summary with these words:

In "The First Hours," Tim Townsend. . . .

If you refer to the author again, by name, simply call him by his last name, "Townsend."

Then, respond to these two questions:

1. Identify six specific techniques that Townsend uses to create a sense of immediacy for his reader concerning the horrific events he describes, explaining, with regard to each technique, whether or not it effectively achieves this purpose.

2. What internal evidence (that is, evidence within the text of the essay itself) suggests that Townsend is a reliable first-person narrator? Explain.

Your summary and responses to items at least three pages long (and it probably will be longer).

Start with a summary in your own words. (Any use of direct quotations on your part should be brief and few; the vast majority of the summary should be in your own words. Any material that is quoted directly from the original author’s work must be placed in quotation marks, even if it is just a word or a phrase--unless it is a commonplace word or phrase; if in doubt, use quotation marks or put the idea in your own words.) Begin with the preposition “In,” followed by the title of the essay (in quotation marks) to which you are responding, including a comma before the closing quotation marks, and then the writer’s full name. If you mention the writer again, as you probably will, refer to him by his last name only:

In "The First Hours," Tim Townsend

Follow this opening phrase with an appropriate action verb:

In "The First Hours," Tim Townsend describes

Next, finish your sentence with a summary, in one or more sentences, of the essay as a whole, providing the essence, or gist, of it; make sure that you are accurate and objective:

In "The First Hours," Tim Townsend describes the horrific aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks upon the World Trade Center.

Then, present the author’s thesis. A professional writer seldom writes an explicit, specific, unifying, one-sentence thesis, but suggests his or her main idea a bit here and a bit there, throughout the essay, leaving it to the reader to piece together the essay’s implied thesis. Therefore, you will probably have to generate a thesis that encapsulates the author’s main idea:

Identify the parts or sections of the author’s essay. Then, include only one- or two-sentence summaries of the major supporting elements of each part or section. (Make sure that this part of your summary, which should be only a few additional sentences, remains restricted to the ideas that make up the original author’s thesis, as you have developed it, based upon his or her essay):

In "The First Hours," Tim Townsend describes the horrific aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks upon the World Trade Center. These attacks, which occurred on September 11, have had long-term, devastating social and personal effects upon the victims and other Americans. Townsend’s essay has three sections. In the first, he recounts incidents as a mere observer; in the second, he recounts further incidents, as one of the victims, when he becomes a participant in the events; in the third, he reflects upon the horrific, ongoing repercussions of the attacks.

Now, write a sentence that transitions to the next paragraph of your response, the one in which you are going to consider the techniques that the author uses to create a sense of immediacy for his reader. (If you are using a prompt that your instructor or textbook provided, use the wording of the prompt as a springboard into your own sentence:

Beginning his narrative account of the event in media res, Townsend uses descriptions of vivid sensory details, empathetic identifications with victims, personifications, allusions to famous local landmarks, descriptive snapshots of individual victims, and the first-person point of view of a reliable narrator to create a sense of immediacy for his reader concerning the horrific events that he describes.

For each of the rhetorical techniques that you have identified, include examples and brief, infrequent direct quotations from the text of the original author’s essay to support and develop your claim. In doing so, make sure that you include transitions to keep your own reader on track. Depending upon the length of your paragraphs, you may want to break your writing into shorter paragraphs, perhaps giving your analysis of each of these rhetorical techniques a short paragraph of its own:

Beginning his narrative account of the event in media res, Townsend uses descriptions of vivid sensory details, empathetic identifications with victims, personifications, allusions to famous local landmarks, descriptive snapshots of individual victims, and the first-personal point of view of a reliable narrator to create a sense of immediacy for his reader concerning the horrific events that he describes.

For example, the essay begins in the middle of the action that it presents, as the reader, like the narrator, sees a series of bizarre sights without understanding what has happened. There is no context; the reader has no idea what has caused the incidents that the narrator reports. It is as if the reader has, along with the narrator, stepped into a situation that is already underway. Transitions suggest that the narrator is taking in the sequence of actions as an eyewitness who is present as the state of affairs unfolds, piecing together the situation as it takes place before his eyes; in addition, these transitions suggest that he is ambulatory, that he is walking: “The first thing I saw,” “half a block east,” “I ventured a block south,” “at first,” “someone mentioned.”

His description of details is vivid. The particulars with which he acquaints the reader are bizarre, which suggests that the situation he relates is likewise peculiar; he sees “burned luggage”; “cars. . . on fire”; a man wearing nothing but a towel, shaving cream still “on the left side of his face,” a man “walking barefoot over shards of glass”; a “hail” of glass; “body parts”; “mangled flesh”; “a leg”; and “hunks of metal. . . strewn for blocks.” These visual details are complemented by the narrator’s references to sounds that are just as unusual and unsettling: “a low metallic whine,” “a high-pitched whoosh,” “the shrill squeal of sirens,” screams, and “shrapnel. . . whizzing by.” The narrator’s use of such vivid details, like his appeal to the senses of sight and hearing, help to create the sense, for the reader, that he or she is there, seeing and hearing what the narrator sees and hears as these uncanny incidents occur.

