Breakthrough Writer

All Back in the World Lessons on One Post

"Rich Brother" Lesson

"Missing Person" Lesson

"Desert Breakdown, 1968" Lesson

"Say Yes" Lesson

"Our Story Begins" Lesson

"Our Story Begins" Lesson

 

Links for Parallelism

Purdue Owl

Parallel Usage

Parallelism in a Thesis

Parallel Structure Quiz

Part One: 3 Traps of Life As They Are Embodied in the Story's Characters

Trap One: Hopeless Despair: The doctor who wouldn't let go of his divorce pain and walked around an empty house. 

In a similar trap, Charlie feels like a nonentity, a cipher, a nobody. He is looking for a sense of place, purpose, distinction, and belonging. He is looking for hope yet he feels like an outsider, a young man whose writing aspirations evidence a life of futility and vanity. As a result, he is overcome by the paralysis of self-pity. His hope lies in his passion and hunger for literature and writing in general. By the story's end, he identifies with the ship moving through the fog, an act of faith and desire kept alive.

Trap Two: Vainglorious Pride: A woman died because she wouldn't take off her body-length mink coat in Buenos Aries, an an outdoor bazaar.

Hipsters say "we're educated, hip, cosmopolitans, not like those close-minded provencial tribalists," and in doing so these hipsters become the very tribalists they claim to despise.

Pride always results in blindness.  

Audrey and George, the two illicit lovers embody pride and vanity. They feel morally and spiritually superior to the man they’ve betrayed, Truman. They are in fact blinded by their vanity, which is ironic in the context of Miguel whose passions make him blind.

Audrey and George think they're better educated than most; they think they're special; as a result, they are blind to their vanity.

Trap Three: Self-Satisfied Mediocrity and Complacency: The couple in Torrance who have separate TVs and pills and fast-food refuse on their porch. 

 Truman is a man who evidences a lack of curiosity regarding anything beyond his small circle of interest; he shows a certain philistinism (disdain for arts) and is so lax and self-satisfied with his current station in life that he is blind to the fact that his wife Audrey his having an affair with his “friend” George.

 

Part Two. Thematic Elements

Fog is pervasive in the story. Fog appears to represent blindness, a struggle to see.

All the characters are blind in some fashion or other and this blindess brings them to one of Life's 3 Traps. Like a typical college student, Charlie is blind to his identity, his niche, his sense of belonging; Audrey and George are blind to their vanity that makes them repulsive and obnoxious; Truman is blind to his complacency that stagnates him and makes him fail to see his wife is venturing into adulterous waters; Miguel is blinded by fanatical love.

Irony

Story’s irony is that in the midst of all this blindness and fog there is hope: All the characters are starting their lives over. A new start suggests rebirth and the possibility of seeing things again.

Jahiliyya, this is the Arabic term for a long, protracted period of ignorance, the dark ages, if you will. Every character is stuck in the Jahiliyya, as we all are at one period in our lives.

Charlie is blind to his own life but he becomes the Third Eye of the love triangle, witnessing in an almost voyeuristic fashion the sad truth that Truman is about to confront.

Final paragraph shows a lobster flailing its pincers, perhaps a sign of desire. Perhaps our “salvation” is staying hungry, keeping our passion, as a sort of antidote from complacency and vanity and despair.

Part Three. Class Activity for Reviewing Irony in the Stories and Developing Your Thesis

Explain specific, distinguishing characteristics for irony for the following stories and then develop a thesis that allows you to put ALL the distinguishing characteristics for your research paper:

"Rich Brother" (example: The more assured Pete is in his identity as the "rich brother" the more he remains blind to his essential weakness: He is an emotional cripple, incapable of change, incapable of maturity and humility, and incapable of freeing himself from his sick addiction to playing the role of Mother to his brother Donald.)

"The Missing Person"

"Say Yes"

"Desert Breakdown, 1968"

"Our Story Begins"

Review of Essay Assignment

In a 6-page research paper, use no fewer than 3 stories from the book to write an extended definition of the word irony. You must chronicle an ironic experience you had in a personal narrative for the first 2 pages.

Some thesis statements to avoid:

Wolff's stories are rich in irony.

Irony really hits the characters with a wallop.

I really like all the irony in Wolff's stories.

We learned that irony is part of seeing the world in a new way and that once you see irony, really see it, you can't go back to your pre-ironic existence.

I feel better about myself now that I learned the definition of irony and have decided to change my major.

Understanding irony in Wolff's stories really opens your eyes to life's deeper truths and now that I've read this book I'm a better person. Thank you, McMahon.

Understanding irony makes me feel special, like I'm a member of an elite club, but the downside is now I feel lonely because so few people understand life the way I do. McMahon, you ruined my life.

I've studied irony in McMahon's class and read all the stories but now I'm more confused about irony more than ever and will probably drop McMahon's class and take 1A from another instructor.

Irony is not really that big of a deal. I see it everywhere. I don't see why McMahon has to make a big production of it. Frankly, I'm bored with the subject of irony and am ready to give up on McMahon.

Studying irony makes you a better person so spend a lot of time studying it and you'll see how much better your life is.

I don't believe in irony. It doesn't exist. It's just a cynical attitude McMahon has about life and he's trying to infect us with his cynical attitude. I resent him and I resent the class. At the end of the semester I'm filing a complaint.

 

Signal Phrases to Integrate Quotations into Your Essay

Writing Guide and Exercises

Essential Clause Defined

Essential and Nonessential Clauses

 

 

Spring 2012 English 1C Syllabus Posted on The Critical Thinker Blog

Critical Thinker now has the Spring 2012 English 1C syllabus. 

Spring 2012 English 1A Syllabus (Revised Point System)

Email: jmcmahon@elcamino.edu

Office: PE4; extension 5673

Website: Breakthrough Writer: Easiest way to find blog is to go to Google and type “breakthrough writer.” My blog will be your first hit.

http://herculodge.typepad.com/breakthrough_writer/ 

Essay Assignments and Texts:

 

Night by Elie Wiesel.

Major Themes in Night

1.      Denial and acclimation to evil

2.      Danger of silence

3.      Theodicy: The problem of reconciling evil to an all-powerful, all-loving God. There are many parallels to Job.

4.      Remembering what happened and keeping vigilant; we must take responsibility for our apathy and indifference to what happened in the past.

5.      Dehumanization and scapegoating throughout history. 

6.      Loss of innocence:

You lose your faith in the world as you once knew it. God will not or cannot protect you from evil. Nor can your parents. Before his experience in the concentration camp, Elie assumed these two propositions were true. 

You lose your orientation to the world as you once knew it. The boundaries of common decency that keep evil in check do not exist. 

You lose the image of yourself you once valued. You no longer believe in the common decency of humanity and recognizing the human capacity for evil you change so radically that you can not even recognize your old self.

You are overcome with the fear that God does not exist and fear that without a god anything--no matter how vile--is permissible. "If God doesn't exist, then everything is permitted," is taken from the Brothers Karmazov by Dostoyevsky. 

7.      Enduring suffering comparable to Job

Essay 1:

Essay Options for Night: You must have a Works Cited page with a minimum of 5 sources.

 

 One. Open-ended: Take one of the above themes and develop a thesis for a 6-page research paper. You must use at least 5 sources, the book Night, my blog and at least 3 other sources.

Two.  In a 5-page essay, compare Wiesel’s ordeal with that of Job’s, especially in the context of theodicy.

