Using Signal Phrases or Identifying Tag to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
Writing Effective Introduction Paragraphs for Your Essays
Weak Introductions to Avoid
One. Don’t use overused quotes:
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
"Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars."
Two. Don’t use pretentious, grandiose, overwrought, bloated, self-regarding, clichéd, unintentionally funny openings:
Since the Dawn of Man, people have sought love and happiness . . .
In today’s society, we see more and more people cocooning in their homes . . .
Man has always wondered why happiness and contentment are so elusive like trying to grasp a bar of sudsy, wet soap.
We have now arrived at a Societal Epoch where we no longer truly communicate with one another as we have embarked upon the full-time task of self-aggrandizement through the social media of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al.
In this modern world we face a new existential crisis with the advent of newfangled technologies rendering us razzle-dazzled with the overwhelming possibilities of digital splendor on one hand and painfully dislocated and lonely with our noses constantly rubbing our digital screens on the other.
Since Adam and Eve traipsed across the luxuriant Garden of Eden searching for the juicy, succulent Adriatic fig only to find it withered under the attack of mites, ants, and fruit flies, mankind has embarked upon the quest for the perfect pesticide.
As we co-mingle amidst our ferocious Apex Predators, we often wonder if we could harness those feral beasts to do our bidding.
Three. Never apologize to the reader:
Sorry for these half-baked chicken scratch thoughts. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I didn’t have sufficient time to do the necessary research for the topic you assigned me.
I’m hardly an expert on this subject and I don’t know why anyone would take me seriously, but here it goes.
Forgive me but after over-indulging last night at HomeTown Buffet my brain has been rendered in a mindless fog and the ramblings of this essay prove to be rather incoherent.
Four. Don’t throw a thesis cream pie in your reader’s face.
In this essay I am going to prove to you why Americans will never buy those stupid automatic cars that don’t need a driver. The four supports that will support my thesis are ______________, ______________, _______________, and ________________.
In this paper I will provide a cogent history of computers for your reading pleasure.
It is my intention in this exposition to escort you down a mesmerizing trail of various causes for our characters' decisions to make a myriad of Faustian Bargains as I will highlight from our assigned novel. These causes, it will be shown with great lucidity, shall mostly, but not entirely, focus on our professor's penultimate lecture in which he explained that Faustian Bargains are the result of _________, __________, ___________, and _____________.
Five. Don’t use a dictionary definition (standard procedure for a sixth grade essay but not college in which you should use more sophisticated methods such as extended definition or expert definitions):
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines metacognition as “awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking process.”
General Principles of an Effective Introduction Paragraph
It piques your readers’ interest (often called a “hook”).
It is compelling.
It is timely.
It is relevant to the human condition and to your topic.
It transitions to your topic and/or thesis.
The Ten Types of Paragraph Introductions
One. Use a blunt statement of fact or insight that captures your readers’ attention:
We would assume that jealous men are obsessed with fidelity, but in fact the most salient feature of the jealous man is that he is more often than not cheating on his partner. His jealousy results from projecting his own infidelities on his partner. He says to himself, “I am a cheater and therefore so is she.” We see this sick mentality in the character Dan from Ha Jin’s “The Beauty.” Trapped in his jealousy, Dan embodies the pathological characteristics of learned helplessness evidenced by ___________, _______________, ________________, and _______________.
The United States prison system is immoral because it is not based on moral and public safety concerns so much as it is propelled by a business model, which compromises its integrity in several ways including _________, __________, ________, and ____________.
John Taylor Gatto opens his essay “Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kinds, and Why” as thus:
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in the world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: Their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teacher’s lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn’t get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
Gatto goes on to argue in his thesis that school trains children to be servants for mediocre (at best) jobs when school should be teaching innovation, individuality, and leadership roles.
Two. Write a definition based on the principles of extended definition (term, class, distinguishing characteristics) or quote an expert in a field of study:
Metacognition is an essential asset to mature people characterized by their ability to value long-term gratification over short-term gratification, their ability to distance themselves from their passions when they’re in a heated emotional state, their ability to stand back and see the forest instead of the trees, and their ability to continuously make assessments of the effectiveness of their major life choices. In the fiction of John Cheever and James Lasdun, we encounter characters that are woefully lacking in metacognition evidenced by _____________, ______________, _____________, and _______________.
According to Alexander Batthanany, member of the Viktor Frankl Institute, logotherapy, which is the search for meaning, “is identified as the primary motivational force in human beings.” Batthanany further explains that logotherapy is “based on three philosophical and psychological concepts: Freedom of Will, Will to Meaning, and Meaning in Life.” Embracing the concepts of logotherapy is vastly more effective than conventional, Freud-based psychotherapy when we consider ________________, ______________, __________________, and ________________.
Three. Use an insightful quotation that has not, to your knowledge anyway, been overused:
George Bernard Shaw once said, “There are two great tragedies in life. The first is not getting what we want. The second is getting it.” Shaw’s insight speaks to the tantalizing chimera, that elusive quest we take for the Mythic She-Beast who becomes our life-altering obsession. As the characters in John Cheever and James Lasdun’s fiction show, the human relationship with the chimera is source of paradox. On one hand, having a chimera will kill us. On the other, not having a chimera will kill us. Cheever and Lasdun’s characters twist and torment under the paradoxical forces of their chimeras evidenced by _____________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Four. Use a startling fact to get your reader’s attention:
There are currently more African-American men in prison than there were slaves at the peak of slavery in the United States. We read this disturbing fact in Michelle Alexander’s magisterial The New Jim Crow, which convincingly argues that America’s prison complex is perpetuating the racism of slavery and Jim Crow in several insidious ways.