The narrator also places the reader on the scene, as it were, by inviting him or her to empathize with the plight of the men and women who, he says, leap from the ninetieth story of a burning skyscraper: “What must have been going through their minds to choose certain death? Was it a decision between one death and another? Or maybe it wasn’t a decision at all, their bodies involuntarily recoiling from the heat.” The invitation to the reader to put him- or herself in the shoes of these terrified victims both humanizes them and causes the reader to imaginatively identify with their plight, as if the reader were not only on the scene him- or herself, but is an observer--and, indeed, a victim--as well.

The narrator also uses personification to create the sense that the reader is present as the incidents take place. Damage to a building is described as a “gash,” rather than as damage, as if the building is made of flesh, rather than steel and glass, as if it is a human being rather than a building. In a way, the skyscraper, as a symbol, is a synecdoche for the people who work in the building; it is wounded because its human occupants are wounded. This personification of the building is unusual enough to drive home the point to the reader that men and women had been injured or killed in the attack upon the buildings, and this identification with them as human beings rather than merely abstract characters in a narrative helps the reader to sympathize with the victims, as if the reader were present, watching the people leap from the building, as the narrator does, and helps the reader to feel the narrator’s horror and sorrow on the jumpers’ behalf. The narrator also anthropomorphizes the cloud of smoke and ashes that results from the explosion, as if it is an enemy that pursues him and his fellow victims as they flee the potentially deadly debris that the cloud carries, the “shrapnel of metal, glass, and concrete” that could go “whizzing. . . through” one’s “head.” This cloud not only chases them, as if it is a predator, but it also blinds and chokes the narrator: “It was difficult to breathe or even keep my eyes open.” Since readers identify with the protagonists of stories and the narrator is the protagonist of this narrative essay, the reader identifies with him, imaginatively sharing his plight. The cloud is a threat to the reader, as it is to the narrator and the other victims; being pursued by this menacing, potentially deadly cloud of blinding, choking smoke places the reader on the scene as the narrative’s incidents continue to unfold.

The narrator’s allusion to famous local landmarks helps to place the reader in New York City as the action progresses: “The South Tower of the World Trade Center,” “Battery Park,” “Manhattan,” “FDR Drive,” “Brooklyn Bridge,” “North Tower,” “Brooklyn.” Not only do these references orient the reader, allowing him or her to locate the action that takes place, but they also place him or her on the scene, first as an observer and then as a participant, in the story’s incidents.

The narrator also provides verbal snapshots of individuals, helping to humanize the crowd while creating the impression that the reader him- or herself witnesses the plight of these individuals. He describes “a woman” who, turning “to run,” drops her “black bag,” spilling “a CD holder” and “sending bright silver discs across the ground” and an elderly gentleman who trips and takes “a face-first drive across the pavement, glasses flying off his face.” At this point, the reader has become more than merely a participant; he or she is involved in the incidents, a witness who is present among the other victims, so close to the action that he or she can see what happens to individuals in the crowd of “thousands” of fleeing “refugees.”

The narrator’s use of the first-person perspective also creates a sense of immediacy, for he relates to the reader as a fellow human being, not as an objective, anonymous reporter, but as an “I” speaking directly--and passionately--to the reader as a “you.”

Once you have completed the second section of your response, introduce your third section, using a sentence that is both transitional (provides a transition) and topical (introduces a topic):

Townsend’s use of a reliable first-person narrator also helps him to create a sense of immediacy for his reader while imparting credibility to his role as the narrative’s narrator.

Then, include examples and brief, infrequent direct quotations from the text of the original author’s essay to support and develop your claim:

Townsend’s use of a reliable first-person narrator also helps him to create a sense of immediacy for his reader while imparting credibility to his role as the narrative’s narrator. He admits that he had “always wondered what” he might “do in a life-or-death situation,” hoping that he would respond in an altruistic, even heroic, manner. However, he disappoints himself. When an opportunity arises to assist a fallen, elderly gentleman who is fleeing from the toxic cloud that resulted from the explosion of one of the buildings, he hesitates. When he turns back to assist, “two younger guys” have already come to the man’s aid. In addition, he seeks only his own safety, separating himself from the crowd and hiding in a “flower bed.” Whether cowardice or the instinct for self-preservation motivated these actions, he admits that he is ashamed of himself: “September 11^th, 2001, at 9:45 A. M. was not my finest moment.” Although he is obviously uncomfortable with his behavior on the scene, Townsend is brutally honest with the reader in confessing his conduct and his feelings regarding his actions. If he is honest about reporting such a personally painful moment, especially when he didn't need to mention it at all, it seems likely that he can be considered a reliable narrator concerning the other incidents he relates.