Three.  In a 5-page essay, argue whether or not Wiesel has salvaged a moral code from his ordeal or has he succumbed to nihilism.

Four. In a 5-page essay, analyze the effects of Wiesel's loss of innocence and how he deals with those effects. 

Five. Analyze the false logic behind the deniars of the Holocaust. 

 

Essay 2

A Good Fall by Ha Jin: In a 6-page research paper, develop a thesis about freedom as this theme applies to no fewer than 3 stories in the collection.

 

Essay 3

Back in the World by Tobias Wolff: In a 6-page research paper, use no fewer than 3 stories from the book to write an extended definition of the word irony. You must chronicle an ironic experience you had in a personal narrative for the first 2 pages.

 

Essay 4

The Overcoat and Other Short Stories by Nikolai Gogol: In a 6-page research paper write an extended definition of the word chimera by comparing the "overcoat" to an “overcoat” from your personal life.

 

Research and Grammar Book: A Writer’s Resource El Camino College Handbook 3rd Edition

 Grading

 4 Research Papers: 6 pages with correct MLA format Works Cited page: 200 each for 800 points

4 Take-Home Quizzes (posted on blog a few days before due date) 50 points for 200 points.

Grant Total: 1,000 points. 900 is A. 800 is B. 700 is C. 600 is D.

 

You Can’t Revise Essays or Quizzes for Higher Grade

 

In the past, revisions have been the equivalent of me correcting student papers, essentially playing the role of proofreader so that I’m giving higher grades for my corrections. I have concluded that such a process is a complete farce so instead of revisions you can give me the first 2 or 3 pages of your essay anytime before it’s due, including on the day you turn in the quiz and I will identify patterns of grammar errors and content problems so that I can hopefully get you on the right track.

 Late Essays Are Deducted a Full Letter Grade

 Because getting into the lax habit of finding excuses for turning in late work is anathema to succeeding in the real world, late essays are discouraged by deducted full letter grade. If essay is more than a week late, you cannot get any points and mathematically you will fail the class so most likely you will be dropped.

Plagiarism, the act of trying to deceive your instructor by turning in work that is NOT your own writing, will result in zero points and will seriously endanger your possibility of passing the course. 

Pressure to Get an A and Things That Disqualify a Student from Receiving an A Grade

I know a lot of students are under excruciating pressure to get A grades in their classes. I appreciate that and because I do, I need to explain two things that disqualify a student from getting an A grade:

One: Turning in a late essay more than a week after its due date. These late essays get ZERO points and will mathematically eliminate the chances of an A grade.

Two. Cheating, plagiarising, trying to deceive me by turning in work that you didn't write will render a ZERO grade.

Three. Using social media to distract yourself and others in class. This includes texting, surfing internet, playing computer games, leaving class frequently to take calls, etc. 

 Writing and Reading Schedule

February 13 Introduction, Grading Policy

February 15 Night; read first third

February 20 Holiday

February 22 Night; read second third

February 27 Night; read last third

February 29 Quiz 1 due in my office

March 5 Essay 1 due in my office

March 7 Essay 1 due in my office

March 12 A Good Fall: “The Beauty” and “Temporary Love”

March 14 “A Composer and His Parakeets” and “Choice”

March 19 “The House Behind a Weeping Cherry” and “A Good Fall”

March 21 “In the Crossfire”

March 26 “The Bane of the Internet”

March 28 Quiz 2 due in my office

April 2 Essay 2 due in my office

April 4 Essay 2 due in my office

April 16 Back in the World: “The Missing Person”

April 18 “The Rich Brother”

April 23 “Desert Breakdown, 1968”

April 25 “Say Yes”

April 30 “Our Story Begins”

May 2 Quiz 3 due in my office

May 7 Essay 3 due in my office

May 9 Essay 3 due in my office

May 14 “The Overcoat”

May 16 “The Overcoat”

May 21 “The Overcoat”

May 23 Quiz 4 due in my office

May 28 Holiday

May 30 Consultation in my office (bring your thesis)

June 4 Essay 4 due in my office

June 6 Essay 4 due in my office

1A Quiz #3 for Fall Semester 2011: Back in the World

In 600 words, define irony as it is rendered in the stories "The Missing Person" and "Desert Breakdown, 1968."

Lesson 6 for A Good Fall: "Bane of the Internet"

Lexicon 

One. jealousy is a form of helplessness: a mental disease, a form of imprisonmnet, a form of madness turning into a demonic obsession in which the subject projects his own desires to commit heinous acts of infidelity on his partner. As his obsession grows, he becomes more and more controlling and suffocating until he reaches a yet even higher level of insanity in which he WANTS his partner to cheat on him in order to vindicate his delusions. He longs to shake his finger and say "I told you so! I knew it!" Jealousy is sometimes rooted in insecurity; in worse instances, jealousy is rooted in sociopathy, the evil condition of despising all people or being indifferent to others' suffering or both.

 

Two. Projection: Assuming others have your worst traits while remaining blind to those traits you have in yourself.

 

Three. Vindication: proving to others and yourself that you are right. The problem with wanting to be right all the time is that you forget more important things like reaching an understanding with others.

 

Four. Solipsism is a state of helplessness: extreme self-centeredness in which you look at others as either competitition to be destroyed or trophies to be displayed for your glory. Solipsism leeches away at empathy until there is none. The ultimate destination of solipsism is insanity. With solipsism there must be a degree of paranoia and delusions of grandeur.

 

Five. Seeing the trees but not the forest: You micromanage the small things and lose sight of the more important things (Lina)

 

Six. Obligation to conformity of the social order vs. obligation to one's true self (Lina)

 

Seven. Heartless reciprocity: Doing a good deed not out of love but to demand that the person you help be under obligation to return a favor, often bigger than the original good deed (Zuming)

 

Eight. Spleen love: The more you love someone, the greater degree that love can turn to hate (Panbin).

 

“The Beauty” 25 (story resembles true news report)

 

1.     What evidence is there that Dan has been suffocating his wife Gina? Control, jealousy, mistrust, the sense that Gina is hiding something from him, which she is, but he has no idea. The problem is that the more he suffocates her, the more she wants to live in a parallel universe away from him as an escape thus reinforcing his suspicions. They are caught in this vicious cycle.

 

2.     How does Dan’s jealous behavior actually encourage a closer friendship between his wife Gina and her friend Fooming Yu? Fooming Yu knows her secret and uses it to hold power over her, so Gina is being controlled by two men. Plus she's raising a child. This will lead to her insanity if nothing changes.

 

3.     What evidence is there that Dan pursued Gina as a trophy object and not a human being? See pages 29 and 32. Dan sees Gina as a competition, not as a human being. His relationships are all compromised and poisoned by his egotism and solipsism (extreme self-centeredness).

 

4.     How does his daughter Jasmine enflame Dan’s jealousy? See page 28. Baby doesn't look like either parent. So who's the father?

 

5.     What is the irony of Dan’s visits to the bathhouse?

 

6.     What is Dan specifically jealous about on page 29? Fooming knows more about Gina than does Dan. Perhaps Dan has little interest in Gina other than the way she makes her husband look good like an accessory.

 

7.     How are Dan’s character flaws rendered on page 29? He has a Darwinian view of the world that makes his humanity ugly. Everyone is a competitor for status. Another flaw is that Dan suffers from projection; since he wants to cheat, he projects, that is, he assumes his wife wants to always cheat on him. The more jealous the husband, the more likely he is to cheat.