"The report that everybody's talking about this morning is Oxfam's opus on global inequality, which leads with an eye-popping statistic: The richest 85 people in the world own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire global population.
Yes, that equation works out to: 85 > 3,000,000,000."
Derek Thompson, The Atlantic
Five. Use an anecdote (personal or otherwise) to get your reader’s attention:
One afternoon I was napping under the covers when Lara walked into the room talking on the phone to her friend, Hannah. She didn’t know I was in the room, confusing the mound on the bed with a clump of pillows and blankets. I heard her whisper to Hannah, “I found another small package from eBay. He’s buying watches and not telling me.”
That’s when I thought about getting a post office box.
This could be the opening introduction for an essay topic about “economic infidelity" in which spouses shop behind their spouses' backs.
As we read in Stephen King’s essay “Write or Die”:
“Hardly a week after being sprung from detention hall, I was once more invited to step down to the principal’s office. I went with a sinking heart, wondering what new sh** I’d stepped in.”
Six. Use a piece of vivid description or a vivid illustration to get your reader’s attention:
My gym looks like an enchanting fitness dome, an extravaganza of taut, sweaty bodies adorned in fluorescent spandex tights contorting on space-age cardio machines, oil-slicked skin shrouded in a synthetic fog of dry ice colored by the dizzying splash of lavender disco lights. Tribal drum music plays loudly. Bottled water flows freely, as if from some Elysian spring, over burnished flesh. The communal purgation appeals to me. My fellow cardio junkies and I are so self-abandoned, free, and euphoric, liberated in our gym paradise.
But right next to our workout heaven is a gastronomical inferno, one of those all-you-can-eat buffets, part of a chain, which is, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.
Seven. Summarize both sides of a debate.
America is torn by the national healthcare debate. One camp says it’s a crime that 25,000 Americans die unnecessarily each year from treatable disease and that, modeling a health system from other developed countries, is a moral imperative. However, there is another camp that fears that adopting some version of universal healthcare is tantamount to stepping into the direction of socialism.
Eight. State a misperception, fallacy, or error that your essay will refute.
Americans against universal or national healthcare are quick to say that such a system is “socialist,” “communist,” and “un-American,” but a close look at their rhetoric shows that it is high on knee-jerk, mindless paroxysms and short on reality. Contrary to the enemies of national healthcare, providing universal coverage is very American and compatible with the American brand of capitalism.
Nine. Make a general statement about your topic.
From Sherry Turkle’s essay “How Computers Change the Way We Think”:
The tools we use to think change the ways in which we think. The invention of written language brought about a radical shift in how we process, organize, store, and transmit representations of the world. Although writing remains our primary information technology, today when we think about the impact of technology on our habits of mind, we think primarily of the computer.
Ten. Pose a question your essay will try to answer:
Why are diet books more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more fat?
Why is psychotherapy becoming more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more crazy?
Why are the people of Qatar the richest people in the world, yet score at the bottom of all Happiness Index metrics?
Why are courses in the Humanities more essential to your wellbeing that you might think?
What is the difference between thinking and critical thinking?
Journalist’s Six Questions for “Desert Breakdown, 1968”
Who is involved in the conflict? Mark and Krystal
What issues are most compelling in the conflict? Krystal’s need for a secure environment for her and her baby vs. Mark’s unstable, narcissistic character
When did the conflict begin? When Mark impregnated Krystal in Europe (though some would say the conflict started earlier when Mark’s parents spoiled him)
Where does the conflict seem most heated or violent? In the desert when the couple is low on cash (even though Mark is a phone call away from getting bailed out by his parents)
Why does the conflict still persist? Because Mark is an intractable narcissist who can apparently entertain himself with his delusions of grandeur forever
How might this conflict be resolved? Mark would have to humble himself, face reality, get a job, and realize Krystal is “the best thing he has going.”
Lexicon for “Desert Breakdown, 1968”
1. cipher, a nonentity, a nobody; a cipher like Mark is a narcissist whose self-esteem is GREATER than who he really is.
According to David Brooks' The Social Animal, most people suffer a disparity between their inflated self-esteem and their low competence and talent.
Irony: People with low self-esteem often are more competent and conscientious. This is probably because the term "low self-esteem" really means something else entirely: conscientious, having a moral conscience.
Another irony: A society like America that is obsessed with high self-esteem discourages the development of morality. In other words, America is a narcissistic culture hiding behind the robes of "self-esteem."
2. Entitlement: I deserve good things in life without having to struggle to become worthy of those good things. Why should I have to work my butt off to get good crap? People should just love me for who I am. And this "love" should translate into me getting the stuff I want when I want it, which is now.
Entitlement is a form of self-crippling because you need character, toughness, discipline, and structured routine to achieve greatness.
