Breakthrough Writer

Summer 2010 English 1A Journal Entries on One Post

Entry One: Write about someone you know who is afflicted with concupiscence, which traps them on the "hedonic treadmill."  Or write about someone  who thinks he or she is rising when in reality he or she is falling. 

Entry Two: Write about your denial over a personal shortcoming followed by an awakening.

Entry Three: Describe someone you know who is flourishing in a paragraph. Or: Write about someone you know who benefitted from perdition. 

Entry Four: Write about how you conformed to peer pressure and how this blind obedience to peer pressure made you feel regretful afterwards because in part you compromised who you are. You compromised your integrity. And you compromised your values. The purpose of this journal entry is to have a salient first page for your research paper. 

Entry Five: Write about a time in your life when you succumbed to nihilism. Or write about someone you know who is a nihilist. Tell the students about your teenage friend who tried to bulk up to 300 pounds and failed. 

Or write about someone you know who exercised noble disobedience to use for your conclusion. 

Entry Six: Provide personal examples of determinism and free will, either in yourself or someone you know.

Entry Seven: Write about a personal experience you had where the abuse of power resulted in the loss of someone’s humanity. You could write about a bully, a cruel teacher who humiliates students, or some authority figure. Or you could write about how you exercised power in a way that you made feel regretful and guilty afterwards. You could use this anecdote for the first page of your essay. 

Entry Eight: 

Think of someone you know who, like Mel, suffers from egotism and solipsism. This one-page profile could be used for the first page of your essay. 

Entry Nine:

In a paragraph, describe someone you know who, like the narrator in "Cathedral," has over time become disaffected.

Entry Ten: Write about a chimera you became obsessed with, how it propelled you into the world of solipsism, and how it crushed you with devastating disappointment.

Entry Eleven: Write about an ironic reversal in your personal experience or in someone you know. 

Entry Twelve: Write about a sibling rivalry that contains the symbiosis evident in Donald and Pete.

Entry Thirteen: Write about someone who is spoiled and narcissistic in a way that reminds you of Mark from the story "Desert Breakdown, 1968."

Entry Fourteen: Write about a personal "back in the world" experience.  

Back in the World Lesson #1: “The Missing Person” with Essay Assignment Options

Part One.

Essay 4:

 When Our World Turns Upside Down: The Terrifying Character Awakenings in Back in the World

 

In your first two pages, profile someone (your or anyone else) who had lived too long “removed from the world” and narrate the incident that re-connected this person to reality.

 

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

Similarly, the characters (drawn from no fewer than 3 stories) in Tobias Wolff’s masterful stories go on their own “Back in the World” journey, an arduous, excruciating passage that is characterized by ____________________________, _______________________, _____________________________, and _____________________________.

 

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from Where I’m Calling From, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

 

 

 “The Missing Person” by Tobias Wolff

 

 

Part Two: Lexicon

 

1.  Sloth posing as a Christian 19

2.  Jerry the mountebank

3.  Mendacity, the art of lying

4.  Duplicity, the art of being two-faced

5.  Obsequiousness, the art of butt-kissing

6.  Sobriquet, nickname, “Slim” 31

7.  Jerry’s B.S. is intoxicating and contagious 32, 33

8.  Certain lies are indomitable juggernauts 35 and 49 (can’t put the genie back in the bottle)

9.  Sagacity; Leo’s thoughts show wisdom on page 43.

10.               Serendipitous

 

Part Three: Types of Irony

 

1.  Plot Irony: A reversal that results in the opposite of our expectations like a car death after wearing seatbelt. This is one of the most common forms of irony.

2.  Serendipitous Irony: The more we deviate from our original plan, the better the outcome.

3.  Faustian Irony: The more we think we’re rising and succeeding in life, the more we are actually falling as we become crushed under the weight of our own vanity, which blinds us and leaves us vulnerable to failure.

4.  Idle Irony: The better our life becomes the more we are compelled by boredom to sabotage our happiness. In other words people often cause problems that don’t really exist. And soon they create very real problems out of nothing.  

5.  Pathological Irony: Man shoots foot off to get rid of a wart.

6.  Sarcastic Irony: Saying one thing and meaning an other.

7.  Satanic Irony: A greedy man enjoys a long, healthy life while his innocent victims die cruel deaths and their lives are short. This type of irony refutes notions of justice.

8.  Narcissistic Irony: searchers for the self lose their selves while people who don’t think about their selves find their selves. Someone goes into therapy and becomes even crazier. Or the example of Stalingrad in which the selfish die and the helpful live.

9.  Jungian Irony: The more extreme we develop a facet of our personality the more extreme we develop its opposite. The macho man is also becoming more and more of a baby.

10.               Materialistic Irony: You buy an expensive fur coat but the weather is forever hot so you can’t wear it like the old lady in Buenos Aires.

11.               Short-sighted irony: You workout to impress a girl but she’s turned off by big muscles. You were looking at what you want, not at what she wants. A woman overdressed and wears too much make-up and men are terrified of her.

12.               Ironic Irony: You try to be ironic because you think it’s cool but you come across as a fake and as a poser.

13.               Corruptive Irony: The more we get our hands dirty in the mess of life, the more pure we become; the more we stay away from the filth, the more contaminated we become by our lack of involvement, which is a form of narcissism. This is the major theme of the story “The Missing Person.” Leo finds love and redemption while working as a hustler in Las Vegas. “It’s all right. I’m here.” These are the final words and show that he’s not the missing person anymore.

 

 

 

Part Four. Journal Entry

Write about an ironic reversal in your personal experience or in someone you know. 

Essay Options:

One. When Our World Turns Upside Down: The Terrifying Character Awakenings in Back in the World

 

In your first two pages, profile someone (your or anyone else) who had lived too long “removed from the world” and narrate the incident that re-connected this person to reality.

 

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

Similarly, the characters (drawn from no fewer than 3 stories) in Tobias Wolff’s masterful stories go on their own “Back in the World” journey, an arduous, excruciating passage that is characterized by ____________________________, _______________________, _____________________________, and _____________________________.

 

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from Where I’m Calling From, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

Two. Open-Ended Essay Option for Back in the World

Using no fewer than 2 stories, analyze the meaning of the book's title Back in the World. Same research requirements as above. 

1A Lesson for "The Rich Brother" and "Say Yes"

 

Part One: Your Last Essay

Essay 4 When Our World Turns Upside Down: The Terrifying Character Awakenings in Back in the World

 

In your first two pages, profile someone (your or anyone else) who had lived too long “removed from the world” and narrate the incident that re-connected this person to reality.

 

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

Similarly, the characters (drawn from no fewer than 3 stories) in Tobias Wolff’s masterful stories go on their own “Back in the World” journey, an arduous, excruciating passage that is characterized by ____________________________, _______________________, _____________________________, and _____________________________.

 

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from Back in the World, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

 

Part Two. Lexicon

 

1.  Decrepitude (weakened, broken down, the condition of both brothers)

2.  hubris

3.  braggadocio

4.  culpability

5.  symbiosis

6.  passive-aggressive

7.  scapegoat

8.  sibling rivalry

9.  stagnation

10.               status quo

11.               spite—an impulse for revenge that hurts you more than the person you hate.

12.               Insanity— doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein)

13.               centrifugal

14.               centripetal

 

 

 

Part Three. Pete’s 6 Moral Flaws

 

1.  He worships money, seeing it as a solution for everything.

2.  He suffers from a brand of obnoxious smug pride rooted in his wealth. (“Grow up and get a Mercedes.”) In fact, Pete is not rich at all as evidenced by the story’s ironic title “The Rich Brother.” Pete in fact is anything but “rich.” He is impoverished by his condition of helplessness and moral decrepitude. Pete covers his flaws with a pose of hubris and braggadocio.

3.  He sees things only at face value without digging deeper because he is afraid of what he will find.

4.  He is afraid to confront his culpability for the past, namely, his role in hating on his brother Donald through his rivalry and blind ambition.

5.  Pete is a liar to his brother and to himself. For example on page 197 he lies about his dreams, claiming he only dreams about sex and money when in fact he is haunted by guilt for the sins he once committed against Donald. On 199 and 200 we find that Pete tried to kill his brother after an operation because he was jealous of the way his mother doted on Donald. Ironically, now it’s Pete who dotes on Donald and in doing so he assures that he keeps Donald crippled, which is to his advantage, or so he seeks.

6.  He is afraid to confront his current role as Donald’s “mother,” which is ironic since he in a way attempted to steal Donald’s mother from him. In other words, Pete is dependent on Donald being dependent on him. What we have here, then, are two brothers trapped in a snake grip of hatred from which they can never let go. In psychology this is called “symbiosis.”