You have now completed a reader’s response that includes both a summary in your own words of the essay and your analysis of the rhetorical techniques that the essay’s author uses--in this case, to create a sense of immediacy for his reader and to indicate that his first-person narrator is reliable. Here is the result, in its entirety:

Beginning his narrative account of the event in media res, Townsend uses descriptions of vivid sensory details, empathetic identifications with victims, personifications, allusions to famous local landmarks, descriptive snapshots of individual victims, and the first-personal point of view of a reliable narrator to create a sense of immediacy for his reader concerning the horrific events that he describes.

The narrator also provides descriptive snapshots of individuals, helping to humanize the crowd while creating the impression that the reader him- or herself witnesses the plight of these individuals. He describes “a woman” who, turning “to run,” drops her “black bag,” spilling “a CD holder” and “sending bright silver discs across the ground” and an elderly gentleman who trips and takes “a face-first drive across the pavement, glasses flying off his face.” At this point, the reader has become more than merely a participant; he or she is involved in the incidents, a witness who is present among the other victims, so close to the action that he or she can see what happens to individuals in the crowd of “thousands” of fleeing “refugees.”

A Lesson Learned

2012-02-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

Tom Smith
Professor Gary Pullman
English 98
29 September 2011

A Lesson Learned

It is difficult to see oneself as others do. Men and women tend to rationalize their behavior, providing excuses as to why they did or did not perform some action. They often give themselves the benefit of the doubt when they suspect that they may have acted in their own, rather than in another person’s, best interests. They sometimes believe that they act according to motives other than the true ones which inspire their behavior. Such individuals are sometimes dishonest, about both their intentions and their conduct, but, other times, they may simply be mistaken--no one knows him- or herself completely; everyone is capable, at times, of surprising him- or herself. Likewise, people may lack the knowledge or the experience that they need to make objective, realistic, and accurate evaluations of their actions or those of the others with whom they interact. However, some people are simply more selfish than others and do whatever they please, whenever they like. A few are unaware that their actions do not match their inclinations. Occasionally, someone acts as he or she does simply because he or she has no reason or, more commonly, no incentive, to change his or her behavior, even though it may be offensive or annoying to another person. Tom Smith is such an individual. He changed only when his obnoxious behavior became as painful to him as it was to his someone about whom he cared. Once, Tom was stubborn, but after he lost a girlfriend because of his inflexible behavior, he became more open-minded.

Tom always insisted upon having his own way. When his girlfriend, Brenda Lewis, suggested that they drive up the Coastal Highway, from San Diego, so that they could enjoy the ocean scenery, as they passed through the beach cities on their way to Los Angeles, Tom wouldn’t hear of it. He said that he was the driver, not her, and that, as the driver, he would decide which route they drove. They’d made the same trip many times, and he always drove the same route, he told her, for a reason: going by Interstate 5 was quicker than traveling by the Coastal Highway, because the interstate bypassed the very beach cities that Brenda found quaint and charming. Although it was an inland highway that did not offer a view of the ocean, it was more direct and provided only limited access to traffic. What was important, he maintained, was not the view of the terrain through which they traveled but getting to their destination by the most direct and quickest route. Tom also insisted upon doing what he wanted to do. He decided where he and Brenda would eat, what movies they would see, whether and where they would go dancing, and how many friends--and which ones--to invite to the occasional parties he wanted to have. He might appear to listen to her suggestions, but, when the time came to plan their outings or gatherings, he always saw to it that they did things his way. Tom was obstinate about his opinions as well. Others had a right to their views, he admitted, but so did he, and he refused to change his mind about the issues of the day. Whether the topic was relatively unimportant, such as which football team was likeliest to win the Super Bowl or whether to have peanuts, popcorn, pretzels, or all three snack items during the Super Bowl party he hosted every year, or the issue was more significant, such as whether a political candidate’s views were racist, sexist, or unbiased or a job possibility offered benefits and other incentives beyond the wage or salary it paid to make it worth his--or Brenda’s--while, he always maintained that his judgments were sound and need not be changed.

Finally, tired of Tom’s stubbornness, Brenda broke up with him. She had told him on many previous occasions how annoying she found his obstinacy concerning all matters great and small. She had tried to get him to be more open to her suggestions. She had proposed that they compromise. They could travel part of the way from San Diego to Los Angeles on the Coastal Highway and the rest of the way on Interstate 5. He had refused. She had suggested that they each make a list of places that they enjoyed frequenting and of friends whom they liked to invite to their parties, alternating between destinations and each inviting those friends on their respective lists to attend their parties. Again, he had declined. She had invited him to attend lectures on the political topics that various candidates held, so that he could hear both sides of issues and make up his mind as to where he stood on the basis of more complete information. He had rejected her offers. She had suggested that he should decide which jobs he wanted to seek and let her find the ones that appealed to her, but, once more, Tom had demurred. When it became obvious to Brenda that Tom would never change his stubborn ways, she had broken off their relationship.