In contrast, Mark is dependent on being bailed out by his parents to the point of being an entitled cripple. Thus we can conclude that parents who spoil their children cripple them and that the children unconsciously know this and resent their parents. Indeed, then, people do resent the hands that feed them.
Another irony: Unconditional generosity results in resentment from the benefactor of the generosity. Mark has no boundaries, no accountability, the adolescent dream of freedom, yet he is a slave to his immaturity, selfishness, spite, and rancor.
3. Audacity: stupid or inappropriate bold action; shameless boldness
4. Audacious, the adjective form of the noun audacity.
5. Thanatos, choosing death over life like when Mark in the hearse; perhaps Mark wants to die to spite his parents and to escape the unbearable truth that he has no talent and is doomed to failure.
6. Asinine, foolish
7. Hedonism; defining the ultimate form of happiness as the pleasure principle, a sort of religion whereby bodily pleasures are the supreme experience. At the root of hedonism is the desire to escape the self by losing oneself through self-abandonment. Often this self-abandonment is reckless and self-destructive. The bad boy rocker can pull off a binge of self-abandonment but not the anal accountant.
8. Acedia, depression from having no focus in life; your energy is sapped from you in the absence of a life purpose; I see a lot of acedia with potheads and alcoholics.
9. Nihilism, a sense that nothing matters for you or anything in this world; you’re beyond caring; a nihilist says, “I don’t give a damn about anything.” Or “It’s all B.S.”
10. Pushing the envelope (both husbands from "Say Yes" and "Desert Breakdown, 1968," push their wives to extremes until the wives have a "back in the world" moment) The irony is that people stay in their private hell because it's not hellish enough. Hell has to get really bad before we want to make our escape. In the absence of a hellish relationship, many people resign themselves to a slow, agonizing, low-simmering death.
Mark’s Misguided Definition of Freedom Leads to Moral Dissolution
1. No boundaries, anything goes.
2. Self-indulgence; the self-indulgent man isn’t happy
3. Loyalty only to selfish whims, no accountability to anyone else, including one’s family
4. Make up reality as you go along to suit your needs and to justify your heinous actions
5. No accountability to anyone so that you’re free to piss away your life on nonsense.
6. To pursue one’s hedonistic vision of happiness.
7. The myth of Hakuna Matata
8. Use your money to get away with your most base impulses. Think of Arnold S and Maria Shriver. Arnold used big money to pay-off mistresses to keep silent but a love child for ten years finally emerged. Money can only keep secrets for so long.
Part Three. The Results of Misguided Freedom
1. Seeking immaturity or perpetual adolescence evidenced by hedonism and self-aggrandizement
2. Suffering from loneliness and lack of connection that result from the various addictive behaviors that inform perpetual adolescence
3. Suffering from a lack of focus, becoming a wayward soul or sort of waif, and being trapped inside acedia
4. Suffering from moral dissolution, nihilism, despair, a lack of meaning, nothing matters anymore
5. Vacillating between self-pitying despair and bombastic grandeur. Think of Mark's Apex Fantasy: Being famous and humiliating his parents. His hatred of his parents parallels Donald's hatred of Peter.
A More Accurate, Healthy Definition of Freedom
1. The discipline to do what it’s in your best interests.
2. Structured time that gives you increased responsibilities. The result is greater and greater maturity and fortitude.
3. Accountability to others, which strengthens your connections to others. Happiness is how connected we are to others.
The Results of Real Freedom
1. Productivity
2. Maturity
3. High esteem in community
4. Connection to others
5. Individuation, which is the evolution from one’s parental ties to becoming a fully formed person away from one’s parents
Wives and Husband in Wolff's Short Story Collection: Do they find redemption?
1. Crazy is the new normal
2. Auto pilot and passive acceptance
3. Husband pushes the envelope and shatters auto pilot
4. Wives resolved to self-sufficiency and control of their own destiny (“Desert Breakdown” and “Say Yes”)
Study Questions for “The Deposition”
One. Explain the title’s double meaning.
There is the deposition of the witness and there is the metaphorical deposition of Burke who is questioned for the crime of lust and stalking.
He becomes a witness to his own life with a stream of memories as he walks the streets of his youth and is “flooded with desire” and nostalgia.
Does he experience metacognition?
Two. Burke is a great judge of the world’s failings but not his own. Explain.
He is a self-righteous and angry man who has let his body go to pot, so to speak, even as he derides the dilapidated structures around him.
Three. Explain Burke’s pride and its relationship with the story’s theme.
Here we read a key passage:
Burke believed that he had a gift for sensing not only a person’s truthfulness in response to a given question but, more important, his natural inclination toward the truth. It was like a homing instinct in those who had it. No matter what the risk, no matter how carefully they might have defended themselves with equivocation and convenient lapses of memory, it was still there, fidgeting to be recognized. Over the years, Burke had brought considerable skill to the work of helping people overcome their earlier shufflings and suppressions, even their self-interest, to say what they really wanted to say. The nurse needed to tell his story; Burke was sure of it, and sure of his own ability to coax the story forth. He would master this coy witness.
Four. An honest assessment of Burke might be that he is so susceptible to lust and lasciviousness that he can be put into a trance and go into “stalker mode.” Is this true?