 

 

Part Four. Donald’s 6 Moral Flaws.

 

1.  Driven by spite and cowardice, Donald sabotages his own life in order to make Pete bail him out again and again and again. This is Donald’s cowardly and passive-aggressive way of punishing Pete for what he did to him during childhood. Donald embodies the saying, “Bite my nose to spite your face.”

2.  He uses religion to judge others while ignoring his own egregious flaws. In other words, Donald is a pompous ass.

3.  Donald is stuck in a life of stagnation though he deludes himself with clichés that he is “breaking his pattern” (192)

4.  Donald is stuck on a sense of lugubrious identity known as “victimization.” He is both overcome by spite and self-pity. As a result of seeing himself as a victim, he has reached a point of no return in which he is both undateable and unemployable.

5.  As long as Donald can scapegoat Pete for all his problems, he never has to grow up and take accountability for his own actions.

6.  Donald is big on generosity but only with his brother’s money, not his own.

 

 

 

Part Five. The 7 Qualities of Symbiosis

 

1.  Two weak people merge to hide and reinforce their flaws.

2.  Two people become mutually dependent on the other in order to stop changing, growing, maturing, and fulfilling their potential.

3.  Two people use each other as a crutch and an excuse for their stagnation in life.

4.  One person gets stronger and stronger or so he thinks while the other gets weaker and weaker. In truth, both get weaker and weaker because bother are more and more dependent on the other.

5.  Two people stay together, not because of love, but because of weakness, hatred, and fear.

6.  In a symbiosis, both people are blind or fail to admit how dependent they are on the other. On page 201 we see that Pete has a dream about Donald in which Pete is blind.

7.  To use a psychological cliché, both parties of the symbiosis are called “enablers,” that is they perpetuate each other’s dysfunctions.

 

 

Part Six. Who is undergoing the “Back in the World” journey and why?

 

Pete is going through the journey of facing his culpability in continuing to cripple his brother. As a child he resorted to violence. Now he is killing his brother by being like the doting mother, an enabler.

 

Pete is a centrifugal character while Donald is incurably centripetal.

 

Part Seven. 

Pete, _________, and ___________ experience “Back in the World Moments,” which can be generally defined as waking up to the reality that you have been denying, to your detriment, for an intractable duration. This waking up consists of ____________________, ___________________________, _______________________, and ________________________________.

 

1.  confronting your convenient ignorance or naïveté

2.  confronting your own culpability in your demise

3.  accepting that the world does not conform to your wants; rather you must often conform to what the world demands of you. 

4.  being so radically changed by your waking up that you can and will no longer tolerate the status quo

 Part Eight. Journal Entry

Write about a sibling rivalry that contains the symbiosis evident in Donald and Pete

Lying Down the Psychological Groundwork for Back in the World by Tobias Wolff

 

Part I What are the 10 Obstacles of Going “Back in the World”?

 

1.  Naïveté or innocence like the wife in “Say Yes” or Krystal in “Desert Breakdown”

2.  Egotistical blindness that results in a refusal of accountability, self-introspection and creates an inflamed sense of entitlement like Peter in “The Rich Brother.”

3.  Narcissism, which results in delusions of grandeur like Mark in “Desert Breakdown.”

4.  Misguided good intentions—perhaps the wife in “Say Yes” thought she could “reform” her husband.

5.  Misguided ambition—Leo in the “Missing Person” aspires to a “spiritual life” for which he has no aptitude.

6.  Unconscious fear—Leo withdrawals into the church because of his fear of women, heartbreak, intimacy and in a general sense a fear of the world. In many ways the story “The Missing Person” is about the power of corruption for transforming our lives for the better—if we react to corruption in a way that makes us stronger, not weaker. To borrow a clichéd quote from Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

7.  Wishful thinking—it’s human nature to want to believe that things aren’t as bad as we suspect they are. Perhaps this is the case of the wife in “Say Yes” and Krystal in “Desert Breakdown.”

8.   Oversimplistic view of the world that causes us to look at the surface without peeling the outer layer and seeing the complexities, contradictions, paradoxes, and enigmas that lie underneath.

9.  Having parents, a spouse, a boyfriend, a girlfriend or other enablers who bail us out every time we sink so that we develop a false sense of security and feel free to pursue our delusions with impunity like Mark in “Desert Breakdown.”

10.               Money can give us a false sense of security and invincibility so that we can assert our most destructive, grotesque aspects of our personality and think we can get away with it—like Peter in “The Rich Brother.” Also take a look at Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears.

 

 

Part II: “Back in the World” Moments:

 

Hopefully, all of us will have a “back in the world” moment, that defining instance in which we take our heads out of our proverbial butts and see reality for what it really is:

 

1.  You wake up one morning and realize your boyfriend or girlfriend is the devil and you can’t believe you spent all these months, maybe even years, jumping through hoops to stay in the relationship.

2.  You wake up one morning and realize you need to move out of your parents’ house.

3.  You realize that if you continue hanging out with your loser friends, you’ll never make it through college and you’ll end up like them, living paycheck to paycheck and hanging out doing nothing for the rest of your life.

4.  You realize you have crappy study habits and that if you don’t achieve more consistency in your homework, you’re going to be a failure or at best a mediocrity.

5.  You realize that a clique or social circle that you thought you were part of wants nothing to do with you.

6.  You realize that you have grotesque table manners and that you slurp and inhale your food in such a way that grosses everyone out.

7.  You realize you have poor personal hygiene and you realize that if you don’t clean your teeth and wash your armpits, no one is going to want to be around you.

8.   Your messy room and your dirty car reflect on something deeper inside your personality that points to chaos, lack of focus, and general disarray.

9.  All the time you spend on the Internet is a reflection of how you have failed to maintain real human relationships and how you use this fantasy Internet life to compensate for your emotional retardation.

10.               You realize a supposed friend or even family member has back-stabbed you all your life and there’s nothing left for you to do but break all ties with this individual.

11.               You realize that you and your wife can only buy so many toys and organically baked treats for your dog and that it’s time to have a real child.

12.               You realize that it’s you alone who’s responsible for your road rage and that if you don’t do something about your anger issues you’re going to kill someone or yourself.

13.               You realize that you alone are responsible for all your failures and that you can no longer afford to blame your parents for your dissatisfaction in life.

14.               You realize that you’re majoring in a college subject to please your parents and other family members but that deep inside you despise your major with every fiber of your being.

15.               You realize that you’re fiancé who is beloved by all your friends and family is someone whom deep down you’re just not really into or worse is someone whom you truly despise.

16.               You realize that you’re so emotionally needy that you spend your credit cards on garbage you don’t need and that if you continue with  this compulsive spending you’re going to spend the rest of your life getting pimped by the credit card companies.

17.               You realize that all the promising diets you spend so much time and money on give you a phony short-term weight-loss that always ends up with you gaining all your weight back and hundreds if not thousands of dollars poorer for your vain efforts.

18.               You realize that paying thirty dollars a month to be a member of 24 Hour Fitness or Balley’s or Gold’s Gym isn’t sufficient motivation to get you off your butt because you’re essentially a lazy person.

19.               You realize that paying a personal trainer sixty dollars a month isn’t sufficient to get you off your butt because no one but yourself will give you the motivation you need to be successful in life.

20.               You realize after going on American Idol that you can’t sing. That’s pathetic. It took you the experience of going on American Idol and being laughed at by Simon Cowell and millions of others before you realized you couldn’t sing.

Part III: Journal Entry

Write about a personal "back in the world" experience.  

 

Part One: Your Last Essay

Essay 4 When Our World Turns Upside Down: The Terrifying Character Awakenings in Back in the World

 

In your first two pages, profile someone (your or anyone else) who had lived too long “removed from the world” and narrate the incident that re-connected this person to reality.

 

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

Similarly, the characters (drawn from no fewer than 3 stories) in Tobias Wolff’s masterful stories go on their own “Back in the World” journey, an arduous, excruciating passage that is characterized by ____________________________, _______________________, _____________________________, and _____________________________.

 

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from Back in the World, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

 

Part Two. Lexicon

 

1.  Decrepitude (weakened, broken down, the condition of both brothers)

2.  hubris

3.  braggadocio

4.  culpability

5.  symbiosis

6.  passive-aggressive

7.  scapegoat

8.  sibling rivalry

9.  stagnation

10.               status quo

11.               spite—an impulse for revenge that hurts you more than the person you hate.