 

8.     What is the real source of humiliation Dan suffers on page 31? He cannot control his wife.

 

9.     What evidences a sense of resentment Dan harbors against his daughter Jasmine on page 35? He resents her for impeding his sleep "on purpose."

 

10.      How is Dan seen as a man of abstractions, not reality, on page 36?

 

11.      What is the essential insanity of jealousy? See page 37. Once you invest energy into believing that your spouse is cheating on you, you HAVE to believe it in order to justify and vindicate all your lost energy.

 

12.          Unravel the mystery of Gina. 40-48

 

13.      Is Dan’s curiosity and suspicion toward his wife vindicated on page 44?

 

14.      How is Dan’s inhumanity revealed after he hears the truth? 45 "You gave me a raw deal! No wonder Jasmine is so homely."

 

15.    What hypocrisy regarding self-deception does Dan reveal on page 45?

 

16.     Explain the story’s ending, Dan’s reluctance to go home. He feels betrayed because he can no longer trust his wife who duped him.

 

17.      While one crisis has been resolved regarding Gina’s identity, there is a deeper, unresolved crisis that doesn’t bode well for the marriage. Explain. (Dan’s character, overwrought by egotism, solipsism, superficiality, centripetal development, etc)

 

“Temporary Love” 175

 

1.     What is the perplexing situation called a “wartime couple”? Cohabiting to reduce living expenses while spouses live in another country. In the case of the story, the two roommates fall in love.

 

2.     What are Lina’s flaws? Naiveté and rigid adherence to loyalty code prevent her from seeing the big picture and the truth. Her loyalty to convention becomes her prison. Or is it a sign of good character? Both?

 

3.     How do we know that Lina is in denial? Over what? 178 (mutual convenience)

 

4.     What does it mean to be “responsible” on page 179? How could we have opposing definitions? Do we betray ourselves to be responsible to convention and tradition? Is this "responsbility" a form of imprisonment?

 

5.     Contrast Lina’s life with Panbin and her life with Zuming. How is it the difference between heaven and hell? One man is a vampire. The other man shows the love of reciprocity.

 

6.     What evidence is there that Zuming does not love his wife? He is not interested in love but control.

 

7.     Zuming nursed Lina’s father after he had a stroke. Does this make Zuming seem like a loving person? Explain. 185

 

8.     What does Lina discover after she accuses Panbin of telling Zuming about their affair? 187

 

9.     One of the story’s sad points is that Panbin opened Lina’s eyes as to what kind of men there are in the world. Explain in the context of the ambitious Zuming.

 

10.     Once you’ve tasted good love, can you leave it and settle on a compromised, degraded version of it? Explain.

 

11.     Will Zuming leave Lina some day? Explain. 190

 

12.     How does Panbin’s life illustrate “spleen love”? See 191-194. He becomes an “international womanizer,” a nihilist, a bitter misanthrope.

Consumer Addiction and Learned Helplessness in "The Bane of the Internet"

One. How Do You Defend Yourself Against Addiction When It Comes Upon You Gradually?

Slippery Slope:

The Internet begins as an insidious process of dissolution, wearing down the Third Eye bit by bit until slaves of the Internet have no free will, no freedom to act independently and rationally.

First we stop writing letters. We write degraded, abbreviated emails and settle into convenience. And then we whet our appetites or I should say we inflame our appetites on various consumer goods so well packaged on the Internet.

We click on images and images feed envy and envy feeds unrealistic expectations. 

The most dangerous things that happen to us in life happen incrementally and insidiously, bit by bit, under the radar. When we lose our souls, it never happens in a grand, tumultuous moment. It always happens gradually. 

There is a perhaps overused analogy of a frog comfortably waddling in a pot of room-temperature water. The water slowly heats up and painlessly the frog is dead. Such is internet addiction.

Two. Convenience Trap:

As we enjoy more and more conveniences, we develop a dependence on them resulting in the erosion of our tolerance for pain, hard work, patience, and putting for meaningful effort to maintain human relationships. Before we can understand what has happened to us, we have become emotional cripples. 

Three. Paradox of the Internet:

The more "connected" we are with technology, the more disconnected we become because the modes of communication are superficial and these superficial modes replace meaningful ones.

Four. The Purpose of Advertising:

To create desires that would not otherwise exist. The internet is more than anything an arm of advertising. Advertisers know your psychology more than you do. They know it more than your therapist does. They are smarter than your therapists. Advertisers are the supreme psychologists of the world.

Those who know psychology go into advertising.

Those who want to know about psychology but never really understand it become therapists.

Five. Libido Ostentandi:

Latin for the need to show off, to be ostentatious as a way of finding validation, regognition, and for being flattered with the title of having "good taste."

Six. The Death of the Rational

The older sister says "be rational" but to no avail. The younger sister has no Third Eye. Therefore, she has no free will and is at the mercy of her irrational impulses. She is a slave to nonsense. 

Consumerism is based on the irrational: 

"Oh, what a feeling!" (Toyota)

"He's got gum!" (Wrigley's)

Make your boss Stouffers Stuffing and get a promotion

Seven. The dangers of consumer ostracism:

If I don't have X, people won't accept me into their tribe; if I don't have brand XY, people won't love me the way they should; if I don't have brand XYZ, I won't find fulfillment and as a result I won't be worthy of other people's love.

Eight. Older sister becomes a Cash Momma instead of a loved family member.

In fact, the older sister, living in America, becomes the object of scorn and envy and as such is not loved at all but despised.

Nine. The consumer addict becomes a cynical nihilist:

Selling organs probably a ploy but in any case the younger sister is making a Faustian Bargain, a deal with the devil.

Ten. Being a Consumer Is in Many Ways Being Stuck in Adolescence

Consumerism is a form of arrested emotional development. You're stuck in adolescence, which is defined by moments of grandiosity (inflated expectations of consumerism) followed by disappointment, self-pity, and self-hatred. These feelings of self-loathing compel you to seek more grandiosity (buy more crap) followed, once again, by self-pity and disappointment. 

Getting trapped in this cycle is a form of learned helplessness. 

When you buy a car, there are heightened emotions, adrenaline kick, hormone spike, for example (study at Duke showed men gain testosterone when sitting in a Porsche and LOSE tesosterone when sitting in a Camry. Where's the free will in that?) and then after the hormones settle, you descend into a Consumer Hangover.

And what is the remedy for a Consumer Hangover? More shopping! And what follows more shopping? Another Consumer Hangover. 

Eleven: Consumerism Is About Finding Meaning, Idendity, and Belonging

When we look to consumerism to replace basic human needs such as meaning, identity, and belonging, we call this impoverishment through subsitution. The more we fill the void in our lives with fake albeit potent "meaning," for example, the more we crave real meaning and try to fill the void with more and more fake meaning. 

Buying an iPad, a Mini Cooper, or a BMW grants us privileged enterance into a special club where we luxuriate with people who remind us of ourselves and our values. 

Sample Thesis Statements That Are Too General Or Too Obvious

"The Bane of the Internet" is about imprisonment.

"The Bane of the Internet is about consumer addiction.

"The Bane of the Internet" is about a greedy woman who loses her soul to the devil.

"The Bane of the Internet is about an American from China who watches helplessly as her family in China become full of greed, envy, and spite.

"The Bane of the Internet" makes it clear that we should maintain meaningful communication with our family.