Read this key passage:
Burke held back—though barely aware of holding back, or of the catch in his throat. She was tall, magnificently tall to his eyes. He caught just a glance of lips painted black before her long dark hair swung forward and veiled her face as she looked down to find her footing on the curb. She stopped on the sidewalk and watched the bus pull away in a belch of black smoke. Then she slipped her bag off her shoulder and stretched luxuriously, going up on her toes, hands raised high above her head. Still on tiptoe, she joined her fingers and pushed her hips from side to side. She was no more than twenty feet away, but it was clear to Burke that she hadn’t noticed him, that she thought she was alone out here. He felt himself smile. He waited. She dropped her arms, did a few neck rolls, then hiked her bag back onto her shoulder and started up the street. He followed, matching his pace to hers.
She walked slowly, with the deliberate, almost flat-footed tread of a dancer, toes turned slightly out. She was humming a song. Her knee-length plaid skirt swayed a little as she walked, but she held her back straight and still. The white blouse she wore had two sweat spots below her shoulder blades; Burke could picture her leaning back against the plastic seat on the bus, drowsing in the swampy air as men stole looks at her over their folded papers.
The tone of her humming changed; grew more rhythmic, less tuneful. Her hips rolled under the skirt, her shoulders shifting in subtle counterpoint. Her legs were very white and on the back of her right calf there was a dark spot the size of a penny—maybe a mole, or a daub of mud.
Burke has been following the woman for some time as we continue to read:
Burke stared at the curve of her neck, so white, so bare. It looked damp and tender. She went on in her slow glide and he followed. He had been walking in time with her, but such was his absorption that he lost the beat, and at the sound of his footsteps she wheeled about and looked into his face. Burke was right behind her—he had somehow closed the distance without realizing it. Her eyes went wide. He was held by them, fixed. They were a deep bruised blue, almost violet, and darkly rimmed with liner. He heard her suck in a long ragged breath.
Five. What kind of witness is Burke when put on the “witness stand”?
Read this key passage:
“The young lady there?” Burke asked.
“Don’t play cute with me,” the woman said. “I’ve never seen anyone so terrified. The poor thing could hardly speak when she came to my door.”
“Something sure scared her,” the cop said.
“And what was my part in this?” Burke asked. He looked directly at the girl. She was hugging herself, sucking on her lower lip. She was younger than he’d thought; she was just a kid. He said, gently, “Did I do something to you?”
She glanced at him, then averted her face.
In the same voice, he said, “Did I say anything to you?”
She stared at the ground by her feet.
“Well?” the cop said, sharply. “What’d he do?”
The girl didn’t answer.
“Aren’t you the smooth one,” the woman said.
“I do remember passing her a while back,” Burke said, addressing himself to the cop. “Maybe I surprised her—I guess I did. I was in kind of a hurry.” Then, speaking with absolute calm, Burke explained his business in New Delft, and the forty-five-minute break, and the route he had taken and the necessity of moving right along to get back on time, even if that meant overtaking other people on the sidewalk. All this could be confirmed at the law office—where they’d certainly be waiting for him. Burke invited the cop to come along and settle the matter forthwith. “I’m sorry if I surprised you,” he said in the girl’s direction. “I certainly didn’t mean to.”
The cop looked at him, then at the girl. “Well?” he repeated.
She turned her back to them, rested her elbows on the roof of the cruiser, and buried her face in her hands.
The cop watched her for a moment. “Ah, geez,” he said. He gave the driver’s license another good look, handed it back with the card, and walked over to the girl. He murmured something, then took her by the elbow and began to help her into the back seat.
The woman didn’t move. Burke felt her eyes on him as he replaced the license and the card in his wallet. Finally, he looked up and met her stare, so green and cold. He held it and did not blink. Then came a flash of bursting pain and his head snapped sideways so hard he felt a crack at the base of his neck. The shock scorched his eyes with hot tears, blinding him. His face burned. His tongue felt jammed back in his throat.
“Liar,” she said.
Until Burke heard her voice he didn’t understand that she’d struck him—he was that stunned. It gave him a kind of relief, as if without knowing it he’d been gripped by the fear of something worse.
He heard the doors of the cruiser slam shut, one-two! He bent down with his hands on his knees, steadying himself, then straightened up and rubbed at his eyes. The cruiser was gone. The left side of his face still burned, hot even to the touch. A bearded man in a black suit walked past him down the hill, shooting Burke a glance and then locking his gaze straight ahead. Burke checked his watch. He was seven minutes late.
He took a step, and another, and went on, amazed at how surely he walked, and how lightly. Down the street a squirrel jabbered right into his ear, or so it seemed, but when he glanced up he found it chattering on a limb high above him. Still, its voice was startling—raw, close. The light in the crowns of the trees had the quality of mist.
Burke stopped outside the law office and gave his shoes a quick buff on the back of his pant legs. He mounted the steps and paused at the door. The blow was still warm on his cheek. Did it show? Would they ask about it? No matter—he would think of something. But he couldn’t help touching it again, tenderly, as if to cherish it, as he went inside to nail this witness down. ♦
Burke proves to be evasive, obfuscating, and cagey, the very kind of witness he despises.