12.               Insanity— doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein)

13.               centrifugal

14.               centripetal

 

 

 

Part Three. Pete’s 6 Moral Flaws

 

1.  He worships money, seeing it as a solution for everything.

2.  He suffers from a brand of obnoxious smug pride rooted in his wealth. (“Grow up and get a Mercedes.”) In fact, Pete is not rich at all as evidenced by the story’s ironic title “The Rich Brother.” Pete in fact is anything but “rich.” He is impoverished by his condition of helplessness and moral decrepitude. Pete covers his flaws with a pose of hubris and braggadocio.

3.  He sees things only at face value without digging deeper because he is afraid of what he will find.

4.  He is afraid to confront his culpability for the past, namely, his role in hating on his brother Donald through his rivalry and blind ambition.

5.  Pete is a liar to his brother and to himself. For example on page 197 he lies about his dreams, claiming he only dreams about sex and money when in fact he is haunted by guilt for the sins he once committed against Donald. On 199 and 200 we find that Pete tried to kill his brother after an operation because he was jealous of the way his mother doted on Donald. Ironically, now it’s Pete who dotes on Donald and in doing so he assures that he keeps Donald crippled, which is to his advantage, or so he seeks.

6.  He is afraid to confront his current role as Donald’s “mother,” which is ironic since he in a way attempted to steal Donald’s mother from him. In other words, Pete is dependent on Donald being dependent on him. What we have here, then, are two brothers trapped in a snake grip of hatred from which they can never let go. In psychology this is called “symbiosis.”

 

 

Part Four. Donald’s 6 Moral Flaws.

 

1.  Driven by spite and cowardice, Donald sabotages his own life in order to make Pete bail him out again and again and again. This is Donald’s cowardly and passive-aggressive way of punishing Pete for what he did to him during childhood. Donald embodies the saying, “Bite my nose to spite your face.”

2.  He uses religion to judge others while ignoring his own egregious flaws. In other words, Donald is a pompous ass.

3.  Donald is stuck in a life of stagnation though he deludes himself with clichés that he is “breaking his pattern” (192)

4.  Donald is stuck on a sense of lugubrious identity known as “victimization.” He is both overcome by spite and self-pity. As a result of seeing himself as a victim, he has reached a point of no return in which he is both undateable and unemployable.

5.  As long as Donald can scapegoat Pete for all his problems, he never has to grow up and take accountability for his own actions.

6.  Donald is big on generosity but only with his brother’s money, not his own.

 

 

 

Part Five. The 7 Qualities of Symbiosis

 

1.  Two weak people merge to hide and reinforce their flaws.

2.  Two people become mutually dependent on the other in order to stop changing, growing, maturing, and fulfilling their potential.

3.  Two people use each other as a crutch and an excuse for their stagnation in life.

4.  One person gets stronger and stronger or so he thinks while the other gets weaker and weaker. In truth, both get weaker and weaker because bother are more and more dependent on the other.

5.  Two people stay together, not because of love, but because of weakness, hatred, and fear.

6.  In a symbiosis, both people are blind or fail to admit how dependent they are on the other. On page 201 we see that Pete has a dream about Donald in which Pete is blind.

7.  To use a psychological cliché, both parties of the symbiosis are called “enablers,” that is they perpetuate each other’s dysfunctions.

 

 

Part Six. Who is undergoing the “Back in the World” journey and why?

 

Pete is going through the journey of facing his culpability in continuing to cripple his brother. As a child he resorted to violence. Now he is killing his brother by being like the doting mother, an enabler.

 

Pete is a centrifugal character while Donald is incurably centripetal.

 

Part Seven. 

Pete, _________, and ___________ experience “Back in the World Moments,” which can be generally defined as waking up to the reality that you have been denying, to your detriment, for an intractable duration. This waking up consists of ____________________, ___________________________, _______________________, and ________________________________.

 

1.  confronting your convenient ignorance or naïveté

2.  confronting your own culpability in your demise

3.  accepting that the world does not conform to your wants; rather you must often conform to what the world demands of you. 

4.  being so radically changed by your waking up that you can and will no longer tolerate the status quo

 Part Eight. Journal Entry

Write about a sibling rivalry that contains the symbiosis evident in Donald and Pete

Lying Down the Psychological Groundwork for Back in the World by Tobias Wolff

 

Part I What are the 10 Obstacles of Going “Back in the World”?

 

1.  Naïveté or innocence like the wife in “Say Yes” or Krystal in “Desert Breakdown”

2.  Egotistical blindness that results in a refusal of accountability, self-introspection and creates an inflamed sense of entitlement like Peter in “The Rich Brother.”

3.  Narcissism, which results in delusions of grandeur like Mark in “Desert Breakdown.”

4.  Misguided good intentions—perhaps the wife in “Say Yes” thought she could “reform” her husband.

5.  Misguided ambition—Leo in the “Missing Person” aspires to a “spiritual life” for which he has no aptitude.

6.  Unconscious fear—Leo withdrawals into the church because of his fear of women, heartbreak, intimacy and in a general sense a fear of the world. In many ways the story “The Missing Person” is about the power of corruption for transforming our lives for the better—if we react to corruption in a way that makes us stronger, not weaker. To borrow a clichéd quote from Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

7.  Wishful thinking—it’s human nature to want to believe that things aren’t as bad as we suspect they are. Perhaps this is the case of the wife in “Say Yes” and Krystal in “Desert Breakdown.”

8.   Oversimplistic view of the world that causes us to look at the surface without peeling the outer layer and seeing the complexities, contradictions, paradoxes, and enigmas that lie underneath.

9.  Having parents, a spouse, a boyfriend, a girlfriend or other enablers who bail us out every time we sink so that we develop a false sense of security and feel free to pursue our delusions with impunity like Mark in “Desert Breakdown.”

10.               Money can give us a false sense of security and invincibility so that we can assert our most destructive, grotesque aspects of our personality and think we can get away with it—like Peter in “The Rich Brother.” Also take a look at Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears.

 

 

Part II: “Back in the World” Moments:

 

Hopefully, all of us will have a “back in the world” moment, that defining instance in which we take our heads out of our proverbial butts and see reality for what it really is:

 

1.  You wake up one morning and realize your boyfriend or girlfriend is the devil and you can’t believe you spent all these months, maybe even years, jumping through hoops to stay in the relationship.

2.  You wake up one morning and realize you need to move out of your parents’ house.

3.  You realize that if you continue hanging out with your loser friends, you’ll never make it through college and you’ll end up like them, living paycheck to paycheck and hanging out doing nothing for the rest of your life.

4.  You realize you have crappy study habits and that if you don’t achieve more consistency in your homework, you’re going to be a failure or at best a mediocrity.

5.  You realize that a clique or social circle that you thought you were part of wants nothing to do with you.

6.  You realize that you have grotesque table manners and that you slurp and inhale your food in such a way that grosses everyone out.

7.  You realize you have poor personal hygiene and you realize that if you don’t clean your teeth and wash your armpits, no one is going to want to be around you.

8.   Your messy room and your dirty car reflect on something deeper inside your personality that points to chaos, lack of focus, and general disarray.

9.  All the time you spend on the Internet is a reflection of how you have failed to maintain real human relationships and how you use this fantasy Internet life to compensate for your emotional retardation.

10.               You realize a supposed friend or even family member has back-stabbed you all your life and there’s nothing left for you to do but break all ties with this individual.

11.               You realize that you and your wife can only buy so many toys and organically baked treats for your dog and that it’s time to have a real child.

12.               You realize that it’s you alone who’s responsible for your road rage and that if you don’t do something about your anger issues you’re going to kill someone or yourself.

13.               You realize that you alone are responsible for all your failures and that you can no longer afford to blame your parents for your dissatisfaction in life.

14.               You realize that you’re majoring in a college subject to please your parents and other family members but that deep inside you despise your major with every fiber of your being.

15.               You realize that you’re fiancé who is beloved by all your friends and family is someone whom deep down you’re just not really into or worse is someone whom you truly despise.

16.               You realize that you’re so emotionally needy that you spend your credit cards on garbage you don’t need and that if you continue with  this compulsive spending you’re going to spend the rest of your life getting pimped by the credit card companies.

17.               You realize that all the promising diets you spend so much time and money on give you a phony short-term weight-loss that always ends up with you gaining all your weight back and hundreds if not thousands of dollars poorer for your vain efforts.

18.               You realize that paying thirty dollars a month to be a member of 24 Hour Fitness or Balley’s or Gold’s Gym isn’t sufficient motivation to get you off your butt because you’re essentially a lazy person.

19.               You realize that paying a personal trainer sixty dollars a month isn’t sufficient to get you off your butt because no one but yourself will give you the motivation you need to be successful in life.

