Essay Assignment
Write 1,000-word essay in which you develop an extended definition of the term narcissism using at least 3 stories. You must have a Works Cited page with no fewer than 3 sources, the stories, my blog, and a source of your choice. about how Wolff’s stories give us a penetrating look at narcissism. Use no fewer than 3 stories from the book.
What Is an Extended Definition?
It contains 3 elements, a single-sentence definition with the term, the class, and the distinguishing characteristics.
The distinguishing characteristics are the mapping components that outline the body paragraphs of your essay.
Examples
Water is a liquid recognized by H2O.
A sycophant is a person who relies on false flattery, spying, groveling, and other types of manipulation to curry favor with a higher-up.
Processed food is a food product that is packaged in boxes, cans, or bags and contains additives, artificial flavors, and other chemical ingredients.
Real food is a whole food from nature that is unaltered, unprocessed, unpackaged, and untouched by the hands of industry.
Nostalgia is a sentiment distinguished by a pain or ache for home, a hunger for "the good old days," and is triggered by smells, music, visions, and other cues.
Ennui is a form of fatigue characterized by dissatisfaction, self-loathing, meaninglessness, and boredom.
The cognoscenti is an exclusive inside group of self-described hipsters who consider themselves more cool, more informed, and more intelligent than the "stupid, toothy peasants who slog across Planet Earth."
When we look at an extended definition, we often attribute distinguishing characteristics by looking at causes and effects.
Example: Defining Narcissism in Brian Gold from "The Chain"
Brian Gold feels humiliated, small, and helpless. He sees power by an act of revenge.
Humiliation feeds the ego's need for grandiosity, a form of narcissism.
Example of Intro and Thesis
I was six years old and trying to tell myself that everything was okay as I walked with some kids to KR Smith Elementary in San Jose, CA. But the smell of rotten tuna wafting from my Captain Kangaroo lunch box was so strong the three boys accompanying me were asking me what the hell that horrible smell was, so we stopped in a field and to appease their curiosity I opened the lunch box and the tuna sandwich, rotten and slimy, mixed with the mayonnaise, had escaped its plastic baggie to create dark ink streaks and odious chunks along the insides of the tin box. The rancid tuna had coated my apple, my orange, and whatever else Mother had put inside for me that day.
One of the kids asked me if I was going to eat this and I shrugged. I assumed I had no choice. It was my lunch after all. So I closed the lunch box and we continued our way to school and then I put my lunch box alongside everyone else’s in the designated coat closet.
During class, Mrs. Corey sniffed along with the other students and crinkling her forehead complained about a rotten fish smell. Other students were squeezing their noses and making mock gagging noises. It was clear Mrs. Corey could not teach until the matter of the rancid fish smell had been solved. The boys I had walked to school with pointed at my offending lunch box upon which Mrs. Corey walked cautiously toward it, as if approaching a landmine, slowly opened the box and stared at its contents as if witnessing an abomination from the bowels of hell. Then looking at me, she said, “Did your mom pack this?”
I nodded and Mrs. Corey winced in a way that castigated my parents, my extended family, and my ancient ancestors and delivered terrified pity on me.
She then closed the lunch box, gave it to the teacher aid to place outside, and announced to the class that my food was unfit for eating and that she needed volunteers to take one thing out of their lunch and give it to me so that I would have something to eat during lunch time.
During the lunch break, I was too mortified to have an appetite and I remained on my blanket while avoiding the odd stares from my classmates. It was my first lesson on how generosity, no matter how well-intentioned, becomes a burden when tinged with pity because the recipient of the charity feels belittled, humiliated and smaller as a human being than the giver. Charity is too often a bargain in which the recipient loses his dignity and feels humiliated in so many intangible ways that accepting the charity becomes impossible.
Sadly, though, Brian Gold, overcome by humiliation, accepts "charity" in Tobias Wolff's masterful story "The Chain" and in doing so he strikes a Faustian Bargain (deal with the devil) that sends him down a rabbit hole of destructive narcissism evidenced by ______________, _____________, ______________, and ____________________.
Two. Narcissism Fuels Spite in “The Chain” 131
One. Spite: The impulse for revenge. More specifically, spite is an obsessive appetite for harming and injuring someone as a form of self-gratification and the misguided pursuit of justice. The narcissist often feels victimized by others or he feels envious of other people being more happy than he is. In both cases, he reacts with spite.
Two. Self-Destructive Spite: “Bite your nose to spite your face” captures the Faustian Bargain of revenge in which the avenger suffers self-mutilation as he seeks misguided “justice.”
Three. What are Brian Gold’s psychological weaknesses that fuel his spite?
1. Self-pity causes resentment, which seeks relief through lashing out at one’s perceived enemy. Gold pities his low station in life. He believes a more grandiose existence, one rich in bling and opulence, will make him happy when in fact what he really needs is integrity and dignity. See page 136.
2. Lacking in self-esteem and self-worth, Brian Gold needs an enemy(a scapegoat) to elevate his self-regard and to appear heroic toward others. See page 132 in which Brian Gold is obsessed with boasting of his heroism to others. See page 137 where he fears people perceive him as being weak and passive for being a Jew. He appears to have an inferiority complex.