Prewriting and Thesis Practice for "The Deposition"
I used clustering but have to show you in a brainstorm laundry list format:
Burke and his personal quest for truth vs. his dishonesty and self-deception
Burke is pompous and self-righteous about his station in life, a lawyer who questions dishonest witnesses on the witness stand.
Burke feels morally superior to most. He sees himself as an embattled champion of the truth against the forces of evil and deception.
Burke probably feels that he is smarter than most as he evidences a certain degree of intellectual pride.
Burke feels pride for fighting for the right cause: He tries to bring justice to victims of bullies and corporate greed.
But for all of Burke’s inflated self-image, he is a victim of his own self-deception.
He is blind to his own dishonesty. Worse, he is as dishonest as the very witnesses he excoriates in his imagination.
He will undergo his own “deposition” when a cop, a witness, and a victim of his stalking confront him with his crime and he goes into denial mode.
Burke cannot tolerate the disparity of being a truth seeker (in his own mind) with being a liar, someone who uses his lawyer skills to dodge the truth.
Burke’s ego won’t allow an honest self-evaluation.
Even when slapped in the face with truth, we tend to feel the momentary slap but go back to our self-deceptive lives.
Burke’s self-deception makes him live, to a certain degree, inside his head, which of course is solipsism.
Burke wills ignorance: He makes himself blind to his stalking and scaring a woman. He doesn’t even know he was following her so closely.
He is pulled by his own desires; he is overcome by own desire to be young again, to feel connected to his youthful self.
Burke is probably not a bad person. He probably means well, but he is still prone to self-deception and lies. He is probably like most of us.
Thesis Attempts
Thesis One
Burke’s self-deception points to the motivations we all have for living under an umbrella of lies, which include our ego’s inability to accept the disparity between our anger at dishonesty in others with our own compulsive lying (hypocrisy), our inability to bear witness to our own inappropriate actions even as we do them, and our need to have an inflated vision of ourselves in order to remain motivated with our life work (championing the rights of the poor).
The above is a thesis of cause and effect.
Thesis Two.
What’s frightening about Burke’s dishonesty and self-deception is that Burke is not a “bad” person by any means. And this is the genius of Tobias Wolff: Many of his most dishonest characters are hard-working, decent people who tell lies because, as Wolff’s fiction shows, lying is a necessary coping or survival mechanism. Normal, decent people have to lie in order to_________________, _________________, _________________, and ____________________.
The thesis answers a question: Why do normal, decent people live lives of dishonesty and self-deception?
We all suffer the conflict between our private desires and our public duty. This tension causes us to create a false self that helps feel better about the suppression or repression of our private desires that are constantly compromised by our public duties.
Our flaws contradict our self-image with such force that to honestly confront our flaws would sink and demoralize us, making us unable to perform our functions, which rely on our elevated self-image (confidence).
We get trapped into a situation and we have no choice but to force ourselves to believe our hellish situation is better than it really is.
No matter how successful we are, we find it is in our nature as humans to acclimate to our success and this acclimation results in boredom, which in turn makes us discontent with our life of privilege and success. This in turn compels us to create a fantasy world that relieves us of the boredom and banality of our existence.
Can you use McMahon's material for your essay?
Only if you use signal phrase and cite your source. For example:
As we read in McMahon's blog . . .
McMahon's remarks can be expounded upon by . . .
We can further complicate McMahon's analysis by . . .
If you write a debatable claim, you want to use an appropriate introduction.
Study Questions for "The Liar" (excellent commentary on this blog)
One. What purpose are lies, such as his mother coughing up blood, serving the boy who just lost his father?
Perhaps by telling stories of tragedy and woe, he gains an illusion of control. He becomes the story teller rather than the victim.
It appears the boy lies so his mother will discover them for a variety of reasons.
He tells Dr. Murphy he doesn’t want to upset his mother but perhaps he blames her for his father’s death or resents her for living while his father had to die.
He writes, “Things were never easy between my mother and me,” and that she underestimated him accusing him of being a sissy or “delicacy” as he calls it.
He further says he got on her nerves. Father liked the son more than Mother.
Nor did Mother like the way her son behaved at his father’s funeral.
The lying separates Mother and son. He feels protected from that separation.
Also his morbid lies disturb his mother and perhaps this gives him a feeling of power over her. He can make her feel “like a failure.”
He appears to feel no emotions except when he tells lies. And he appears to want to stir emotions in others by lying. People are too numb for his tastes.
Two. What story or “lie” does the mother tell herself?
That people get “cured,” that there is “closure.” This is a fiction, a lie we believe to comfort ourselves.
Three. Dr. Murphy says of the boy’s father, “He was afraid of finding his limits.” Explain.
He could believe that he had no limits by not challenging himself.
Four. The story addresses the problem of solipsism as Dr. Murphy says about his son Terry: “How can you prove to a solipsist that he’s not creating the rest of us?” Explain.
People live too much in their heads and believe the delusional stories they tell themselves so much that outside forces, that is, other people can no longer reach them because other people eventually become the creation of the solipsist.
Five. Does the boy seem very close to his parents?
He says he and his mother are constantly at odds and he was “coldhearted” at his father’s funeral; also he no longer misses his father.