20.               You realize after going on American Idol that you can’t sing. That’s pathetic. It took you the experience of going on American Idol and being laughed at by Simon Cowell and millions of others before you realized you couldn’t sing.

Part III: Journal Entry

Write about a personal "back in the world" experience.  

1A Summer July 26 2010 Lesson for Raymond Carver: "Cathedral" and

Lesson #2: "Cathedral" (356)

Part One. Reading Questions

 

One. What is the irony of using a blind character in the story as a way of developing one of its major themes? See page 391 where the narrator recounts the blind man burying his wife and how “he had never seen her.” Who’s really blind?

Two. Explain the title. A Cathedral is where miracles happen. The miracle is that a dead man will be resurrected. The dead man is equated with the image of skeletons that occur later in the story during the TV show. Clearly, the narrator is dead and reborn by the story’s end.

Three. How does the narrator reveals himself in the first paragraph? He’s a defensive ignoramus and a man so isolated from the complexity of the human condition that he is a walking corpse. He’s a dead man. Later we find that he’s friendless. His wife says he has no friends. He lives inside himself, a prisoner of his own solipsism, which is fueled in part by fear.

Four. What is foreshadowed in the second paragraph? Robert’s sensitivity, tracing the wife’s face, will be passed on to the narrator at the story’s end.

Five. What is the narrator’s real source of jealousy? Dead people don’t like to see people living life fully. They want everyone to be as dead and miserable as they are. The narrator resents the blind man for living life fully.

Six. What do we know about the narrator’s habits? They’re reductionary. He does the same rituals over and over to close himself from emotion.  The TV watching, the fear of silence, the fear of conversation, insomnia, the depression, the smoking dope until he can crash in bed. The blind man represents change, a threat, an interference with his routine. Our routines comfort us, but they also imprison and eventually kill us.

Seven. What is the story’s turning point? Where Robert apologizes for monopolizing the talk with the wife. He shows empathy, something the narrator is lacking. He shows he has this quality, empathy, which evinces Robert’s maturity and gives him the credentials to be trusted as a parent figure for the narrator who is essentially a frightened child. Once that dynamic is established, the miracle can begin.

 

Eight. What contradiction about maturity do we learn in the story? The adult is relaxed enough to be a child and possess a child’s hunger to learn new things. We see this on page 397 when they’re watching TV. One of life’s contradictions is that we have to be mature enough to be children, to be relaxed enough to let go and let our child explore.

Nine. How do we know the narrator is a scared little kid emotionally? He keeps saying, “I’m not doing so well, am I?” He needs an adult’s approval.

Ten. How does the narrator change at the end of the story? In the beginning he is disaffected. By the end, gets excited, his legs become numb, he’s possessed with a sense of urgency and life purpose. He says at one point, “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.”

 

Part Two. Disaffected, adjective; Disaffection, noun:

To be disaffected is to be emotionally withdrawn, disengaged with the world, depressed. Disaffection is the condition of having given up on life and in essence being a member of the walking dead.

 

Part Three. The Causes of Disaffection

1.  You lack confidence to engage with others so you withdraw into yourself. Perhaps you were hurt in the past and don’t want to get hurt again, so you avoid people.

2.  You get married more for convenience and to shelter you from the world.

3.  You become addicted to your routines, which shut out the outside world.

4.  You are reflexively hostile to anyone new because they represent a threat to your existence. You hate change.

5.  You act like a churlish (grouchy) know-it-all who has all the answers, a person who dismisses everything as a “joke” and “utter nonsense.”

6.  You are incapable of listening to others. The only thing you listen to the Cynical Voice constantly grumbling inside your head.

7.  You are lethargic in your self-centeredness and numb yourself with various addictions in order to undergo your “slow death.”

8.  You teach yourself that there is no hope for change or a better life so you succumb to learned helplessness.

 

Part Four. Journal Entry

In a paragraph, describe someone you show who has over time become disaffected. (McMahon: talk about the divorced doctor)

Lesson #3: “Feathers” (332) by Raymond Carver

One. Reading Questions

1.  Explain the essay’s title. Iridescence, something that intoxicates, chimera, metaphor.

2.  What evidences the narrator’s empty existence on the first page? The monotony becomes "normal," that is it becomes something the husband and wife become used to. In fact, their life is one of hellish loneliness and depression, yet they're not aware of this fact. To be depressed on not know you're depressed is very dangerous because you do desperate things unconsciously such as pursue chimeras, illusions, projections of your own desires. 

3.  On page 333, what evidences the narrator’s dysfunctional marriage? The wife feels threatened by a simple dinner. How insular is she? What kind of stagnation are we talking about here?

4.  What reasons can we infer that the narrator and his wife don’t want children? Do children force parents into a social world? What else?

5.  How does “Feathers” repeat the same themes in “Cathedral”? See page 335. Openness vs. closed system of living. Edenic images similar to the paradise seen from the Cathedral. The Peacock is Otherness like the cathedral. The shimmering Otherness of the peacock is juxtaposed with the pedestrian banal working-class existence of Bud and his wife.

6.  How and why does Carver juxtapose the different economic classes in this story? Is he painting Fran as some anal-retentive middle-class suburbanite? See page 342

7.  How does Bud’s wish to fix his wife’s teeth repeat themes in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”? Living love vs. thinking about love.

8.  What significance is there in having an ugly baby in the story? 349, 350 The baby contrasts the peacock, the reality behind the chimera or ideal.

9.  Why did Fran and the narrator have a baby after visiting Bud and his wife? What were the motives? What were the effects of acting on this compulsion? 354, 355 Quick fix? Living vicariously through others?

10.               The story’s ending is about what? The reality of banality and the dream of Otherness? Looking to be razzle-dazzled by something that ends up being incurably ordinary? We seem to love an idea about life, marriage, having children, etc., but not the reality of it.

 

Part Two. The Chimera’s Definition, Causes and Effects

 

1.  The chimera is a mirage that draws us in slowly, starting with a burp or a trifle, a tease, an iridescent color that flashes before our eyes or it hits us over the head. In either case, it grows into an obsession and consumes all our energies, thoughts, and dreams.

2.  The chimera is based on unconscious longings for class ascent, acceptance, love, popularity, wealth, parental unconditional love (Rosebud), the Chanel Number Five Moment, distinction, proving our doubters that they were wrong.

3.  We project our fantasy onto a tabula rasa.

4.  Often the chimera is a panacea, a cure-all for all our woes.

5.  The Absolute Fallacy (success, fitness, perfection, perfect absolute relationship)

6.  The Transcendence Fallacy

7.  The Bitch Goddess Fallacy

8.  The inevitable despair of the chimera. George Bernard Shaw said there are two great tragedies in life: Not getting what we want and getting it.

9.  The cycle of ongoing chimeras, people who never learn and who go in circles, jumping from one chimera to the next.

10.               The paradox of the chimera: Chimeras destroy us but they also feed our dreams and in some ways give us strength, drive, motivation, and vitality that we otherwise wouldn’t have.

11.               The need for the chimera: We must have stars in the horizon for which he can row our oars.

 

Examples of chimera (have students come up with some):

 

1.  The low-carb diet or the South Beach Diet

2.  Yoga

3.  A Lexus IS350

4.  Viagra

5.  Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft

6.  Dianobol

7.  Having a six-pack

8.  Cosmetic surgery, botox or nose job or implants.

9.  G-Star Jeans (underground store for special jeans, not the ones you can buy at Nordstrom)

10.               the cognoscenti.

11.               Becoming famous

12.               Angelina Jolie; she’s more than a human. She’s become the great bitch goddess, every man’s dream and every woman’s nightmare. The fantasy of the seductress.

13.               Jennifer Aniston, the myth of the good girl, the myth of innocence.

14.               Celebrity of all kinds, an autograph, a sighting.

15.               Las Vegas

16.               Palos Verdes (my neighbors in Torrance are bitter that they haven’t moved to PV yet. Peevers.

17.               UCLA

18.               iPod

19.               Anything sold on the QVC network

20.               Marriage. Not all marriages but most are built on the Goody Box chimera. When I want a goody I reach into the goody box. But what happens when all the goodies run out.

21.               Me-Time. People who have lots of me-time are miserable.

 

1.  a panacea like a Fad diet

2.  a rite of passage like a car representing freedom, independence, and sexual attraction.

3.  a form of medication for depression or some deeply acute problem that you bandage with a simple solution; you buy a wardrobe to cover a restlessness and anxiety that haunts you.

4.  the myth of romantic absolute, fueled by crappy love songs.

5.  a childhood longing, like Christmas lights and Budweiser sign.

 

Part Three. 