Although he was a stubborn man, Tom cared for Brenda, and her ending of their relationship affected him enough for him to become more flexible. He does not assume that he knows what is best for everyone else, and he is more willing to listen and to compromise. He has adopted Brenda’s suggestions, and he works hard at being more open-minded, more flexible, and more tolerant of other people and their views. Others find that it is easier for them to get along with him, and, although Tom is not exactly what one might call easygoing, he is nevertheless more cooperative, accommodating, and forbearing. He considers other people’s interests, desires, and needs, and he no longer thinks that everything must go his way or that everyone should think and feel as he does. He has demonstrated considerable growth since Brenda broke up with him.

Tom’s newfound flexibility may have come too late to save his relationship with Brenda, but their separation, although painful, has helped him to understand that obduracy is a severe handicap to human affairs, whether one’s dealings with others are intimate and personal or formal and impersonal. As a result, he has become more adaptable in his dealings with others, and his behavior is no longer annoying. Brenda did him a favor by breaking up with Tom, because he had to confront an unpleasant truth about himself. As a result, he discovered how truly stubborn he had been, and his conduct toward others has become much more open and engaging. Brenda has noticed the change in his behavior, and there is a good chance, she has confided in her best friend, Sally Johnson, of her dating the new-and-improved, much-less-stubborn Tom. Good results can come from needed changes in one’s behavior.

Ghosts: An Endangered Species?

2011-11-18T20:57:00.000-08:00

Tom Corbett

Professor Gary Pullman

English 101E, 8:30-9:45

6 August 2013

Ghosts: An Endangered Species?

For various reasons, from humanity’s earliest days, the spirits of the dead, or ghosts, are alleged to have visited the living. Some return to avenge their murders, others to warn loved ones of impending catastrophes, and still others to assuage guilt so powerful that it has survived the grave. If one can believe the stories associated with ghosts, these spirits have haunted everything from ancient graveyards and medieval castles to modern mansions and hotels. Short story writers, novelists, and screenwriters would have their readers and audiences believe that some ghosts have a sense of humor while others are somber, indeed. They have appeared in--or have been the subjects of--literary works as diverse as William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, H. G. Wells’ “The Red Room,” Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, Mark Twain’s “A Ghost Story,” Stephen King’s The Shining and Bag of Bones, and Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas. Ghosts have appeared as guest stars, so to speak, in such movies as Topper, Poltergeist, Beetlejuice, Ghost Busters, The Sixth Sense, The Others, An American Haunting, and many others, and in episodes of such television shows as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Bewitched, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Ghost Hunters. There is no doubt about it: ghosts have not only been reported throughout history, but they have also enjoyed plenty of airtime. The virtual omnipresence of ghosts is curious when one considers that such entities may not actually exist. Although men and women who believe in the existence of ghosts offer such evidence for their existence as eye-witness reports, photographs, electronic voice phenomena, abrupt temperature drops, and sudden increases in electromagnetic radiation, this evidence can be explained without reference to the entities that are supposed to cause them, which makes the actual existence of ghosts questionable at best.

Since the beginning of time, people have claimed to have seen ghosts, and believers in the existence of spirits of the dead declare that so many people could not be deceived or lying in providing eye-witness testimony. It does seem likely that some--perhaps many--such eyewitnesses really do believe that they have seen ghosts. Seeing is not believing, though, or should not be. Scientists regard eyewitness testimony, or anecdotal or testimonial evidence, as they prefer to call it, as being notoriously unreliable. In “anecdotal (testimonial) evidence,” an Internet article concerning such evidence, Robert T. Carroll points out that “anecdotes are unreliable for various reasons,” including the distortion that occurs as accounts are told and retold, exaggeration, confusion regarding “time sequences,” “selective” memory, misrepresented “experiences,” and a variety of other conditions, including the effect upon their testimony that “biases, memories, and beliefs” have. In the same article, Carroll also suggests that gullibility, “delusions,” and even deliberate deceit also make such testimony “inherently problematic and usually. . . impossible to test for accuracy.”

Most people who investigate reports concerning the presence or appearances of ghosts also seek to photograph them. It has been said that cameras do not lie, but the problem with photographic evidence is that it is easy for photographers to doctor film. In his Internet article concerning “spirit photography,” James Randi gives an example of a rather crude attempt by some spiritualists to fool folks into believing they had captured the apparition of the deceased author of the Sherlock Holmes short stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who, as himself a spiritualist, was a frequent focus of “spook-snappers” who “claimed to summon him up after his death in 1930” (“spirit photography”). The problem, Randi says, with their evidence is that it is “apparently a cut-out of a reversed photo placed in what appears to be cotton wool”; otherwise, the spirit photograph “agrees in detail, lighting, and expression with the original” photograph of Doyle which was taken in the author’s “prime” (“spirit photography”). In other words, the photograph is a fake. A favorite technique among those who create fake spirit photographs, Carroll points out in his online article, “spirit photography,” is the “double exposure,” an example of which appears on the article’s webpage. A double exposure occurs when the same film is exposed to first one, and then another, object, with the result that the image of the second object overlays or overlaps the image of the first object; both images appear to have been photographed together, at the same time and in the same place. However, pictures of supposed ghosts sometimes result from the photographer’s own incompetence or “natural events,” rather than deliberate deceitfulness, Carroll concedes, including “various flaws in camera or film, effects due to various exposures, film-processing errors, lens flares (caused by interreflection between lens surfaces), the camera or lens strap hanging over the lens, effects of the flash reflecting off of mirrors, jewelry. . . light patterns, polarization, [or] chemical reactions” (“spirit photography”). When deliberate deceit occurs, photographers may also use graphic arts software or computer graphics software to deliberately manipulate photographs that are uploaded from the camera into a computer.