Perhaps he feeds off the melodrama of his morbid lies to substitute for the emptiness he feels toward his parents.
Six. Comment on his singing the Tibetan language in “an ancient and holy tongue.”
He believes in his own lie, or story-telling, and so does his audience. He has become a solipsist. But ironically he finds connection with his lies at the end. However, it's a false connection.
Prewriting Thesis Exercise
James wants to be the storyteller, the person who controls the narrative.
James resents his mother and lies give him power over her.
James feels little in his home life. Perhaps he shut down in the presence of his unloving mother. For whatever reason, he can feel more when he creates a false world of lies.
James’ mother has a lie: the belief in “closure.” Closure is a myth.
Lying gives James an illusion of power and control.
Combining Burke and James for a thesis:
What’s frightening about James’ and Burke’s dishonesty and self-deception is that they are not bad people by any means. And this is the genius of Tobias Wolff: Many of his most dishonest characters are decent, good-hearted people who tell lies because, as Wolff’s fiction shows, lying is a necessary coping or survival mechanism. Normal, decent people have to lie in order to_________________, _________________, _________________, ____________________, and _____________________.
Types of Lies in Tobias Wolff’s Fiction
Pete in “The Rich Brother” tells many lies: his richness makes him a better person that most; he is a victim of his brother’s refusal to grow up; he is not responsible for anyone but himself; he is in control of his life.
Pete creates a fictitious self, one that is vainglorious and full of braggadocio to hide his feelings of futility, helplessness, and despair over his ongoing toxic relationship with Donald.
Mark in “Desert Breakdown, 1968” shares similar lies of Pete in that both have an inflated self-esteem they use to hide their feelings of helplessness and worthlessness.
Mark creates a narrative of being a talent on the verge of greatness to hide the fact that he is a parent-mooching ne’er-do-well.
Dr. Booth’s lie is that his son, who doesn’t conform to his father’s ideal of masculinity and manhood, must go to a military academy to become more like his father. Actually, the lie is twofold: One, that the military academy is in his son’s best interests and, two, that the father was a manly as he likes to think he was. In fact, he uses this fantasy to hide his sense of regret and failure.
Option One
We read in Judith Shulvit's Slate book review of Our Story Begins the following:
To read a collection of Wolff's work that spans the years is to realize that he is obsessed with the act of lying. Asked in an interview why so many of his characters lie, Wolff replied, "The world is not enough, maybe? … To lie is to say the thing that is not, so there's obviously an unhappiness with what is, a discontent." A recent outbreak of faked memoirs has set off a storm of outraged pontification about why people pass off false histories as their own, so it's satisfying to read about liars who lie for interesting reasons rather than the usual despicable ones. Wolff is, in fact, a genius at locating the truths revealed by lies—the ancient and holy tongues, you might say, the otherwise inexpressible inner realities that lies give voice to.
In a six page paper, typed and double-spaced, develop a thesis that analyzes the characters' need to lie in Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins. Address at least 4 stories in your essay. Be sure to have a debatable claim that is argumentative, cause and effect, definition, or claim of value.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Applying Option One to "Desert Breakdown" and "Nightingale"
Brainstorm a list of ideas:
Mark and Dr. Booth are both vain who are driven by a vain image of themselves that disconnects them from others.
Mark's lie is that he is a talented man who just hasn't found his niche yet.
Dr. Booth's lie is that he is doing the best for his son by enrolling him in military school.
Another lie of Dr. Booth is that he is capable of making good judgments in general.
Unlike Mark who is delusional, Dr. Booth sometimes lets the truth seep in; however, Booth doesn't act on the truth; he acts on his lies, so in some ways he is more odious than Mark.
Another Brainstorm:
Comparing Mark and Dr. Booth
They don't listen.
They are both trapped in their head.
They are both egotistical to the point of being obnoxious.
Their selfishness compromises their wellbeing and the wellbeing of others.
They don't change. Rather, they are in an endless cycle of futility.
They are both fearful.
Taking the brainstorm and turning into a cause and effect claim that addresses the first essay prompt:
Wolff’s characters, including Mark from “Desert Breakdown” and Dr. Booth from “Nightingale,” base their lives on a fabric of lies that are constantly generating as a defense mechanism against the men’s failed expectations, their inflated self-image they prop as a mask to hide their self-loathing, and the fictitious version of themselves that is out of control, lonely, selfish, and cowardly.
Statement of fact (weak thesis)
Vanity and guilt feed the lies of Mark and Dr. Booth
Debatable claim
While lying is considered morally reprehensible, in Tobias Wolff's fictional universe we asked to kinder to the liar because a life of lies is an understandable reaction to the human condition, which is comprised, regardless of the characters' best efforts, of lack of control, helplessness, and solipsism.
Option Two
In one of his darker moods, our instructor McMahon, inspired by Wolff's fiction, said this about the human race:
"We are a lost and sorry lot, hopelessly imprisoned by self-deception: false narratives we rely on to define our identities; tantalizing chimeras that assuage the boredom of our banal existence, and willed ignorance that prevents us from seeing the grotesqueries roiling just underneath the facade that we present to the world and to ourselves. As a result, we are crazed and deformed creatures forever lost in a world of solipsism."