"The Bane of the Internet" shows it's important to have the Third Eye to ward off greed and addiction.

"The Bane of the Internet" is an excellent story about how self-destructive consumer addiction can be.

Better Thesis:

"The Bane of the Internet" is example of the type of story in Ha Jin's collection in which the absence of the Third Eye results in the loss of freedom evidenced by __________, __________, __________, ___________, and _______________. 

How to Use the Third Eye to Escape the Learned Helplessness of Consumerism

 

 

Introduction About Learned Helplessness

 

 

The Curse of Tatiana Minero

 

 

The incident that sealed my deeply entrenched bitterness and my brooding disposition forever, an event that at the time seemed relatively harmless, happened to me over thirty years ago. I was sixteen, a bodybuilder of svelte proportions, tanned and endowed with long brown locks, luscious thick eyebrows, and piercing beady brown eyes. I had showy squared-off cheekbones and a strong commander-like jaw that allowed me to exude a certain swarthy appeal. But beneath my supercilious, self-assured pose resided your typical teenage male, a social nincompoop, self-conscious, awkward, prone to excessive sweating. I was, like many young men my age, tongue-tied around women, having devoted all my time and effort to honing the perfect body but spending zilch on attaining even a modicum of a personality. A pity I didn’t have the insight to see that such a condition would lead to a life-long curse, a searing affliction that men suffer when they are compelled to look back on a lost opportunity and then are left to wonder what could have happened if only they hadn’t fumbled the ball.

 

We all fumble. We all make mistakes. But we all learn from our errors and go on with our lives. Right? Wrong. Dead wrong. Take it from me, a middle-aged, rancorous man, heavy-hearted, emotionally-arrested, a slave to the past,  a helpless victim to a memory that, against my will, plays over and over in my mind and keeps its freshness and vitality even as I wither away.

 

The incident happened in the dead of summer. Scheduled to enter Mr. Teenage Golden State in a couple of weeks, I was tanning myself at Cull Canyon Lake, when I noticed an olive-skinned girl had thrown down her towel close to me and plopped herself down on the sand. This was no ordinary girl. This was a sixteen-year-old goddess, the fabled Tatiana Minero. Her body slathered in a deliquescing, zero-sun protection tropical banana-coconut tanning oil,  she was soon stretched out in the supine position, revealing her smooth, willowy body in a tiny green chambray bikini, the material so scanty that both top and bottom could easily fit inside a robin’s egg. Her straight, dark, silken brown hair flowed down the length of her sleek, reticulated back. Her diminutive ankles were adorned with little shimmering bracelets of tiny silver, almond-shaped bells that jingled when she walked, emitting a sort of siren’s call so that every time she stood up to walk toward the drinking fountains, all of the men, overcome with a sort of smoldering, glandular itch, abruptly stopped what they were doing to observe what was no doubt the most cataclysmic event of the day, the witnessing of Tatiana Minero strolling slowly toward the drinking fountains to take a sip of water. To see Tatiana Minero get up from her towel, stroll toward the fountains, wet her parched mouth, and return to her spot on the sand was to be keenly aware of a palpable change in the atmosphere. Male hormonal levels, tensions, and anxieties immediately began to rise and seethe as all men’s eyes were glued to Tatiana’s trajectory to and from the drinking fountains. It was as if her mere act of walking was a rare phenomenon, one of the great wonders and mysteries of the world, so that all the men at Cull Canyon Lake, not wanting to miss a second of this breathtaking spectacle, became completely fixated and motionless in a sort of bizarre time warp whereby Planet Earth seemed to have, in deference to Tatiana, stopped rotating.  I can still see the men frozen between the apex of their leap off the diving board and the water below them, I can still see them stuck in mid-air as they lunge for a Frisbee or a football, I can still see them unable to clamp their teeth down on the mouth-watering poor boy sandwich they were eager to bite into just a moment before Tatiana Minero stood up and, like the Priestess of Planetary Rotation, halted the Earth’s revolution around the Sun. All of the men at the lake, their conversations and antics interrupted, their lives put on hold, their very thoughts jammed, were noticeably agape, their eyes burning with torment and insanity, as they beheld this sylphlike teenage girl walk ever so slowly toward the drinking fountains.

 

To add to our misery, occasional breezes wafted Tatiana’s sweet-smelling tanning oil into our direction, affording us a redolent reminder of her presence so that, like dogs in some cruel Pavlovian experiment, we shuddered with violent paroxysms as we inhaled her potent, ambrosial cocktail. 

 

But the torment didn’t stop there. As if Tatiana wasn’t already unbearably irresistible, she also enjoyed the cachet and supernatural aura of  belonging to a prized progeny of sisters, aunts, and cousins, who, known simply as The Minero Sisters, were legendary throughout the San Francisco East Bay for their beauty, the kind that aroused such passion that men squandered entire fortunes, warred and conspired against each other, and plotted diabolical schemes into the deep of the night for the privilege of being one of their suitors.

 

As I tried to relax on my pale orange Charlie Brown bedspread,  I had heard some guys nearby whispering to each other, with the kind of excitement and conspiratorial glee reserved for surprise movie star appearances, about how this gorgeous girl lying on the sand next to me was one of the Minero Sisters. To merely utter the words “Minero Sisters” elicited an immediate smile and understanding and sometimes caused the hairs behind a man’s neck to bristle, for the words had the same kind of power and brand recognition as the words BMW, Mercedes Benz and Lexus.

 

Some guy from my school had introduced me to Tatiana as she was lying on her beach towel just a few feet away from me. To my surprise, upon meeting me, her ears perked up and her dark saucer eyes seemed to greedily soak in her view of me as she sat upright, supported by her long, slender arms, their sleek shape and cocoa butter tan highlighted by gold arm bracelets coiled around her delicate wrists like writhing snakes. With a coquettish giggle, she outstretched her legs in front of her while her high-arched feet circled playfully, causing her ankle bells to jingle. Then turning her head toward me in a way that caused her long dark brown hair to whip around her body like a matador’s cape, she stared at me, asked me who I was and why she had never seen me before.  The tone of her voice was downright imperious. She sounded like a mildly irritated queen who would have her informants beheaded for having failed to apprise her of my very existence. “How come I’ve never seen you before?” she asked again. I told her I attended Castro Valley High. No wonder, she said, she had never seen me; she was a student at Hayward High School. Then out of the blue, she asked me a question that caught me completely off guard:

 

“Are you a good kisser? Cause with a body like that, boy, it would be a real shame if you weren’t a good kisser.”

 

In shock, dumbed by her beauty, and paralyzed by such a brazen proposal, my bowels loosened, and I found myself unable to speak. I tried and tried with all my will to say something in response to her audacious remark but my lips were pressed shut. I would have been happy merely spitting out some incoherent gibberish, but my brain synapses were apparently short-circuited rendering my jaw locked and I was revealed for who I truly was, a helpless mute, a dumbfounded ninny, an inexperienced awkward-handed Billy goat,  unworthy of holding court with the great Tatiana Minero. 

 

My failure to respond to her scintillating offer seemed to tell her all she needed to know about me, which was, of course, that for all my tanned, sculpted muscles, I was in fact not a good kisser, not just in the literal sense of not being able to kiss, that is, the mechanical act of caressing her lips with my own, but in the fuller, broader, more devastating sense of not having the confidence, the moxie, and the élan, to express passion toward her. Her question about my kissing was in a way an ingenious work of espionage; she had sent a reconnaissance team, a sort of Geek Patrol, into my psyche to see just what I was made of and found, rather quickly, that I was indeed a geek, so that, armed with this information, she insouciantly turned around and did not speak to me again.