3. He resents that people, including himself, question his masculinity and he seeks revenge to impress people like Tom Rourke so that they will give him “Man Points.” See page 135 in which Tom goads Brian into admitting he liked the taste of blood because, we can infer, real men like blood. No real man sits back and lets a dog attack his daughter. A real man gets revenge. In other words, Brian Gold's motivations are to appease his ego rather than do what is best.
4. He feels alone in his anger, feels that his anger is not understood (certainly Brian Gold’s wife doesn’t understand it) and he seeks those who will help him coddle his anger because in part this newfound anger empowers him. Angry husbands do one thing and one thing only: They cause their wives to go into withdrawal mode. If you're angry when it's appropriate, fine, but when you're always angry, you become boring and annoying. You're no longer a husband; you're a whiner. A woman will either tune you out or leave you. See page 133.
5. The aggrieved oversimplifies a single event and allows that one event to be a repository for all the anger and frustration in his life so that in seeking to avenge one injustice when in reality he has consolidated all his anger from many areas of his life and focused on one thing. This is the case of Brian Gold.
6. He has an injured ego, which seeks to restore itself by dominating its perceived enemy. Dealing with an injured ego is extremely difficult because these people become inconsolable, perceiving help or good advice as a form of patronization or manipulation. The person with the injured ego is usually paranoid.
7. Brian Gold has a sense of violated honor, which results in the aggrieved lashing out as misguided attempt at restoring his honor. In an attempt to restore his honor, he resorts to the cheap propaganda of the Taliban, calling the disc jockey a “Child of Satan” to justify his vandalism. See page 144.
8. He possesses self-righteous indignation, which gives the aggrieved an unlimited license to exact justice against his perceived enemy.
9. He is stricken by envy, which causes self-pity and resentment and turns the aggrieved into a “hater” who seeks consolation by degrading and humiliating those he sees enjoy an unfair advantage in life over him. See page 138 where Gold ponders the wealth the owners of the dog enjoy.
10. He has too much alone-time, which allows the aggrieved to dwell and obsess over his perceived grievance, nurturing it and giving it life until it grows beyond his wildest dreams. The craziest people in the world spend too much time alone.
Four. What does the story tell us about the unintended consequences of spite?
1. The aggrieved “bites his nose to spite his face,” meaning that in the process of injuring his enemy he suffers an even greater injury.
2. The aggrieved is so intoxicated by his own self-righteous indignation that he is blind to the self-destruction that results from his spite.
3. The aggrieved often forms alliances with unsavory, even satanic individuals like Tom Rourke, who promise to help carry out his acts of revenge. Once the pact is made with the likes of Rourke, Gold now owes a debt to him and here we arrive at the Faustian Bargain. See pages 140 and 142.
4. Once the aggrieved tastes revenge, he develops an addiction to it so that revenge becomes his only form of “pleasure.”
5. Once the aggrieved begins his act of revenge, he sets into motion a chain of events that grow beyond his control resulting in destruction that is disproportionate to the original infraction.
6. Fixation, stagnation; also called arrested development or emotional retardation.
7. Perdition, a form of shame and punishment that lasts a very long, long time. See page 148.
Five. Defining Narcissism with a single-sentence definition.
You begin your extended definition with a single-sentence definition.
A single-sentence definition has 3 components.
1. term
2. class
3. distinguishing characteristics
Narcissism is a mental disease recognized by extreme self-centeredness, disregard for others, pathological lying, spite, and delusions of grandiosity.
Definition of narcissism by Geoffrey Miller, author of Spent: Narcissism "combines an intense need for admiration by others with a lack of empathy for others."
Six. Sample Essay Structure for Essay #1
In a page, profile a narcissist you know, someone who is afflicted with self-pity, neediness, vanity, resentment, and the kind of insecurity that makes he or she resort to embellishing his or her life with a grand facade, a mask of bling and braggadocio that cannot conceal an emptiness, a self-loathing, and a lack of real meaningful connection to self, others and life. Use concrete details, snippets of dialogue, and a salient anecdote to bring to life this sorry narcissist, who for better or worse, is your friend, relative, family member, or acquaintance.
In your second page, build a bridge between your profile and your analysis of the Tobias Wolff stories. Your bridge, or transition, might start like this: "Likewise, the stories inThe Night in Question feature characters who highlight the same narcissistic qualities as my friend. These qualities show that narcissism is a disease evidenced by _________________________, _____________________________, ________________________, and _____________________________.
Your body paragraphs will expound on the mapping components (indicated by the blanks above)
Writing an Extended Definition
You need to begin with a single-sentence definition, which contains the term, narcissism; the class (mental disease? affliction? spiritual malaise?); and distinguishing characteristics, which may contain the following:
1. self-centeredness that becomes so extreme it's no longer called self-centeredness; it's called solipsism; withdrawing into your own head to the point of being insane.
2. self-pity
3. spite born from envying other people's happiness, real or imagined. In modern America we call these people "haters."
4. low self-esteem accompanied by intense self-loathing.