If neither eyewitness testimony nor photographs prove the existence of ghosts, perhaps electronic voice phenomena (EVP) do so. A sophisticated term for tape-recorded voices, EVP demonstrate the presence of ghosts, some contend, since sensitive instruments have recorded the disembodied voices of apparitions. However, as Carroll indicates, in his Internet article, “electric voice phenomenon (EVP),” skeptics point out that such sounds may not be voices at all, but may be nothing more than the results of “interference from a nearby CB [citizen’s band radio] operator or cross modulation”--one radio station transmitting over another station’s broadcast. Likewise, Carroll points out, in the same online article, EVP may be nothing more than a listener’s interpreting “random noise” as the statements of a disembodied voice or voices. In the same Internet article, Carroll cites the explanation by Jim Alcock, a psychologist, for this tendency: “When our brains try to find patterns, they are guided in part by what we expect to hear. . . . People can clearly ‘hear’ voices and words not just in the context of muddled voices, but in a pattern of white noise in which there are no words at all.” It seems that, for these reasons, EVP is just as problematic as the proof of ghosts’ existence as eyewitness reports and photographs have been shown to be.

Perhaps the abrupt drop in temperature that some ghost hunters have both felt and recorded will prove more convincing evidence of the existence of the spirits of the dead. According to an anonymous “paranormal researcher,” who writes, in answer to a question posted on Yahoo! Answers, it is believed that such “cold spots” result from ghosts’ draining of energy sources, such as electricity, as a means to produce sounds or to speak. Supposedly, the anonymous writer says, the energy the ghosts draw from the environment heats their own energy, but this heat is then dissipated by the sound effect the ghost produces with this borrowed energy. However, neither he nor any other researcher seems able to explain how a disembodied spirit--that is, an entity that has no lips, teeth, tongue, vocal cords, or lungs--can speak, even if it does help itself to ambient energy sources. Carroll finds such evidence to be less than persuasive. In his Internet article, “ghost,” he notes that “many people report physical changes in haunted places, especially a feeling of a presence accompanied by temperature drop and hearing unaccountable sounds” and, agreeing that such people “are not imagining things,” he, nevertheless, discounts the notion that ghosts are responsible for these phenomena. Instead, he says,

Scientists who have investigated haunted places account for both the temperature changes and the sounds by finding physical sources of the drafts, such as empty spaces behind walls or currents set in motion by low frequency sound waves (infrasound) produced by such mundane objects as extraction fans (“ghost“).

Sudden increases in electromagnetic radiation are “produced by such things as power lines, electric appliances, radio waves, and microwaves,” Carroll observes, in his Internet article “EMF (EMT).” Therefore, he suggests, the idea that ghosts somehow cause such radiation seems unlikely, and, indeed, “some think that electromagnetic fields are inducing the haunting experience” (“ghost”).

Occasionally, as a Halloween feature, some newspapers or television shows spotlight a supposedly haunted house in which ghostly phenomena are described, but then a natural explanation is provided for each of the supposedly supernatural elements of the tale. One such account, by Cathy Lubenski, appears in The San Diego Union-Tribune, under the title “When your house has spooks, who are you going to call?” Her story includes reports of slime oozing from walls, cold spots, lights flashing on and off, doors opening by themselves, knocking inside walls, foul odors, and howling. Were one living in a house in which such phenomena were occurring, it might well seem that the residence was indeed haunted. Instead, each of these phenomena had a natural cause, not a supernatural origin, as Lubenski explains in her article: The slime was from a bees’ nest in the attic; the cold spots and opening and closing doors resulted from an air-conditioner unit’s return airflow; the flashing lights were the effects of shorts in the electrical system; the stench was produced by dead rats in the wall and trapped sewer gas; and the howling and knocking sounds were caused by the wind, blowing down a vent (I3).