 

Ever.

 

It was not just that she did not speak to me, but, on a more traumatic scale, that she actually seemed to recede from my universe, fade, and disappear, forever out of my grasp so that now, over thirty years later, I still reconstruct the event and imagine how rapturous it would have been had I had it within me to respond to her question with something charming, assured, and sophisticated, something that would let her know that I was indeed the great kisser she had been looking for.

 

Please don’t get me wrong. It’s not like my whole life has succumbed to this one incident. I’ve moved on as best I could. I went to college, got a decent-paying job, and married a beautiful Mediterranean woman. She is a splendor to behold, voluptuous, large-lipped, blessed with long curly brown hair. Quite frankly, the best way to imagine my wife is to think of Anita Ekberg in Federico Fellini’s famous fountain scene in La Dolce Vita. Yes, my wife does possess what many might call that larger-than-life kind of beauty, the kind that is so powerful and delectable that I enjoy, in the public arena, the assurance and satisfaction that other men will seethe with envy and admiration whenever they see me with her.

 

But you see, not all is well. My wife is often awakened at night by my crying out Tatiana’s name. Yes, I still dream of her. Imagine it. Tatiana, a girl I never even touched, being the cause of my greatest infidelity! It brings me so much anguish to still be under her spell more than thirty years later. She is such a haunting presence in our home, such an unwelcome apparition. Sometimes my wife, after hearing me speak of Tatiana in my sleep, must leave the bed and weep downstairs. I no longer try to comfort her, for I’ve learned that in these moments she is inconsolable and that my words, no matter how kind and sincere, only torment her all the more.

 

I rarely sleep at night myself because I fear I may see Tatiana again. Sometimes she laughs. Sometimes she says she still wants me. Sometimes she cries because, she says, I have betrayed her.  Sometimes she does not even appear beautiful but looks decrepit, hollow, and reptilian. I know she is not the same girl who spoke to me at the lake over thirty years ago. She is something else entirely, a demon, a succubus, an unclean spirit that slowly rots my soul, eats away at my marriage, and shows me no mercy.

 

I fear that if this goes on my wife will leave me. She hasn’t said so explicitly but I know she is considering it. Who could blame her? Married to a man whose heart still clings to something that is not even real. A man who cannot and will not let go of the past. A man who feels entitled to nurse his grievances, to make them more important than anything else in the world. This, you see, is the very curse I’ve been talking about—the  stubborn refusal to let go, the unrelenting determination to make the lost opportunity more significant than it really was.

 

Downstairs I hear my wife crying. I know it’s my fault, for I’ve been dreaming of Tatiana again, uttering her name like a whimpering dog. Yes, I am pathetic, repulsive even. But equally repulsive is my wife whose loud, peasant-like sobs and that hideous drink she’s been taking lately—a vermillion green chalky substance that her doctor promises will assuage her chronic dyspepsia.

 

I cannot contemplate my wife’s gaseous condition without flaring my nostrils in disgust, after which I feel compelled to imagine my lovely Tatiana, so full of grace, sophistication, and splendor. She would never suffer such an unwomanly affliction that would require the consumption of a bitter-tasting noxious beverage. Nor would she ever cry like that. No indeed. Tatiana, you can be sure, would weep in silence and her tears, running down her velvety cheeks, would only enhance her already sublime beauty, the kind for which an idiot like myself would throw away his entire life. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Example of an Introduction about the Learned Helplessness of Consumer Addiction, Transition, and Thesis

Evisu, True Religion, G-Star, Slim Flare, Citizens of Humanity, 7 For All Mankind, Diesel . . . I found I could not sleep at night unless I recited names of fabulous jeans, jeans that cost between $200-400, jeans that boasted of denim so soft, so textured, so resplendent, so magical, so distinctive, and so empowering that they put all other jeans to shame and rendered the wearers of those inferior jeans pariahs unworthy of my company. The glorious name-brand jeans I am speaking of had almost supernatural powers so that simply wearing them afforded you membership to a special club, a high-brow coterie of people in-the-know, people who could not be bothered by the rest of mundane humanity.

This underground designer jean society often communicated on Internet message boards, chat sites, and met monthly at swank cocktail parties where they would show-off their jeans to others whose jean expertise made them qualified to truly appreciate the way the jeans showcased your svelte thighs, cupped and massaged your rock-hard buttocks, and delineated the appropriate, eye-brow-raising contours. Marriages and other dynamic relationships were born from these designer jean parties where matches were made in denim heaven.

Of course, ordinary people lacked the imagination and refined sensibility to seek out and wear the designer jeans I am speaking of. Rather, only a rare breed, a self-described cognoscenti, coveted these elite jeans. We were people who were plugged-in to a secret society, a mysterious network through which our belonging entitled us to know everything that went on in this world that “really mattered” before it “went mainstream.” We had, for instance, software embedded in our cell phones so that when a new jean came out on the market or a jean went on sale our cell phone vibrated pleasantly and thereby alerted us to a new consumer opportunity. We had unique access to special underground warehouses in the garment district where we could buy jeans as rare and mysterious as the Dead Sea Scrolls. These were mysterious locations so secret we had to be blindfolded and escorted down several spiral stairs to a dank basement where an old lady with moth-ball breath would rudely shove the pair of designer jeans into our hands after we gave her a wad of cash. We weren’t even allowed to try the jeans on, but because their very elusiveness gave them unusually high cachet among the designer jean community, we took the chance that they’d be a perfect fit and usually we were right and found that these underground designer jeans afforded us glories that no other jean could give us.

This isn’t to say that we, as members of the elite designer jean cult were absent of problems. We had some, to be sure. One is that once we put on a pair of jeans that we absolutely loved, we found it almost impossible to take the jeans off, even for showers, the beach, and bedtime, so that for many of us our jeans doubled as bathing suits and pajama bottoms. Also the first day we got our jeans we’d often be overcome with a sort of ambulatory mania by which we’d feel compelled to walk all over town so that the world could see us in our perfect-fit jeans. We’d strut across the mall, around the neighborhood, and into strange homes and do a pirouette until we were escorted off the premises or chased away by vicious attack dogs.

We couldn’t wash these jeans because every wash faded and thus diminished them. Thus we walked around in filthy, great looking denim rags, Fabreezing them, but soon, that's wasn’t enough to curtail the stench that was redolent of cow dung. Nor could I do anything to stop the rashes, ingrown hairs, boils, and bacterial infections rendered from wearing filthy jeans for six months without changing them. 

The skin infections combined with the over-tight jeans sometimes strangulated the femoral artery and caused gangrene and some of us had to have our legs amputated.

You would think having our legs cut off would finally remedy our jean obsession, but you're wrong.  These amputees simply bought prosthetic legs so they could adorn them with even tighter jeans than ever. In a perverse way, the prosethetic thighs and calves afforded them an opportunity to elevate their jean obsession to even greater heights. In fact, a whole specialized jean industry was developed to target those who hobbled on their new prosthetic limbs.

Imagine intoxicating yourself with the delights of adorning your plastic legs with jeans while forgetting to lament the loss of your natural limbs? 

What a woeful race we were, slaves to our consumer addiction. 