In a six-page essay, support, refute, or complicate McMahon's remarks in the context of no fewer than 4 stories from Tobias Wolff's collection Our Story Begins.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Debatable claim
In his darker moods, McMahon says, "We are a lost and sorry lot, hopelessly imprisoned by self-deception: false narratives we rely on to define our identities; tantalizing chimeras that assuage the boredom of our banal existence, and willed ignorance that prevents us from seeing the grotesqueries roiling just underneath the facade that we present to the world and to ourselves. As a result, we are crazed and deformed creatures forever lost in a world of solipsism." Wolff's fictional world corroborates with McMahon's words. Therefore, we cannot morally judge Mark from "Desert Breakdown" and Dr. Booth from "Nightingale" both who are slaves to Wolff's deterministic worldview.
Option Three
One camp of readers argues that Wolff's fiction is redemptive in that its characters are delivered from their delusions through life-changing epiphanies that propel them back into the world of reality and personal accountability. Another camp of readers say the epiphanies come too little and too late and only serve to speak to the characters' lives, which can be defined by endless cycles of futility and as such Wolff's stories are not redemptive but nihilistic.
What camp are you in? Develop an argumentative thesis that defends your position in a 6-page essay.
For your Works Cited, use Wolff's collection, my blog, and a book review.
Debatable claim:
There is nothing redemptive in "Desert Breakdown" or "Nightingale." Both stories force us to smell the reek of nihilism, despair, narcissism, and helplessness. Once we understand that Wolff's fiction champions the worldview of despair, there can be no moral judgment. Indeed, a world where we are not morally accountable is a world that isn't worth living. Therefore, Wolff's fiction is not worth reading.
How to Successfully Address an Essay Prompt
Pare down the assignment to its bare essence.
Option 1: Explain the role of lying in Wolff's characters. You will be crafting an analytical argument and likely making a claim of cause and effect.
Option 2: Explain the role of solipsism in Wolff's characters. You will be crafting an analytical argument and making a claim of cause and effect.
Option 3: Support, defend, or complicate the assertion that Wolff's characters experience some degree of redemption that saves the dark stories from being entirely nihilistic. You will be crafting a debatable thesis and using the Toulmin model.
By making the above clarification, you are answering an important question:
Why are you writing?
The answer to this question is the purpose of your writing and your essay.
Checklist for understanding your purpose:
What key words in the writing prompt identify the purpose of the essay (analyze, argue, compare, describe)?
How can I find a subject and focus that I'm passionate about?
What steps must I go through to write it?
How much time will I need to spend on the assignment?
Sometimes you don't know if you're passionate or not about the assignment until you take the prompt and respond to it with the following:
Five minutes for freewriting
Looping (circling key words in your freewriting)
Brainstorming
Clustering (effective for visual learners)
Reading and re-reading the material
Let's take prompt 2, which is to analyze the role of solipsism in Wolff's characters.
A good place to start is a finding a definition of solipsism.
In the peer-reviewed Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy we read the following:
Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that "I am the only mind which exists," or "My mental states are the only mental states." However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust might truly come to believe in either of these propositions without thereby being a solipsist. Solipsism is therefore more properly regarded as the doctrine that, in principle, "existence" means for me my existence and that of my mental states. Existence is everything that I experience -- physical objects, other people, events and processes -- anything that would commonly be regarded as a constituent of the space and time in which I coexist with others and is necessarily construed by me as part of the content of my consciousness. For the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and emotions other than his own. In short, the true solipsist understands the word "pain," for example, to mean "my pain." He cannot accordingly conceive how this word is to be applied in any sense other than this exclusively egocentric one.
We can brainstorm what a solipsist thinks:
Only my mind exists.
I am the center of the universe.
My existence counts, no other.
I can attach no meaning to others' concerns.
I have no empathy.
I am disconnected from the human race.
Next, let us consider the possible causes of solipsism:
An all-consuming ego
Lack of training and education
Grew up in a symbiotic or dysfunctional household where he or she didn't learn how to make meaningful connections
Is afraid of connecting with others because he or she got hurt in the past so he or she retreats into solipsism
What are some possible effects?
He is obnoxious.
He is selfish.
Being so disconnected from others, he must be isolated and this isolation must on a certain level be terrifying.
Being terrified, the solipsist creates an elaborate fantasy world in which he is idolized and highly esteemed as he believes, erroneously, that being adulated will cure him of his fear, panic, and anxiety.
Subject: Solipsism
Topic: The role of solipsism in Tobias Wolff's characters
Analytical Thesis: The solipsists who populate Wolff's fictions are emotional cripples, survivors of dysfunctional parents, failures who live in a world of fantasy to hide from their shame and inadequacy, and moral ciphers who are too fearful to take accountability for their moral shortcomings.
Problems with the above thesis:
It's too much a statement of fact and not debatable enough. Such a thesis will result in too much summary.
Revised:
Solipsism is so engrained in Wolff's characters that they are incapable of redemption.
Here you've connected the second and third writing prompt.
You can also test the strength of your thesis by crafting an opposing view:
The blanket expression that Wolff's characters are absolute solipsists and therefore incapable of redemption is an absurd over-simplification. In fact, solipsism is relative in Wolff's characters who, contrary to the above, do find an imperfect variety of redemption.