Philosophers advise people to adopt the principle of Occam’s razor, which says, essentially, that one should never consider more possible causes than the number that are necessary to explain why something happens. As Carroll points out, in his Internet article on the topic, “Occam’s razor is also called the principle of parsimony,” and “it is usually interpreted to mean something like ‘the simpler the explanation, the better’” or “as most people would put it today, ‘don’t make any more assumptions than you have to’” (“Occam’s razor”). To demonstrate the principle, Carroll offers this example: “[Erik] Von Däniken could be right: maybe extraterrestrials did teach ancient people art and engineering, but we don’t need to posit alien visitations in order to explain the feats of ancient people” (“Occam’s razor”). Therefore, according to Occam’s razor, one should attribute “art and engineering” to the human intelligence and ingenuity that men and women develop as the result of their evolutionary, genetic and environmental inheritance (“Occam‘s razor“). The same applies, of course, with respect to ghosts. Eye-witness reports, photographs, electronic voice phenomena, abrupt temperature drops, and sudden increases in electromagnetic radiation have been cited as evidence for the existence of ghosts. However, these phenomena can be explained without reference to such supernatural entities, a fact that makes the actual existence of ghosts questionable at best. Therefore, one can conclude that it is more likely that ghosts do not exist than to suppose that they do. Nevertheless, some folks are likely to continue to believe in such spirits, because ghosts add mystery to the everydayness of ordinary life, they suggest that there is some sort of existence after death, and they make interesting literary and dramatic characters that enliven short stories, novels, and movies. Likewise, they are convenient symbols of such emotional and psychological states and experiences as guilt, regret, and remorse; of the memory of traumatic past experiences; and of actual historical events. In the sense that human beings are, to some extent, products of their own previous experiences and of historical affairs, they are haunted, after all--by the ghosts of their own pasts.

Works Cited

Carroll, Robert. “anecdotal (testimonial) evidence.” The Skeptic's Dictionary. 5 Jun. 2012. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

---. “electronic voice phenomenon (EVP).” The Skeptic's Dictionary. 29 Mar. 2011. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

---. “EMF (EMR).” The Skeptic's Dictionary. 19 Dec. 2011. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

---. “ghost.” The Skeptic’s Dictionary. 11 Jan. 2013. Web 1 Aug. 2013.

---. “Occam’s razor.” The Skeptic’s Dictionary. 18. Feb. 2012. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

---. “psychic photography (spirit photography).” The Skeptic’s Dictionary. 9 Dec. 2010. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

"I believe spirits use energy to communicate with us. But which energy sources?" Yahoo! Answers. Yahoo! 1 Apr. 2009. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

Lubenski, Cathy. "When your house has spooks, who are you going to call?" The San Diego Union-Tribune. 29 Oct. 2000: I3. Print.

Randi, James. “spirit photography.” An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. James Randi Education Foundation. 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 1 Aug. 2013.

“Luann”: A Situation-Based, Character-Driven Comic Strip

2011-11-18T16:49:00.000-08:00

“Luann,” by Greg Evans, features the teenage exploits of Luann DeGroot; her parents, Frank and Nancy; her brother Brad; Brad’s girlfriend Toni Daytona; Brad’s buddy T. J.; and Luann’s friends and high school classmates, including her best friend Bernice Halper; her romantic rival Tiffany Farrell; and her nerdy admirer Gunther Berger. Occasionally, other characters appear in the strip, including Aaron Hill, the boy upon whom Luann has an unrequited crush; Toni’s abusive ex-boyfriend Dirk; and Bernice’s handicapped, wheelchair-bound ex-boyfriend Zane. The comic strip is aimed at teenage and young adult readers, although its situations and humor appeal to a general audience. Much of the conflict is situation-based and, as the Internet website Toonopedia’s article on the comic strip points out, the strip typically concerns “the ordinary hassles of teenage life,” such as Luann’s or Brad’s interaction with their family and friends, although some sequences include serious or “touchy” issues such as menstruation, “drug abuse,” “drunk driving,” and “cancer” (“Luann”). With the exception of October 25, the theme for the sequence of the comic strip that appeared from October 25 through October 31, 2009, focuses on Halloween and shows the characters’ personalities as they are revealed by their reactions to problems and conflicts that arise from ordinary, everyday situations.

October 25, 2009

Halloween is a quintessential children’s holiday, and, since “Luann” appeals primarily to teenagers and young adults, its creator focuses most of an entire week’s worth of his comic strip on this festive occasion. The exception is the Sunday, October 25, 2009, edition. All of Evans’ Sunday strips are stand-alone works. They are not part of the daily sequence. Therefore, they must make sense by themselves. The strip for Sunday, October 25, 2009, shows Luann and her friends standing shoulder to shoulder at the front of their classroom. Behind them, the theme of the day’s lesson is written on the chalkboard: “Day of Service--How will you help others?” As their teacher, Mr. Fogarty, looks on, the students tell their peers what each of them intends to do during the Day of Service. Luann is the next to the last in line; Tiffany stands to her left. Each of the students except Tiffany plans to perform a more-or-less significant act of kindness and assistance. Bernice announces that she intends to “visit” a “disabled neighbor.” Crystal plans to “give manicures at the senior center.” Knute will “mentor at the skateboard park.” Delta hopes to “start a citywide volunteer corps.” Gunther intends to “donate extra time at the library.” Luann is going to “clean up litter.” Since all the other students have a relatively important and meaningful task in mind for the Day of Service, the reader anticipates that Tiffany, the last in line, will also have a noble and helpful task in mind. However, her announcement surprises both Luann and the reader. When Tiffany declares that she will do all that she “can to look incredibly gorgeous,” Luann turns to her, in the next panel, and asks, “How does that help others, Tiffany?” Although her explanation (“Uh. You all have to look at me, right? Duh.”) is obviously ludicrous, it reflects her shallow and narcissistic character, and, juxtaposed to her peers’ more important plans to help others, is amusing.