Option #4: The Chimera

Compare Mel McGuiness’ chimera from “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” with the chimera that afflicts the couple in “Feathers.” Before you compare the chimeras from the two stories, begin with a one-page introduction in which you describe a chimera that once afflicted you or someone else you know. 

Journal Entry to Prepare for Chimera Essay

Write about a chimera you became obsessed with, how it propelled you into the world of solipsism, and how it crushed you with devastating disappointment.

 

1A Summer 2010: "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" and "Cathedral"

Lesson #1 “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”

  

Part One. Essay Assignment: The War Between the Ego and Empathy in Where I’m Calling From

In page one, profile someone who suffers “the type of swollen ego that results in solipsism and isolation from sanity, maturity, and the human race.” Then in your second page, profile someone who embodies the “sweet grace of empathy” and show how this person’s empathy connects him or her to others.

 

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

The above characters are antithetical to each other. Similarly, the stories pit characters at war between their egos and the liberation of empathy. Egotism in the stories (choose no fewer than 3) of Raymond Carver has grave consequences, which include _______________________, _________________________, ________________________, and ____________________________. In contrast, empathy has a healing effect on the downtrodden evidenced by _________________________, _______________________, __________________________, and ______________________________.

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from Where I’m Calling From, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.

 

Part Two. Reading Questions

1.  What ways does Mel represent the kind of egotism that precludes understanding, sympathy, and empathy? This cardiologist knows nothing about the real heart because he’s obsessed with the hearing the sound of his own voice, pontificating, bloviating, and bullying his opinions and higher truths over others. His boastful pride compels him to dominate all discussions. He is, to use modern parlance, a know-it-all. Even his theology studies render him ignorant about spiritual matters. He worships his Ego and Smug Self-Certitude more than he cares about love in the real world.

2.  What does the title suggest about the story’s theme? When we talk about love, we talk about everything BUT love. He who talks about love knows nothing about love. Why? Because in part love is not intellectual. Nor is it imposing opinions over others.

3.  Why does love so often result in hate and violence? Terri discusses her previous man Ed on page 170. You’re vulnerable to be betrayed on the deepest level. You’ve stuck your emotions on the table and are in a position to get hurt resulting in rage and sometimes violence. Once you’re in a relationship so deeply, it’s hard to escape so sometimes you feel cornered and this is where abuse occurs. Even though Mel doesn’t want to admit it, often love can go awry, turn into a passion gone wrong. Terri knows this from experience. Love can be the rich custard flan tres leche caramel or love can curdle into rancid chunks of cottage cheese. Mel wants a tidy theory about love that comforts him, but he is embracing a mythic over simplification of love, not the truth. In truth, love has a dark demonic side. Most violent crimes are crimes of passion.

4.  What evidence is there that Mel is a narcissist completely ignorant of love? He says after arguing with Terri about love, “That man tried to kill me.” He makes every conversation about himself, rather than coming to an understanding. See page 171.

5.  What stage of love is the narrator Nick in with his woman Laura? Eros, honeymoon, infatuation. See page 172. His love is untested because at this stage it’s an “easy love.” See page 174. Most Americans have an infantile notion of love as being that first stage in which love is a giant goody box. Whenever you want a goody, you reach into the goody box until the goodies are gone and then you get a new goody box.

6.  What is Mel’s obsession? Love. He always turns the subject toward love? Why? Because he hungers for a kind of ideal love that will ameliorate his raging egotism. He knows deep down something is wrong with him but his ego prevents him from laying it out on the table. Mel’s hunger for love is noble and true and authentic but his quest for love, finding a theory instead of love’s reality, is MISGUIDED and therefore doomed to fail. The more Mel searches for the perfect theory of love, the lonelier he becomes and this makes him hunger for love all the more. Thus Mel is trapped in a vicious cycle.

7.  How does Mel respond to Terry’s plea for empathy and understanding on page 172? He’s supremely unconcerned with her needs, only his need to be right.

8.  Why is Mel in part insecure or threatened by Ed’s demonic love? Because Ed was willing to die for love, something Mel can’t do because Mel cannot let go and lose control. His relationships must be very controlled due to his insecurities.

9.  How does Mel’s immature character force Terry to act? Like a mother. Mamma love. Too many women are mammas for their men. See page 175 as Terry assuages Mel’s insecure ego. Too many men are trapped in Mamma Love. They become helpless cripples nestling in the Womb of a relationship that renders them infants forever and ever.

10.               What journey are the characters embarking on? An exploration of love without defenses, without preconceptions. The alcohol is like a truth serum and they unshed their defenses and only when they have been reduced to a tabula rasa or blank slate can they see love in a new way. See page 176. A “forbidden” journey.

11.               Where does Mel show some humanity and humility? He expresses self-doubt and concedes that maybe Terri was right about love going bad. Yes, love curdles, goes rank. See page 176.

12.               What is Mel searching for on page 177. Permanence and transcendence. These are nice qualities of love, but they are absolutes and ideals and suggest a man who is more in love with the IDEA of love more than love itself.

13.               What makes Mel an interesting character? He can long for a “higher love” but be full of a serpent’s spit, venom, and hate. See page 178.

14.               What is one of Mel’s chief regrets? He never followed his passion, food. He probably became a doctor for status and now he feels compromised as a human being and dreams for some kind of fantasy love, an ideal love. See page 180 where Mel longs for chivalry. Chivalry is just a mask, a form of “armor” that prevents Mel from getting his hands dirty in life and facing his demons. See page 181.

15.               What if anything is profound about the story’s ending? 

 

Part Three. What 10 Things Should Mel Do to be a Happier, More Loving Person?

1.  He needs to take a “chill pill,” that is, learn to relax. He gets too worked up over things and as a result he becomes blind to his anger, egotism and obnoxiousness.

2.  He needs to become a better listener, listen more, talk less.

3.  He needs to learn to accept himself. He appears to be consumed by self-hatred. Why? Because he demands a perfect love from himself, an ideal life and he knows he’s fallen short. Worse, he does nothing to close the gap between his behavior and his so-called higher ideals. He is frustrated with himself and he lashes out on others.

4.  He needs to accept the demonic in others and himself in order to be less demonic. People who don’t acknowledge their inner demons are more dangerous than those who don’t.

5.  He needs to open his mind to definitions of love that are less ideal than his own. Perhaps he should incorporate a “dirty hands” philosophy.

6.  He needs to confront and acknowledge his insecurities rather than being in denial about them as he rages on Terry.

7.  He needs to see how he treats others, a sign of maturity, and maybe he’ll act more loving instead of talking about love all the time.

8.  He needs to realize his own cowardice and egotism have brought him frustration and unhappiness instead of blaming others.

9.  He needs to develop the courage to be honest when he’s sober, not just when he’s drunk.

10.               He needs to learn how to have conversations with people rather than lecturing people.

 

Part Four. Filling in your mapping components by answering a key question.

 

Egotism in the stories (choose no fewer than 3) of Raymond Carver has grave consequences, which include _______________________, _________________________, ________________________, and ____________________________. In contrast, empathy has a healing effect on the downtrodden evidenced by _________________________, _______________________, __________________________, and ______________________________.

Two Important Questions: Your Answers Will Outline Your Essay Number 1

Question One. What are the dangerous consequences of Mel’s egotism?

1.  Mel is obsessed with being right in his theory of love more than he is interested in connecting with people by listening to them and empathizing with them and making compromises with them.

2.  Mel is more interested in the idea of love, which assures his ego, than he is with real love, a complex beast that threatens his ego. Real love isn’t as safe as idealized love. Abstractions about love are just theories, stale formulas relegated to effete college professors. Abstractions don’t cut it in the real world. People tell me you can read parenting books until the cows come home, but until you parent a child, you know nothing about parenting. Mel can talk about love until he’s blue in the face, but until he really loves, he is an ignoramus about love.

3.  Mel’s egotism has blinded him from a painful fact. He doesn’t have conversations with people. He talks down and lectures to them. This disconnects him and pushes him into the world of solipsism in which he becomes the only reality.

4.  Solipsism, failing to connect with others, is a form of insanity. The telling signs of solipsism are self-pity, resentment, and narcissism (you’re the only one who matters, your suffering is worse than everyone else’s, your grievances are more compelling to everyone else’s). Tell the students about the doctor whose wife left him and the student who never dated after 20 years. These are two examples of people who are withdrawn into themselves and cannot connect with the outside world and as such are insane.

Question Two: What are the healing effects of empathy?

1.  Empathy, the ability to stand in someone else’s shoes, is liberation and “a vacation” from the prison of self-centered egotism.

2.  Empathy reveals strength and security. Only strong, mature, secure people are relaxed enough to let go of their ego so they can listen and be of service to others.

