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 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.
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