5. Self-loathing creates the need for a fantasy self, an imagined Grand Self. We call this delusions of grandiosity.
6. A sense of entitlement. "The world owes me."
7. He sees himself as the embattled victim resulting in paranoia. "The world is out to get me."
8. An obsessive need for vindication. "Everyone thinks I'm a loser, but I'll show them." In reality, no one thinks about him one way or the other. No one cares.
Sample Introduction, Transition, and Thesis
Over twenty years ago, I was teaching a composition course on extended definition and the students had to define passive-aggressive behavior: exacting hostility against another person in an underhanded way. There was this beautiful student who wrote her essay about how she hated her father but rather than confront him directly she got the most disgusting boyfriend she could find: ugly, slothful, incontinent, gluttonous, gelatinous. He had dandruff, caked dirt under his fingernails, BO, and of course he didn’t work. This malignant narcissist would luxiriate at her house several hours a day sitting in her father’s favorite chair while watching TV and gorging on chips, dip, and the like. He was full of belches and flatulence and was generally unpleasant. In other words he was the perfect foil, a way for the daughter to rub her father's face in her putrid spite.
Fortunately for her, she realized in writing her essay (it appears my essay assignment saved her life in a way) that she was hurting herself far more than she was hurting her father and this recognition gave her the motivation to break-up with the malodorous, flatulent bum.
I still talk about this girl's essay to my composition students to this day and ask the question: What happened to the smelly ne’er-do-well? If he has half a brain, he has to understand that having this beautiful woman as his girlfriend for so many months was against all odds, an aberration, a freak of nature, a violation of the Laws of Reproduction. No way an ugly, smelly wastrel gets to be the boyfriend of a pulchritudinous goddess.
Sometimes I find myself wondering if the guy killed himself. Surely, he had to know after enjoying paradise he had nowhere to go but down.
My students laugh and think I’m being glib when I say this, but I’m dead serious. Aren’t we all instilled in our DNA with the dream to improve our lot but when that dream is over, when we know we got lucky and cheated the system and that we’ll never taste paradise again, where’s our motive to get out of bed in the morning?
I can only imagine this narcissist wallowing in self-pity now that his taste of Paradise is gone forever. Similar displays of narcissistic self-pity are evident in Tobias Wolff's masterful short story collection The Night in Question in which the characters render us a most penetrating definition of narcissism. We see that narcissism is an acute mental affliction distinguished by _____________________, ______________________, _______________, ___________________, and ______________________________.
Seven. In-class exercise: Write down the name (use a fake name if you want but make-up a name that captures the personality of your subject) of a narcissist you know and make a list of 5 things that evidence his or her narcissism.
One. The Foundation of any Writing Class: Thesis
Qualities of Successful Thesis:
1. One sentence that establishes a demonstrable argument or purpose.
2. Demonstrable means two things: writer has authentic emotional connection to material so he or she doesn’t run out of gas at the midway point. Secondly, it means writer can support the thesis with mapping statements.
Sample: The popularity of SUVs reveals an evil streak in American consumers. First, SUV makers market their vehicles toward people who wish to dominate and bully on the road; second, SUV drivers feel entitled to cheap gas to quench their driving habits, at the expense of American dependency on oil from hostile countries; third, SUV drivers often recklessly multi-task as they live inside their little cockpit fantasy. Lipstick, DVD, Carl’s Jr. gluttony, cell phone, etc. SUV drivers don’t care that their vehicles decapitate car drivers.
3. A good thesis defies the obvious, the self-evident or The So-What Factor:
Samples:
Tom Cruise and Terrell Owens are jerks.
Couples will improve their intimacy if they invest more time in communicating with one another.
Narcisissm is a bad way to live your life because you're so selfish all the time.
If you become a narcissist, no one will like you anymore.
What is a good thesis?
A good thesis often answers a compelling question.
Why does no one care about Barry Bonds, even as he closes in on Hank Aaron’s record?
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, how did the US government leave so many people to die in a country that is the richest and freest in the world?
Why do women continue to outnumber men in college enrollment? Patience, fortitude, humility, pride, long-term vision. What is it?
Sample Thesis Statements
Taking your date to a restaurant on Valentine’s Day is an exercise in foolishness and futility because _______________________, ____________________________, _____________________________, and ________________________________.
The popularity of American Idol is rooted in our unquenchable appetite for seeing others mocked and humiliated. This appetite stems from our ____________________________, _________________________, _______________________, and ____________________________.
There is a certain type of SUV driver who embodies the most malignant characteristics of American narcissism. These characteristics include ___________________________, __________________________, _____________________________, and ______________________________.
Contrasting thesis: The SUV driver and the Mini Cooper Driver give us a picture of two very different types of Americans, the low-brow troglodyte vs. the high-brow hipster. The trog can be distinguished by his penchant for ________________________, ______________________, and _______________________ while the hipster’s calling card is his _________________________, ____________________________, and _______________________________.
Writing Assignment
Write a 6-page research paper in which you develop a thesis about the mental disease narcissism by writing an extended definition of the term. Use no fewer than 3 stories from the book.
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