3.  Empathy gives us real self-worth because we actually see the value of us helping people. In contrast, egotism is a false self-worth because we have to constantly aggrandize ourselves with vanity. Vanity is the Mother of False Self-Worth.

4.  Empathy allows us to listen. Listening helps bring in new information, which forces us to let go of our old, stale ideas. Often we need new information to cleanse us of our old, stagnant ideas and to establish a tabula rasa or blank slate so we can begin anew.

 

Part Five. Student Activity

Think of someone you know who suffers from egotism and solipsism. This one-page profile could be used for the first page of your essay. 

Lesson #2: "Cathedral" (356)

Part One. Reading Questions

 

One. What is the irony of using a blind character in the story as a way of developing one of its major themes? See page 391 where the narrator recounts the blind man burying his wife and how “he had never seen her.” Who’s really blind?

Two. Explain the title. A Cathedral is where miracles happen. The miracle is that a dead man will be resurrected. The dead man is equated with the image of skeletons that occur later in the story during the TV show. Clearly, the narrator is dead and reborn by the story’s end.

Three. How does the narrator reveals himself in the first paragraph? He’s a defensive ignoramus and a man so isolated from the complexity of the human condition that he is a walking corpse. He’s a dead man. Later we find that he’s friendless. His wife says he has no friends. He lives inside himself, a prisoner of his own solipsism, which is fueled in part by fear.

Four. What is foreshadowed in the second paragraph? Robert’s sensitivity, tracing the wife’s face, will be passed on to the narrator at the story’s end.

Five. What is the narrator’s real source of jealousy? Dead people don’t like to see people living life fully. They want everyone to be as dead and miserable as they are. The narrator resents the blind man for living life fully.

Six. What do we know about the narrator’s habits? They’re reductionary. He does the same rituals over and over to close himself from emotion.  The TV watching, the fear of silence, the fear of conversation, insomnia, the depression, the smoking dope until he can crash in bed. The blind man represents change, a threat, an interference with his routine. Our routines comfort us, but they also imprison and eventually kill us.

Seven. What is the story’s turning point? Where Robert apologizes for monopolizing the talk with the wife. He shows empathy, something the narrator is lacking. He shows he has this quality, empathy, which evinces Robert’s maturity and gives him the credentials to be trusted as a parent figure for the narrator who is essentially a frightened child. Once that dynamic is established, the miracle can begin.

 

Eight. What contradiction about maturity do we learn in the story? The adult is relaxed enough to be a child and possess a child’s hunger to learn new things. We see this on page 397 when they’re watching TV. One of life’s contradictions is that we have to be mature enough to be children, to be relaxed enough to let go and let our child explore.

Nine. How do we know the narrator is a scared little kid emotionally? He keeps saying, “I’m not doing so well, am I?” He needs an adult’s approval.

Ten. How does the narrator change at the end of the story? In the beginning he is disaffected. By the end, gets excited, his legs become numb, he’s possessed with a sense of urgency and life purpose. He says at one point, “It was like nothing else in my life up to now.”

 

Part Two. Disaffected, adjective; Disaffection, noun:

To be disaffected is to be emotionally withdrawn, disengaged with the world, depressed. Disaffection is the condition of having given up on life and in essence being a member of the walking dead.

 

Part Three. The Causes of Disaffection

1.  You lack confidence to engage with others so you withdraw into yourself. Perhaps you were hurt in the past and don’t want to get hurt again, so you avoid people.

2.  You get married more for convenience and to shelter you from the world.

3.  You become addicted to your routines, which shut out the outside world.

4.  You are reflexively hostile to anyone new because they represent a threat to your existence. You hate change.

5.  You act like a churlish (grouchy) know-it-all who has all the answers, a person who dismisses everything as a “joke” and “utter nonsense.”

6.  You are incapable of listening to others. The only thing you listen to the Cynical Voice constantly grumbling inside your head.

7.  You are lethargic in your self-centeredness and numb yourself with various addictions in order to undergo your “slow death.”

8.  You teach yourself that there is no hope for change or a better life so you succumb to learned helplessness.

 

Part Four. Journal Entry

In a paragraph, describe someone you show who has over time become disaffected. (McMahon: talk about the divorced doctor)

Lesson Plan #4 for The Chocolate War: Determinism and the Death of Free Will

 

Part One. Essay Variation Based on Today’s Theme:

Analyze the lack of free will in Jerry, Archie, Brother Leon, Obie, and Goober as it evident in the novel.

Suggested Structure: In your first page, explain the difference between free will and determinism using appropriate example. Then in your thesis argue that free will is lacking in the novel’s characters who are beholden to psychological (irrational passions) and external determinism. The deterministic forces from which they have no free will are the lust for power, pride, corruption, revenge, the impulse to disdain the powerless, the pressure to conform, and the pressure to be obedient.

 

Part Two. Explaining Psychological Determinism

 

1.  psychological determinism: your environment and social conditioning leave an indelible print on your personality that no degree of “free-will” can change or erase. You are a product of forces beyond your control. Also referred to as “naturalism.” The characters in the novel are slaves to compulsions that they don’t see or understand.

2.  disaffected: the condition of being emotionally withdrawn, reserved in a condition of learned helplessness and cynicism, emotionally unreachable by the wall of defenses that were created long, long ago. We see learned helplessness in the depressed Jerry, Goober, and Archie. All 3 feel disconnected from others and in the novel all 3 betray themselves in one way or other.

3.  Innocent child’s dream of the omniscient parent: Jerry begins to see that his father has settled for mediocrity, that he never strove to better himself and deep down he is disappointed in his father and even has contempt for him. Without a father to look up to, Jerry feels aimless.

4.  Sadistic: taking pleasure in meanness, which is to say exacting cruelty upon others, especially the helpless. Brother Leon and Archie are examples of characters who have lost the ability to be happy except in the sick way of exacting cruelty against others.

5.  Post-traumatic stress disorder: depression, aggression, violence, and paranoia that results from repeated violent abuse. Sadly, we see that Goober suffers from it after doing one of the Assignments that sent Brother Eugene to the hospital.

6.  Rite of passage; a significant event that marks the passing from innocence to initiation; dubious outsider to loyal tribal member; childhood to adulthood; placid passivity to rigorous curiosity In the novel, conformity is the rite of passage, either selling the chocolates or doing an Assignment. These displays of loyalty and obedience come with a price: Compromising one’s individual conscience.

 

Part Three. Psychological Determinism means certain experiences leave a permanent stamp on our identity. What forces in the environment can forever cripple us emotionally?

 

1.  Abuse, the kind that Jerry and Goober suffer, results in post traumatic stress syndrome.

2.  Rejection from a group results in a sadness and loneliness that results in withdrawal, depression, and seeking out a unconditional love from another source. Consider the lives of two baseball stars Bill Buckner and Chuck Knoblauch who now just spend time with their families. They have disappeared from the game of baseball.

3.  Not getting unconditional love from your parents leaves a permanent hunger for love. Homeless teenagers spend their whole lives looking for unconditional love they didn’t find at home. Often I see them with dogs on the streets. There is a movie about this theme called Citizen Kane.

4.  A teacher who humiliates you and “has it out for you” can have a permanent effect, making you distrust education, making you hostile toward school, and distrustful of authority in general.

5.  Romantic betrayal can make you so distrustful that you make yourself ugly and throw banana peels in people’s path like a former landlady of mine who lived as a lonely miser after her fiancé dumped her for a fourteen-year-old girl and fled to Mexico.

6.  My wife told me that victims of sexual assault commonly gain in excess of fifty to a hundred pounds because they don’t want men to get close to them. We had a neighbor at our condo who was pretty but seventy pounds overweight and owned three pit-bulls whom she spent all her time with. My wife speculated she was a victim of an assault.

7.  Coming from divorced parents or parents living through an abusive marriage can make some children never want to get married. The statistics show that children of divorced parents have a 200 percent greater chance of getting divorced themselves.

 

Part Four. What forces in the environment “program” us in the deterministic sense to be  more successful?

 

1.  Having a family member with good social skills.

2.  Having a family member with a strong work ethic.

3.  Having a successful business nearby creates more traffic and more competition. For example, Starbucks makes other companies, such as Coffee Bean, more successful.

4.  The New England Patriots are the Starbucks of football. A lot of men hate the Patriots because men hate that which threatens their power. But the powerful are effective role models.

5.  Football was a garbage sport in the 1980s coached by rednecks with fat bellies. Not until Bill Walsh coached the 49ers in the late 1980s did all of football improve.