Octiber 26, 2009

The rest of the week focuses upon Halloween. In the October 26, 2009, strip, Frank and Nancy, seated across from one another in their living room, discuss what to hand out to visiting trick or treaters. Nancy confides to her husband, “I didn’t buy Halloween candy. I hate it that kids gorge on sweets, but I don’t know what to give. Carrots? Toys? Dimes?” Her practical husband suggests “garage stuff.” His response seems to surprise Nancy. “What?” she asks him. “We have junk in the garage we plan to sell,” Frank tells her. “Give it to the kids. Win-win.” Unimpressed, Nancy illustrates the absurdity of Frank’s suggestion. Pretending to give the garage items to visiting trick or treaters, she says, as if she were speaking to them, “A bent golf club for you, an ugly tie for you, a half roll of wallpaper for you, a broken lamp for you.” Her humorous protest prompts Frank to response, “See? It’s even kinda scary.” This strip uses a problem--children’s stuffing themselves with “sweets”--to set up a humorous attempt by the characters to find a solution. Nancy’s suggestions for alternative treats (“carrots. . . toys. . . dimes”) are serious, but Frank’s (“junk in the garage”) is both playfully self-serving and humorous. The strip combines a serious health issue with an everyday situation (cleaning out the family’s garage) and a holiday (Halloween) to appeal to a wide audience, which includes both children, adults, parents, and homeowners.

October 27, 2009

The October 27, 2009, edition of the comic strip continues the situation that the previous day’s installment established: what to give visiting trick or treaters on Halloween. Again, Frank and Nancy are seated opposite one another in their living room. Nancy opens the conversation between them: “I think I’ll bake sugarless bran muffins for Halloween treats.” Frank offers an interesting alternative. At first, it sounds ridiculous, even a bit cruel: “Here’s a better idea. Take one of our 500-piece jigsaw puzzles and give each kid a handful of pieces.” However, in the next panel, he explains his reasoning, and the idea doesn’t seem as absurd: “The kids will have to get together to assemble the puzzle. They’ll make new friends! It’ll strengthen the very fiber of our neighborhood!” Nancy’s response is based upon a play on the word “fiber” that Frank has used. “My bran muffins are all about fiber,” she observes. “Yeah,” Frank replies, “but it’s the kind that tends to separate people.” His response suggests that the fiber in the muffins will facilitate the children’s need to use the bathroom, since fiber has a laxative effect on people, and their doing so will cause them to “separate” rather than to “assemble.” This strip shows that both Nancy and Frank care about the welfare of children. Nancy has their health in mind, whereas Frank is concerned with their social wellbeing. Their proposed solutions to the problem of what treats to hand out to children on Halloween also show them to be creative. The conflict between them is gentle and rational, rather than harsh and emotional, showing that they are mature and logical adults. Like many of Evans’ other strips, this one, based upon a specific situation, reveals the traits of his characters’ personalities.

October 28, 2009

The October 28, 2009, edition of the comic strip continues the same situation, as Frank, discovering a kitchen “drawer full of rubber bands from the newspaper” to which they subscribe, suggests to Nancy, as she pours a cup of coffee, “Let’s give these out to the trick or treaters.” She asks a logical question in response, wondering what the recipients “are supposed to do with a rubber band.” In the next panel, Frank explains, “Honey, they’re kids. They’ll think of things.” Nancy agrees, but her rejoinder suggests that the “things” of which the children are apt to think to do with the rubber bands may be undesirable and, potentially, hazardous: “Yeah. Like zing you upside the head as you close the door.” Frank’s suggestion is based upon his understanding that children are imaginative, but Nancy’s comeback addresses another facet of adolescent behavior. Children, she suggests, are also unruly, and their rowdiness could cause unpleasant or dangerous results. It is evident that both characters, as the parents of Luann and Brad, understand children well. The strip also seems to imply that, in caring for children, two heads are better than one, because both Frank and Nancy contribute to an awareness of the nature of children which is truer and more developed than either of their perceptions would be by itself. Children are imaginative, as Frank points out, but they are also immature and disorderly at times, as Nancy indicates.