Checklist for crafting your thesis:
Is the thesis debatable?
Is there enough evidence to support the thesis?
Is the thesis narrow enough for the assignment?
Is the thesis broad enough in its purpose to engage a general reader?
Is the thesis an answer to a question?
Does the thesis suggest or outright map a structure for your essay?
Review Comma Splices
Tobias Wolff's stories are depressing, in other words, we can not find redemption in them, instead, we find only nihilism.
"The Rich Brother" is about self-delusion, moreover, we witness two brothers in a symbiotic relationship, some would call their relationship mutually interdependent in a sick way, it needs to change.
"Say Yes" exposes a husband for who he is, an ignorant racist who thinks he controls his wife however his disconnection from her may result in their divorce, time will tell.
My argument is that there is little or no redemption in a typical Wolff story it is too full of despair and helplessness to evidence redemption, also the characters appear unable to mature beyond the adolescent stage, the period in which we tend to be reckless and hedonistic.
How to fix and how not to fix a comma splice
FANBOYS and conjunctive adverbs
Purdue Owl MLA In-Text Citations for Electronic and Web Sources
“Nightingale” Study Questions
One. What image of the military academy do we get from the “lousy map”?
The academy is higgledy-piggledy, a sort of fraudulent venture, a lie, and it reflects that the lie that is Dr. Booth’s life, a frustrated man full of regrets who wants to find redemption by forcing his son to be the ideal Dr. Booth failed to be.
Like many Wolff characters, Dr. Booth is more concerned with how he is perceived than he is with the substance of his character.
We see Dr. Booth is distant from his surviving sister.
We also see in the first paragraph that he has both a selective and embellished memory, which traps him in a world of lies.
False memory and perception over substance are part of the lying fabric we can use to support our thesis.
A description of the academy shows it as a ghost town, a place where the grandfather clock is frozen; there are no cadets to be seen; the furniture hasn’t been used much. It’s a creepy, empty place, a reflection of Dr. Booth’s misguided dream for his son.
Two. How might one define Dr. Booth as being procrustean with his son Owen and how might this be a tragedy when parents are procrustean with their children?
It appears the more the father bullies the son, the more the son retreats and withdrawals. The father has lost his son who says that going to Fort Steele is not something he desires. “It’s what you want.”
The father may be able to control his son’s school but he can’t own his son’s soul and force of will can’t win a soul. This fact haunts the father.
We read in paragraph 2 that the more Dr. Booth tries to bully his son into going to the school the more distant his son becomes and this withdrawing from life is precisely what Dr. Booth doesn't want to see in his son, yet he does the very destructive act anyway.
We see bull-headed stubbornness resulting in helplessly destructive behavior.
Three. What creepy feeling do we get after Dr. Booth drops off his son at the academy?
That’s the father has left his son in some kind of graveyard to die. The cows and the desolation of the place have no vitality, no spark. It’s a morbid place.
The whole place is a “fiction,” a phantom and once Dr. Booth recognizes this he wants to retrieve his son. He must now rescue his son from a place “without patience, humor, and mercy,” in other words, a place that is like Dr. Booth.
That the school is a fake place speaks to the fake nightingale in Dr. Booth's memory.
As an aside, it's interesting that his name is Dr. Booth because a booth is insular, isolation, and an apparent metaphor for solipsism. And the world of solipsism is a world of "untruths."
Booth’s epiphany, that his son is merely a dreamer and not a bad boy, compels him to return and save his son, but then he ditches his best idea and remains a coward who betrays his son.
Four. What does “Nightingale” have in common with “Desert Breakdown”?
Both stories are about parents who lack real parenting skills. Either they enable their children and create a false bond disconnected from love and reason as we see in “Desert Breakdown,” or they impose a rigid ideal on the child that potentially could crush the child’s psyche, as we see in “Nightingale.”
Both stories are about parents who are disappointed with their sons for not achieving an ideal or fulfilling an expectation.
Both stories address the potential lifelong crippling that occurs when parents try to live vicariously through their children or who fail to discipline them correctly.
Ironically, the stories address dysfunctional parenting from opposite ends. Enabling or spoiling a child is a sign of a parent’s helplessness, but so is imposing a rigid structure on a child.
The spoiled child is the narcissistic child who grows up, in Mark’s case, into the Man Child. He lives a lie of grandiosity that forever eludes him.
The psychologically abused child never fulfills his parent’s expectations. He is forever fighting an inferiority complex. He lives a lie that he is never good enough.
Both stories illustrate parents who are afflicting their sons with psychological abuse, but from opposite ends.
Journalist’s Six Questions for “Nightingale”
Who is involved in the conflict? The father and his son.
What issues are most compelling in the conflict? The father has a rigid definition of manliness that he is desperate to impose on his son.
When did the conflict begin? The father’s personal frustration and feelings of helplessness and failure compel him to live vicariously through his son.
Where does the conflict seem most heated or violent? When the son is at the formidable age of adolescence and poised to go to a military school.
Why does the conflict still persist? Because the father is so hell-bent on squeezing his son into a rigid mold that he is blind to who his son really is.
How might this conflict be resolved? The father will have to see the error of his ways since he, not his son, is at fault.
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