6.  Being raised with diverse food at an early age gives you a more sophisticated palate. Take my wife and me. She grew up on green Jell-O and a cheese sandwiches. I grew up on authentic Mexican cooking in San Jose, California, then moved to Berkeley where I ate Thai, Indian, and other spicy cuisines. It was in my environment. It wasn’t in hers.

7.  Determinism, obesity, and poverty: Poor people are fatter than middle class and rich people. There are many reasons for this, including the stress of poverty, which stimulates a “fat” hormone.

 

Part Five. Nihilism Is No Longer a “Choice” for Archie and Brother Leon

 

1.  nihilism, the obliteration of right and wrong, losing any stakes in life, nothing is at stake anymore, beyond caring is the shortest definition, a sort of spiritual death where you wander the world not caring if you live or die or amount to anything. Death of a moral compass.

2.  Anything Goes Morality or Moral relativism, make up your moral system depending on circumstances. Stealing, lying, cheating, and other immoral conduct can be rationalized under the right circumstances.

3.  Populist Fallacy: Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t I? Brother Leon presumably sees other teachers getting kickbacks, so he “joins the party.”

4.  Slippery slope is when your rationalizations lead to nihilism.

5.  In nihilism you reach the point where there are no rules so that “all is permitted” or “anything goes.”

6.  Inconsolable, learned helplessness, a sense that everything is futile so the only thing left in life is to “get yours.” In America, we have the nihilistic saying, “I’ve got mine. Get yours.”

7.  Point of No Return, like the cop who steals drugs 1,000 times.

8.  “Despair is not knowing it,” Kierkegaard

9.  empathy vs. self-pity, an eternal battle

10.               numbness, which leads to sadism, a perverted form of power in which one derives pleasure from inflicting cruelty upon others.

 

Part Six. Journal Entry:

For today’s essay variation, you are asked to explain determinism and free will in your introductory first page. Provide personal examples of determinism and free will, either in yourself or someone you know.

 

Summer 2010 English 1A Journal Entries on One Post

Entry One: Write about someone you know who is afflicted with concupiscence, which traps them on the "hedonic treadmill."  Or write about someone  who thinks he or she is rising when in reality he or she is falling. 

Entry Two: Write about your denial over a personal shortcoming followed by an awakening.

Entry Three: Describe someone you know who is flourishing in a paragraph. Or: Write about someone you know who benefitted from perdition. 

Entry Four: Write about how you conformed to peer pressure and how this blind obedience to peer pressure made you feel regretful afterwards because in part you compromised who you are. You compromised your integrity. And you compromised your values. The purpose of this journal entry is to have a salient first page for your research paper. 

Entry Five: Write about a time in your life when you succumbed to nihilism. Or write about someone you know who is a nihilist. Tell the students about your teenage friend who tried to bulk up to 300 pounds and failed. 

Or write about someone you know who exercised noble disobedience to use for your conclusion. 

Entry Six: Provide personal examples of determinism and free will, either in yourself or someone you know.

Entry Seven: Write about a personal experience you had where the abuse of power resulted in the loss of someone’s humanity. You could write about a bully, a cruel teacher who humiliates students, or some authority figure. Or you could write about how you exercised power in a way that you made feel regretful and guilty afterwards. You could use this anecdote for the first page of your essay. 

Entry Eight: 

Think of someone you know who, like Mel, suffers from egotism and solipsism. This one-page profile could be used for the first page of your essay. 

Entry Nine:

In a paragraph, describe someone you know who, like the narrator in "Cathedral," has over time become disaffected.

Entry Ten: Write about a chimera you became obsessed with, how it propelled you into the world of solipsism, and how it crushed you with devastating disappointment.

Entry Eleven: Write about an ironic reversal in your personal experience or in someone you know. 

Entry Twelve: Write about a sibling rivalry that contains the symbiosis evident in Donald and Pete.

Entry Thirteen: Write about someone who is spoiled and narcissistic in a way that reminds you of Mark from the story "Desert Breakdown, 1968."

Entry Fourteen: Write about a personal "back in the world" experience.  

Cooked Lesson #1: Thesis and the Tragedy of Coming from a Fatherless Home

 

One. The Four Questions I Ask When I Grade Your Essay

1. How clear is your purpose (thesis) and how effectively do you keep focused on your purpose throughout the essay?

 

2. How well do you develop your ideas with concrete detailed paragraphs?

 

3. How well do you bring the "Excitement Factor" into your essay by finding an approach that stirs your emotional fire, passion, and conviction?

 

4. How effectively do you execute the mechanics so that in terms of grammar, precise word choice, and formatting you deliver a polished, professional manuscript?

 

Two. The Five Writing Traps to Avoid

1.  Turning in late papers—I set my sights on the new cycle of essays so that when a late paper, from the old cycle, comes my way I look at that paper with disdain. In fact, my heart is “dead” to the late paper and I will mark that late paper with a C or D grade no matter what the paper’s virtues. My hostility to the late paper is exacerbated when students give me their grossly tardy expositions during the last two weeks of the semester, a time in which I am  already inundated with stacks of on-time papers, thereby making me especially vitriolic toward late essays, which I see as an affront to my dignity and self-respect and which therefore compel me to mark those essays with a D or F grade. I harbor enormous suspicions towards alleged “medical and family emergencies” which “necessitate” turning in a late essay. While I concede that compelling circumstances do exist and while I address those alleged compelling circumstances on an individual basis and with sympathy, I have found over the last twenty years of teaching that well over 99% of the students who claim special circumstances  are a constant source of chafing agitation and demonstrate a highly annoying predictable pattern of lame excuses, “bad luck,” and emotional neediness which, for their sake, I do not indulge lest I should be guilty of encouraging their dysfunctional behavior. In conclusion, do not, I repeat, do not turn in late essays.

2.   
Writing essays that are full of the obvious and self-evident—an essay full of obvious truths and clichés has no reason to exist, no matter how well organized and well written. Writing about the evil of greed and materialism or the way in which we are withdrawing into our technology or how we have forgotten to love and respect one another are all true and noble sentiments but they have no business in your papers since, presumably, we already have those beliefs so that these papers are superfluous. To capitulate to obvious truths about the human condition is to sermonize or to lecture down to your reader. Also, if the material is obvious, you will be bored with your own essay and your reader will even be more bored. Therefore, strive to challenge your intellect and argue for a position that requires vigorous defense and sophisticated analysis. 


3.  Writing essays from your head but not your gut—intellectual explorations can only take you so far. A memorable essay must be fueled by both your mind and a fire in your belly. If you can’t muster a fire of passion for your topic, then your essay will be flaccid, perfunctory, and lackluster, sins which your reader will never forgive. You cannot fake passion. Either you have it or you don’t. It is your responsibility to find a way to bring authentic passion to your essay. 

4.  Writing half-baked essays—a half-baked essay is a rough draft, a seed of a good idea. It may contain a recognizable structure, topic sentences, a clear focus, and an exciting approach but it falls on its face because the essay lacks details, color, and concreteness. A telltale sign of a half-baked essay is short paragraphs. Fully developed paragraphs, 100-150 words, are a sign of a fully baked exposition, which I can spot immediately just by glancing at your paragraphs. A lack of details, haphazard sentences, redundant syntax, lack of word variety—all these things evince a half-baked essay written in the rush of a moment or with one hand on the keyboard and other holding a cell phone. I have sadly received many half-baked essays because students carried on with cell-phone conversations while writing their essays. 

5.  Relying on your computer or a tutor for spelling, grammar, and other facets of your exposition—realize that your computer is a nincompoop that is incapable of discerning the difference between possessive case and a contraction (whose/who’s or your/you’re or its/it’s) and many other spelling scenarios. Its grammar check is a complete stinker. Its ability to detect other syntax errors is at best weak. Do not rely on it. Do not rely on your tutor for grammar either. Over the last twenty years I have received thousands of “tutor-approved” essays rife with comma splices, run-ons, fragments, noun-pronoun errors, dangling modifiers, faulty subordination, elephantine syntax, and other egregious errors that have prompted full investigations into the credentials of these so-called “tutors.”  I have also over the last twenty years graded horrific, cliché-laden essays that the students defended by saying, “But my tutor liked it,” or “It was my tutor’s idea.” I don’t care what your tutor thought or said about your essay. Your tutor means absolutely nothing to me. Therefore rely on no one but yourself. This is a life lesson in being street smart, the most valuable kind of intelligence. Remember that Rule Number One in being street smart is trusting no one. Rule Number Two is don’t make your pride, performance, and excellence dependent on others. Your excellence and success is your responsibility and no one else’s.   