October 29, 2009

The October 29, 2009, edition of “Luann” is atypical in that it is not humorous in itself. Rather, it sets up the strip that is to appear the next day and, as the inclusion of a web address in the lower right corner of its single panel indicates, it is more of a public service effort than it is an attempt to tell a joke or to express humor. This time, the action, such as it is, occurs in Luann’s bedroom, as her dog, Puddles, sleeps on her bed and her best friend, Bernice, reading a magazine or a book, lounges on the floor, her back against the side of the mattress, while Luann contemplates a large collection of books in her bookcase. Bernice reads to Luann some facts that have captured her attention: “Wow. In America, kids collect almost 3 billion pieces of candy on Halloween.” She finds this information disturbing because of the hazards to children’s health that it represents: “That’s a lot of hyper, obese, bad-teeth kids.” Luann, contemplating her bookcase, says, “Look at all these old children’s books of mine. Wonder what I could do with them?” A teenager, she has outgrown the “children’s books.” What were once welcome diversions are now undesirable clutter to her. However, possibly because they have sentimental value to her, she doesn’t appear to want to simply discard them, for she wonders what she “could do with them.” The strip for the next day will provide the solution to her problem.

October 30, 2009

In the October 30, 2009 strip, Frank and Nancy are still trying to resolve their problem as to what to give trick or treaters in lieu of candy. This time, they are seated at the dining room table. Nancy names “apples” and “stickers” and other possibilities. Frank, once again, suggests an absurd alternative: “paper clips.” As her parents struggle with the issue, Nancy listing their ideas on a sheet of paper, Luann approaches them, carrying a tall stack of books. “How ‘bout givin’ my old children’s books?” she suggests. In the next panel, the parents are alone again, Luann having left the stack of books on the table. Her mother and father stare at the books, speechless. In the last panel, Nancy tosses her crumpled list as Frank offers the strip’s punch line: “It’s scary when she’s more clever than we are, isn’t it?” Although this strip, considered in isolation from the previous editions in the sequence, is not all that amusing in itself, its humor becomes funnier because it builds upon the continuing situation that previous days’ editions of the strip have developed, this one becoming, as it were, not only amusing in itself but the punch line for the whole series of related strips to date. Because Frank and Nancy have considered a series of possible alternatives to the giving of candy to visiting children as Halloween treats without success, Luann’s casual resolution of their long-running dilemma is also amusing, since she is a teenager, while they are adults. Usually, the parents solve problems, but, in this strip, the roles of parents and child are reversed, which helps to fuel the amusement.

October 31, 2009

The October 31, 2009, edition of the comic strip represents the culmination of the Halloween-based series as children visit the DeGroot household to trick or treat. Luann hands out the books. “Just for you,” she says to a girl in a witch’s costume, naming the title of the book she is giving her, “If I Ran the Zoo.” Her announcement of the book’s title brings her father running, as he cries out, in horror at the thought of the loss of the book, “That book is inscribed by Ted Geisel inside!” His announcement shocks Luann, who stares wide-eyed and speechless. “Ted Geisel” is the actual name of the author who has written a popular series of children’s books under the pen name “Dr. Seuss.” The fact that he has “inscribed” the book that Luann is giving away suggests that the volume may be worth a fair amount of money. As such, it is not something that is appropriate to be given away to a child, which explains Frank’s horror and the speed with which he intervenes, as well as Luann’s own shock. Luann’s diplomatic way of resolving this crisis is to offer the child two books for the one that she originally gives her, and the girl gladly accepts, so that, at the end, everyone--the girl, Luann, and Frank--is content with the outcome. Luann’s actions show her to be sensitive, kind, and tactful. She may be a teenager, but she is maturing well emotionally and morally, her behavior suggests. She is also witty, because her dialogue, constituting, as it does, a rhymed couplet, in her offering of two books for the one she originally gives the girl, resembles the rhyming couplets in which Dr. Seuss’ books are written.

Just as she earlier solved her parents’ dilemma concerning what to give trick or treaters instead of candy, Luann now resolves the crisis of reclaiming the book she originally gives a child in a diplomatic, and even witty, manner. Although her parents are obviously mature adults--Frank provides for the financial necessities of a family of four, just as Nancy keeps house for them, and both parents show an understanding of and a concern for both their own children and children in general--both Nancy and Frank can also act childishly on occasion, as is indicated by Frank’s panic at the possibility of losing a book signed by a famous author and his grabbing it out of Luann’s hands the moment she retrieves it from the trick or treater and Nancy’s earlier insistence that her bran muffins are superior to Frank’s suggestion for a Halloween treat because her muffins would be “all about fiber.” The comedy of “Luann” springs from Evans’ display of his characters’ personalities through their responses to the problems and conflicts which arise from specific situations related to everyday life. Such humor appeals to children, teenagers, parents, and other adults alike.

Works Cited

Evans, Greg. “Luann.” Comic Strip. The Las Vegas Review-Journal.
25 Oct. 2009-31 Oct. 2009: C8. Print.

Markstein, Don. (2009). Luann. Don Markstein’s Toonopedia. Retrieved November 4, 2009, from
http://www.toonopedia.com/luann.htm .