Indeed, the above account shows that consumer addiction is a disease that is accompanied by learned helplessness. Likewise, this same helplessness is chronicled in "The Bane of the Internet," which shows, like members of the jean cult, the key factors of consumer addiction, including _____________, _______________, ______________, and _________________.

In Class Activity:

Develop a thesis that compares three to four stories. 

All Lessons on One Post

 

MLA Sample Research Paper

Here's an excellent sample research paper in MLA format. 

McMahon's English 1C Blog Link: The Critical Thinker

My 1C blog has gone through some name changes, but we've settled on the Critical Thinker. 

Lesson #4: In the Crossfire: Welcome to the Third Eye

 

Essay 2: A Good Fall by Ha Jin, 150 points 

In a 5-page essay, contrast helplessness and its resulting recurring cycle of futility with the Third Eye and its resulting effective action in at least 2 of the stories. Use personal interviews to give further depth to your contrast of helplessness and the Third Eye. Your sixth page, your Works Cited page, should have my blog, the book, and your personal interview.

Suggested Structure

Paragraph 1: Define learned helplessness and Third Eye

Paragraph 2: Give examples of both from your own experience, personal interview, movie, book, story, etc.

Paragraph 3: Transition to a thesis about learned helplessness and Third Eye as they pertain to Ha Jin's stories.

Paragraphs 4-6: Body paragraphs devoted to learned helplessness (block form)

Paragraphs 7-9: Body paragraphs devoted to Third Eye

Paragraph 10: Conclusion

Sample 2-Part Thesis Template for Essay Assignment

The darkest stories in Ha Jin's collection render characters crippled by learned helplessness evidenced by ___________, ___________, _____________, and _________________. In contrast, those characters who experience freedom possess The Third Eye evidenced by ___________, ____________, ______________, ______________, and _________________.
 

The darkest stories in Ha Jin's collection, including ____________, ________________, and ________________ render characters imprisoned by learned helplessness evidenced by _________________, _______________, and _________________. In contrast, the more optimistic stories, including ______________and _____________, show characters who enjoy signficant freedom as a result of The Third Eye evidenced by ____________, ______________, and _________________

 

"In the Crossfire," the book's most optimistic story

Tian Is the Hero with the Third Eye

One.

We're all in a freedom quest of some sort:

We want to be free from

emotional eating

envy

low confidence

debt

emotional, compulsive spending (related to debt often)

gambling addiction

family acrimony

a bullying boss

short temper evidenced in many ways not the least of which is road rage

procrastination

smartphone addiction

still thinking about your girlfriend or boyfriend ten years after the breakup

Facebook addiction

If we walk the first two steps on our own, it is commonly said, an outer strength will walk two steps toward us and meet us in the middle. But the point is we have to initiate our own change.

Study Questions for "In the Crossfire"

What is Tian Chu’s freedom quest?

To escape the infantile imbecilities of his mother, a wet blanket, a pernicious force on him and his wife Connie while at the same time he must save his mother's dignity. This is a tight-rope act.

His mother can be a malicious force who would add tofu and soy to dishes even though she knows Connie has allergies to these foods. American culture gives Tian's wife a freedom that his mother cannot understand.

But let's be clear: Tian must also be free from the kind of retaliation that might sever him from his mother. 

You never free yourself from a relative. Like herpes, some problems stick with us forever. All we can do is DEFUSE the situation. There is no "closure." 

Two. The mother has become a “monkey on the back,” a burden that seems to never go away. To have a “monkey on the back” is a form of imprisonment.

Part of this burden rests on the cultural differences between the mother and son. The mother does not approve of the wife having this much freedom. The son knows the mother means well: She is protective of her son's interests. She is passing on her cultural imperatives to him.

Three. However good her intentions, Tian's mother castrates her son through a thousand cuts, most of the cuts centered on Connie: “What’s the use of being six feet tall if you can’t put Connie in her place?” Even here, the son's Third Eye sees the mother's good intentions. But sadly good intentions often pave a pathway to hell.

Four. The mother's presence is toxic. She is a petulant malcontent, always bickering and complaining in order to put down her son. She’s full of insults. While the son indulges his mother, he knows his mother's malcontented words are a cancer on his marriage.

Five. Mother is over protective, believing that Connie is using her husband while working on her degree, denying him children, not cooking for him, and making him do her laundry. Again, the mother means well for her son.

Six. Mother is a master of manipulation always tugging on her son’s heartstrings of guilt. “If you don’t do as I say, you are proving that you want to disown me.” Mother's love for her son is contaminated by a desire for too much control.

Seven. Tian's Third Eye: For all his mother's faults, the son sees some good in his mother: She befriends a poor mother, Shulan, whose husband has abandoned her and child for another woman.

Eight. What frees Tian from his mother?

The Third Eye in the way of keeping distant and exerising his cunning strategy. He asks his boss to terminate him, so he can look for a new job.

He has to be clever to both his wife and mother in order to preserve their self-respect and honor. He lies to his wife and says he was fired. But Connie knows her husband is using a hustle and she becomes part of the trick or hustle. The couple’s fake poverty terrifies the mother into leaving and she even reveals that Tian’s sister wanted the Mother to pressure her son to financially help the sister’s son go to college.

Tian also lies to his mother, saying the fighting between her and Connie stressed him out, compromised his job performance and led to his losing his job.

Nine. The mother knows what's going on, so she implicitly blackmails her son to give her money so she can return to her home without shame. She must save face and her son must save her face.

Ten. For Tian, freedom can only be created if he manufactures a false persona for his parents, especially his mother.

Eleven. Saving Face: both Tian and his mother are playing a game or dancing a dance. "He knows she knows he knows she knows he knows . . ." But even though she knows her son has played a trick, she knows the trick allows her to save face, so she plays the game with him.

The Third Eye As It Is Evident in Tian, Eileen from "Choice," Fanlin from "A Composer and His Parakeets," and Ganchin from "A Good Fall."

1. The Third Eye removes you from the trees and allows you to see the forest: You get sucked up into a drama of excruciating pain but have meta-cognition: the ability to distance yourself from the pot of boiling water (from which your limbs flail) and make a detached plan of effective action: get out of a misguided relationship; gingerly tiptoe around your bellicose mother by being more clever than she is.

2. The Third Eye emphasizes the bigger, long-term picture over the short-term, narrow confines of obsession and emotional upheaval. As a result, it allows you to act cool in a heated situation where you might engage in hostility with someone else and make the problem worse.

3. The Third Eye is about valuing the cool intellect over tumultuous passions. As such, the Third Eye often tells you to avoid compulsive action but wait for more information or at the very least wait until your passions cool so that your action is done in a condition of lucidity. See the book Wait by Frank Partnoy.

4. The Third Eye is the adult that exercises discipline and calm over selfish desires because in part the Third Eye has realistic expectations about life and can enduring suffering without self-pity. I'm thinking of Eileen here. In other words, as one student said, The Third Eye allows for self-sacrifice.

5. The Third Eye is the moral conscience that recognizes your vulnerability to misguided passions and self-betrayal. It sets you free from a situation from which you have been "banging your head against a wall" repeatedly. The Third Eye tells you that you must free yourself from this condition of futility. I'm thinking of Fanlin as he recognizes his bogus relationship. 

6. The Third Eye allows you to see a conflict in terms of gray rather than black and white. For example, Tian does not see his mother as evil even though she is a pernicious force against him and especially Connie. He sees the good in her, helping abandoned women for example, and his ability to comprehend his mother as a complex tangle of contradictions prevents him from demonizing and dehumanizing her so that he can salvage something from his mother-son relationship.