Three. Qualities of a Successful Thesis, the Foundation of Your Essay

1.  One sentence that declares or asserts a position that can be demonstrated with examples.

2.  
The examples can be expressed in mapping statements or mapping components.

3.   Avoids being self-evident or obvious but creates new insights.

4.  
A good thesis is visceral, from the gut, meaning you have an immediate emotional connection to it. The intellect comes later.

 

Sample Thesis with Mapping Statements

Phil Connor’s time warp in Groundhog Day is an excellent illustration of Wallace’s warning about the dangerous consequences of us settling into our morally bankrupt “default setting.” First, Connor is a man who has become a slave to his “template” of self-centeredness, unable to connect with the outside world, a form of insanity. Second, he is absent of any beliefs other than conviction of his own vanity making him blind to his own repulsiveness. Third, his misanthropic bitterness creates a self-fulfilling prophesy that brings out the worst in others and therefore reinforces his cynicism. Fourth, he cannot escape his private hell until, in Wallace’s words, he develops a “critical awareness” of his misguided “certainties” and realizes he is “totally wrong and deluded.”

 

An effective way to write a thesis is to give it concession, refutation, and mapping components (underlined below).  Example:

While ABC's Gray's Anatomy is often cleverly written and deals with timely topics that are dramatized in a complex, compelling  manner, the show too often is sodden with cutesy dialog, predictably needy characters who are less endearing than they are chafing,  and highly annoying, "sensitive" scenes that deteriorate into over-stylized MTV-style music videos accompanied by precious and cloying indy-pop folk rock.

The above example has concession by conceding that the show is often "clever," "timely," and "complex"; at the same time, in the thesis' independent clause the writer refutes the show by accusing it of being "cutesy," "chafing," and "annoying." Finally, the thesis has mapping components that outline the body paragraphs and thus give the writer a road map or organizing structure for the essay.

 

Sample thesis structure for Cooked in which the essay is divided into two parts:

 

Jeff Henderson goes down the road to insanity through __________________, _________________, and ___________________and finds redemption through ___________________, _______________________, and _________________________.  

Part Four. The Risks of Coming from a Fatherless Home

From Life Without Father:

In 30 years the rate of fatherless children has doubled. And death isn't the cause. Abandonment is.

Teen suicided has tripled during that time. 

72% of murderers grew up fatherless. 

70% of long-term prison inmates grew up without a father.

Another Source: New York Times

Another Source: Root Cause of Violent Crime

Another Source: Jeff Henderson Becomes a Father Figure in His TV Show

Another Source: Beliefnet Interview

Part Five: Journal Entry: Someone You Know With No Father Who "Acts Out"

Describe the behavior of a young man you know who has no father. Does his behavior evidence the need for a father? Does he seem to be going down a "wrong path"? Explain. 

Part Six: Essay for Cooked

Essay One: The Fall, Perdition, and Redemption in Cooked

In 1-1.5 pages, write a salient, concrete, colorful profile of someone you know who experienced a fall, perdition, and redemption. You can focus on concupiscence, denial, or effects of a fatherless childhood. If you don't know such a person, find a character in a film or a work of literature. 

Then using an appropriate paragraph transition such as "Similarly" or "Likewise," you might start your thesis paragraph this way:

Likewise, we read in Cooked about the extraordinary Jeff Henderson who undergoes his own Fall into the abyss of insanity and a redemption born from necessity. JH's Fall is caused by ___________________, _________________________, and _____________________________. Only after sinking to the rotten depths of nihilism does he begin his journey toward redemption. This salubrious journey is born from _____________________________, ____________________________, _____________________________, and ______________________________________.

 

Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used fromCooked, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title. 

Back in the World Lesson #2: “Say Yes”

 

Lying Down the Psychological Groundwork for Back in the World by Tobias Wolff

 

Part I What are the 10 Obstacles of Going “Back in the World”?

 

1.  Naïveté or innocence like the wife in “Say Yes” or Krystal in “Desert Breakdown”

2.  Egotistical blindness that results in a refusal of accountability, self-introspection and creates an inflamed sense of entitlement like Peter in “The Rich Brother.”

3.  Narcissism, which results in delusions of grandeur like Mark in “Desert Breakdown.”

4.  Misguided good intentions—perhaps the wife in “Say Yes” thought she could “reform” her husband.

5.  Misguided ambition—Leo in the “Missing Person” aspires to a “spiritual life” for which he has no aptitude.

6.  Unconscious fear—Leo withdrawals into the church because of his fear of women, heartbreak, intimacy and in a general sense a fear of the world. In many ways the story “The Missing Person” is about the power of corruption for transforming our lives for the better—if we react to corruption in a way that makes us stronger, not weaker. To borrow a clichéd quote from Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

7.  Wishful thinking—it’s human nature to want to believe that things aren’t as bad as we suspect they are. Perhaps this is the case of the wife in “Say Yes” and Krystal in “Desert Breakdown.”

8.   Oversimplistic view of the world that causes us to look at the surface without peeling the outer layer and seeing the complexities, contradictions, paradoxes, and enigmas that lie underneath.

9.  Having parents, a spouse, a boyfriend, a girlfriend or other enablers who bail us out every time we sink so that we develop a false sense of security and feel free to pursue our delusions with impunity like Mark in “Desert Breakdown.”

10.               Money can give us a false sense of security and invincibility so that we can assert our most destructive, grotesque aspects of our personality and think we can get away with it—like Peter in “The Rich Brother.” Also take a look at Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears.

 

 

Part II: “Back in the World” Moments:

 

Hopefully, all of us will have a “back in the world” moment, that defining instance in which we take our heads out of our proverbial butts and see reality for what it really is:

 

1.  You wake up one morning and realize your boyfriend or girlfriend is the devil and you can’t believe you spent all these months, maybe even years, jumping through hoops to stay in the relationship.

2.  You wake up one morning and realize you need to move out of your parents’ house.

3.  You realize that if you continue hanging out with your loser friends, you’ll never make it through college and you’ll end up like them, living paycheck to paycheck and hanging out doing nothing for the rest of your life.

4.  You realize you have crappy study habits and that if you don’t achieve more consistency in your homework, you’re going to be a failure or at best a mediocrity.

5.  You realize that a clique or social circle that you thought you were part of wants nothing to do with you.

6.  You realize that you have grotesque table manners and that you slurp and inhale your food in such a way that grosses everyone out.

7.  You realize you have poor personal hygiene and you realize that if you don’t clean your teeth and wash your armpits, no one is going to want to be around you.

8.   Your messy room and your dirty car reflect on something deeper inside your personality that points to chaos, lack of focus, and general disarray.

9.  All the time you spend on the Internet is a reflection of how you have failed to maintain real human relationships and how you use this fantasy Internet life to compensate for your emotional retardation.

10.               You realize a supposed friend or even family member has back-stabbed you all your life and there’s nothing left for you to do but break all ties with this individual.

11.               You realize that you and your wife can only buy so many toys and organically baked treats for your dog and that it’s time to have a real child.

12.               You realize that it’s you alone who’s responsible for your road rage and that if you don’t do something about your anger issues you’re going to kill someone or yourself.

13.               You realize that you alone are responsible for all your failures and that you can no longer afford to blame your parents for your dissatisfaction in life.

14.               You realize that you’re majoring in a college subject to please your parents and other family members but that deep inside you despise your major with every fiber of your being.

15.               You realize that you’re fiancé who is beloved by all your friends and family is someone whom deep down you’re just not really into or worse is someone whom you truly despise.

16.               You realize that you’re so emotionally needy that you spend your credit cards on garbage you don’t need and that if you continue with  this compulsive spending you’re going to spend the rest of your life getting pimped by the credit card companies.

17.               You realize that all the promising diets you spend so much time and money on give you a phony short-term weight-loss that always ends up with you gaining all your weight back and hundreds if not thousands of dollars poorer for your vain efforts.

18.               You realize that paying thirty dollars a month to be a member of 24 Hour Fitness or Balley’s or Gold’s Gym isn’t sufficient motivation to get you off your butt because you’re essentially a lazy person.

19.               You realize that paying a personal trainer sixty dollars a month isn’t sufficient to get you off your butt because no one but yourself will give you the motivation you need to be successful in life.

20.               You realize after going onAmerican Idol that you can’t sing. That’s pathetic. It took you the experience of going on American Idol and being laughed at by Simon Cowell and millions of others before you realized you couldn’t sing.

Part III: Journal Entry

Write about a personal "back in the world" experience.  

 

1A Quiz 4 for Spring of 2010: Back in the World

In a 500-word paragraph, explain the meaning of Tobias Wolff's book title Back in the World. Be sure to use concrete examples.