7. In desperate cases, the Third Eye doesn't become apparent until there has been a "good fall," a hitting of rock bottom in which you no longer have nothing to lose and in this state you're better to evaluate all the delusions that have shackled you to your unnecessary imprisonment.

Example of an Introduction about the Third Eye, a Transition, and a Thesis

A student who took my freshman composition class last semester showed up to my over-crowded Critical Thinking class six weeks ago and begged me to add him. I did as he wished. How did he repay me? Last week during lecture and class discussion, I saw him, in a flagrant disregard for my lecture, doing his chemistry homework. 

My first impulse was to toss his chemistry book across the room and scream a spittle-fueled tirade at him. But my Third Eye kicked in and told me to cool it. I could admonish the back-stabber, my Third Eye told me, but only with cold, calculated, controlled rage.

I walked over to the offender, picked up the chemisty book, and scrutinized the text, squinting my eyes with sarcastic intensity, before I said the following:

"When you do your homework, it's a sign of disrespect to me and the other students. And when you disrespect us, you lower morale. And when you lower morale, you degrade my ability to teach. And when you degrade my ability to teach, you threaten my livelihood. And when you threaten my livelihood, you compromise my ability to feed my children. Is that what you're trying to do here!"

He shook his head emphatically, upon which I said, "Thank you. You're very kind, sir." That's the last I've seen of his chemistry book, or smart phone for that matter.

Fortunately for me, my Third Eye asserted itself before I lost my temper and embarrassed myself by having a hissy fit in front of my students. Perhaps this Third Eye is our only link to free will. 

We see such a link between the Third Eye and free will in some of the more mentally healthy characters in Ha Jin's A Good Fall. Their Third Eye manifests in many ways, not the least of which is ___________________, ______________, ______________, and __________________.

Personal Interview:

If you don't have your own story for your introduction, you may have to conduct a personal interview with someone who has the Third Eye.

This link for MLA Works Cited Format shows that citing a personal interview is rather simple. Last name, first name, title (if any, or you can just put "friend," "co-worker," whatever pertains), Personal Interview, date.

Example:

Wheeler, Harriet, co-worker. Personal Interview. 6 July 2010.

 

Review Thesis Example:

In Ha Jin's story collection A Good Fall some of the stories show characters breaking free from their imprisonment as a result of their Third Eye. As the stories show, many characters are trapped by learned helplessness evidenced by __________, _________, ___________, and __________ while others exercise the freedom of their Third Eye evidenced by________, __________, _________,and _______________. 

If Your Emphasis Is on Learned Helplessness, Your Intro Might Focus on a Narrative About Someone Sinking in That Manner:

Have you ever been to a couple’s house with your wife, got an upset stomach from nerves or the gnawing sense that the meat they served you was undercooked or contaminated or both, had to suffer the great shame and anxiety of rushing to their bathroom several times, and then depleted their entire stock of Costco toilet paper? Worse than that, you later learned you clogged their toilet, found out they had to call a plumber at some late-night hour on a Sunday and that this plumber charged them triple the normal cost for snaking their pipes and they could barely pay the plumber. Their financial burden was so bad they ended up being two months late on their car and mortgage payments so that their credit rating plummeted.

What is really sad about all this is that they were just about to buy a second car, and guess what? Their late car and mortgage payments disqualified them for a low interest rate so they couldn't afford to buy that second car after all.

If you don't think this story is sufficiently pathetic already, then listen to this:  This couple—who used to be good friends with my wife and me—blamed me for all their financial troubles and they no longer want to be my friend. 

Things like this happen to me all the time. My friends list is dwindling. At this rate, losing about a friend a month, next October I’ll be completely friendless.

On a related note, Facebook has already deleted my account because the amount of people who unfriended me was far greater than the amount who had accepted me on their Facebook friends list. To make a long story short, I've been permanently banned from Facebook and no one at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto will talk to me. Believe me, I've called and emailed repeatedly. 

If this condition of losing friends goes on much longer, say three years, I'll be in big trouble.  My guess is that learned helplessness will sink in at which point I will become “unfriendable,” for now and all eternity. 

Desperate to get my friends back, I recently called the couple whose plumbing I had single-handedly ruined and begged for their forgiveness, even offering to co-sign on their car loan (I have an excellent FICO score) so they could get a cheaper rate, but they didn't return my calls. After my initial offer with no response, I then sent them $100 gift cards for Target, iTunes, Amazon, Olive Garden, and Home Depot, but even after all that they still haven’t called me.

Unfriendable. I had better get used to the sound of it.

The above account is obviously of a man who's reached the end of his rope. He has descended to a point of learned helplessness, a condition in which he believes, contrary to reality, that he is helpless to improve his situation. We see a similar tale of woe in Ha Jin's short story collection A Good Fall in which free will is threatened by learned helplessness in many ways, not the least of which is ______________, __________________, ______________, and _________________.

Consumer Addiction and Learned Helplessness in "The Bane of the Internet"

One. How Do You Defend Yourself Against Addiction When It Comes Upon You Gradually?

Slippery Slope:

The Internet begins as an insidious process of dissolution, wearing down the Third Eye bit by bit until slaves of the Internet have no free will, no freedom to act independently and rationally.

First we stop writing letters. We write degraded, abbreviated emails and settle into convenience. And then we whet our appetites or I should say we inflame our appetites on various consumer goods so well packaged on the Internet.

We click on images and images feed envy and envy feeds unrealistic expectations. 

The most dangerous things that happen to us in life happen incrementally and insidiously, bit by bit, under the radar. When we lose our souls, it never happens in a grand, tumultuous moment. It always happens gradually. 

There is a perhaps overused analogy of a frog comfortably waddling in a pot of room-temperature water. The water slowly heats up and painlessly the frog is dead. Such is internet addiction.

Two. Convenience Trap:

As we enjoy more and more conveniences, we develop a dependence on them resulting in the erosion of our tolerance for pain, hard work, patience, and putting for meaningful effort to maintain human relationships. Before we can understand what has happened to us, we have become emotional cripples. 

Three. Paradox of the Internet:

The more "connected" we are with technology, the more disconnected we become because the modes of communication are superficial and these superficial modes replace meaningful ones.

Four. The Purpose of Advertising: To Make Us Helpless

To create desires that would not otherwise exist. The internet is more than anything an arm of advertising. Advertisers know your psychology more than you do. They know it more than your therapist does. They are smarter than your therapists. Advertisers are the supreme psychologists of the world.

Those who know psychology go into advertising.

Those who want to know about psychology but never really understand it become therapists.

Five. Libido Ostentandi:

Latin for the need to show off, to be ostentatious as a way of finding validation, regognition, and for being flattered with the title of having "good taste."

Six. The Death of the Rational

The older sister says "be rational" but to no avail. The younger sister has no Third Eye. Therefore, she has no free will and is at the mercy of her irrational impulses. She is a slave to nonsense. 

Consumerism is based on the irrational: 

"Oh, what a feeling!" (Toyota)

"He's got gum!" (Wrigley's)

Make your boss Stouffers Stuffing and get a promotion

Seven. The dangers of consumer ostracism:

If I don't have X, people won't accept me into their tribe; if I don't have brand XY, people won't love me the way they should; if I don't have brand XYZ, I won't find fulfillment and as a result I won't be worthy of other people's love.

Eight. Older sister becomes a Cash Momma instead of a loved family member.

In fact, the older sister, living in America, becomes the object of scorn and envy and as such is not loved at all but despised.

Nine. The consumer addict becomes a cynical nihilist:

Selling organs probably a ploy but in any case the younger sister is making a Faustian Bargain, a deal with the devil.

Ten. Being a Consumer Is in Many Ways Being Stuck in Adolescence

Consumerism is a form of arrested emotional development. You're stuck in adolescence, which is defined by moments of grandiosity (inflated expectations of consumerism) followed by disappointment, self-pity, and self-hatred. These feelings of self-loathing compel you to seek more grandiosity (buy more crap) followed, once again, by self-pity and disappointment. 

Getting trapped in this cycle is a form of learned helplessness. 

When you buy a car, there are heightened emotions, adrenaline kick, hormone spike, for example (study at Duke showed men gain testosterone when sitting in a Porsche and LOSE tesosterone when sitting in a Camry. Where's the free will in that?) and then after the hormones settle, you descend into a Consumer Hangover.

And what is the remedy for a Consumer Hangover? More shopping! And what follows more shopping? Another Consumer Hangover. 

Eleven: Consumerism Is About Finding Meaning, Idendity, and Belonging

When we look to consumerism to replace basic human needs such as meaning, identity, and belonging, we call this impoverishment through subsitution. The more we fill the void in our lives with fake albeit potent "meaning," for example, the more we crave real meaning and try to fill the void with more and more fake meaning. 

Buying an iPad, a Mini Cooper, or a BMW grants us privileged enterance into a special club where we luxuriate with people who remind us of ourselves and our values. 

Sample Thesis Statements That Are Too General Or Too Obvious

"The Bane of the Internet" is about imprisonment.

"The Bane of the Internet is about consumer addiction.

"The Bane of the Internet" is about a greedy woman who loses her soul to the devil.

"The Bane of the Internet is about an American from China who watches helplessly as her family in China become full of greed, envy, and spite.

"The Bane of the Internet" makes it clear that we should maintain meaningful communication with our family.

"The Bane of the Internet" shows it's important to have the Third Eye to ward off greed and addiction.

"The Bane of the Internet" is an excellent story about how self-destructive consumer addiction can be.

Better Thesis:

"The Bane of the Internet" is example of the type of story in Ha Jin's collection in which the absence of the Third Eye results in the loss of freedom evidenced by __________, __________, __________, ___________, and _______________. 

How to Use the Third Eye to Escape the Learned Helplessness of Consumerism

 

 Adam Baker's Third Eye

1. He finds clarity; he steps back from his materialism and analyzes it.

2. He realizes his apartment upgrades are a result of a lack of financial clarity and feels compelled to tell his wife.

3. He realizes he didn't choose his script; the script chose him.

4. He analyzed the script that was ruining his life: get an education, go into debt pursuing college and have the privilege of going into more debt with materialism.

5. He created a clean slate and wrote a new script.

6. To wipe the slate clean, he and his wife had to look in the mirror and examine an ugly reflection: hoarding, storage, addiction, and the myth of acquiring things as a means to getting security, happiness, and identity.

7. Now they live their dream, not someone else's.

8. Now they value experience over things.

Citing Kindle for MLA

Citing email, Twitter, and YouTube

 

 

 

McMahon Grammar Lesson: Semicolons and Colons (based on Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers)

 

Use a semicolon between closely related independent clauses not joined with a coordinating conjunction.  The second sentence feels like a continuation of the first one in terms of thought process.

 

H.L. Mencken writes, “Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.”

 

I don’t mind cold pie; what I mind is stale pie.

 

When I was in college in the late 1970s and early 1980s, tuition was about $80 a quarter at Cal State; today Cal State charges about 5K a quarter. Do the math; it’s not pretty.

 

My second favorite athlete of all time is Michael Jordan; my first ever is Bo Jackson.

 

Michael Jordan was Icarus, flying to the sun; Bo Jackson was Hercules, toppling over colossal defensive players.

 

Use semicolons between independent clauses linked with transitional expressions. These transitional expressions are called conjunctive adverbs. Here’s a partial list:

accordingly, also, anyway, besides, certainly, consequently, conversely, furthermore, however, indeed, instead, likewise, meanwhile, moreover, nevertheless, nonetheless, otherwise, therefore.

Here’s a partial list of transitional phrases:

After all, as a matter of fact, as a result, for example, in fact, in other words, on the contrary

Bo Jackson was a man of natural Herculean strength; in fact, he never worked out with weights.

Michael Jordan could fly to the sun with grace; however, if he had to, he could bull his way to the basket.

Michael Jordan could fly to the sun with grace; if he had to, however, he could bull his way to the basket.

HomeTown Buffet is based on feeding, not eating, food; consequently, its patrons often suffer from metabolic syndrome, diabetes 2, dyspepsia, and crapulence.

There is one situation in which we use a semicolon that is not between two independent clauses. We use a semicolon between items in a series containing internal punctuation.

 Some of the NBA’s greatest teams are the Chicago Bulls, headed by Michael Jordan; the Los Angeles Lakers, headed by Magic Johnson; and the Boston Celtics, headed by Larry Bird.

Classic science fiction sagas are Star Trek, with Mr. Spock; Battlestar Galactica, with Cylon Raiders; and Star Wars, with Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Darth Vader.

 

The colon

The colon is used to call attention to the words that follow it.

Use a colon after an independent clause to direct attention to a list, an appositive, or a quotation.

List

My kettlebell workout has six exercises in one cycle: swings, upright rows, push-ups, rows, gluteus leg kicks, and leg raises.

Appositive

My roommate is guilty of two of the seven deadly sins: gluttony and sloth. 

Quotation

Consider the words of Jeff McMahon: “Having a chimera will kill you; not having a chimera will kill you.” 

Use a colon between independent clauses if the second summarizes or explains the first.

Faith is like love: It cannot be forced.

Do not use a colon after a verb. 

Some important vitamins in vegetables are: vitamin A, thiamine, niacin, and vitamin C.  

Grammar Lesson: The Apostrophe with the Possessive Case (adapted from Diana Hacker)

Use an apostrophe to indicate that a noun is possessive.

Jeff’s recipes are available online.

You can convert into a prepositional phrase: The recipes of Jeff are available online.

When to add an apostrophe and an s

If the noun does not end is s already.

Please get in on the driver’s side.

I need to borrow some of my wife’s cash.

When to add only an apostrophe

If the noun is plural and ends in an s

Both diplomats’ laptops were recovered by security.

Joint possession

Use the apostrophe on the last noun only.

Jeff and Julia’s car is still in the shop.

To show individual possession, make all the nouns possessive.

Jeff’s and Ron’s BMWs are still in the shop.

Possessive with compound noun

My father-in-law’s watch needs a new battery.

With personal pronouns already ending in s

James’ pants are too wrinkled.

Jesus’ disciples chafed against those who did not believe their words.

 Options with the mysterious bus

The bus’ engine is overheating.

The bus’s engine is overheating.

 Plural

The busses’ engines all need replacing.

The buses’ engines all need replacing.

Plural nouns not ending in s

The nurses' paychecks are on hold for another week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Man's Search for Meaning Lessons on One Post

Lesson One

Lesson Two

Lesson Three

Lesson Four

Lesson Five