Evaluating Sources
You must assess six things to determine if a source is worthy of being used for your research paper.
The author’s objectivity or fairness (author is not biased)
The author’s credibility (peer reviewed, read by experts)
The source’s relevance
The source’s currency (source is up-to-date)
The source’s comprehensiveness (source has sufficient depth)
The author’s authority (author’s credentials and experience render him or her an expert in the field)
Warning Signs of a Poor Online Source
Site has advertising
Some company or other sponsors site
A political organization or special interest group sponsors the site.
The site has many links to other biased sites.
Summarizing Sources
“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms”
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using signal phrases, also called identifying tags, to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
Examples
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.
The story "Lime Pickle," referring to a spicy Indian condiment that makes the tongue dance with exotic pleasure, focuses on the conflict between a sweet, innocent young couple and debauched father whose introduction of the lime pickle becomes a metaphor for lost innocence. As we read, the narrator's girlfriend, upon realizing her father is an adulterous fop without morals, clings to her boyfriend in horror while watching her fond notions of family innocence "dissolve in some corrosive solution before her eyes." Of course, the lime pickle, that spicy, piquant temptress, is the corrosive Dionysian force that dissolves the nesting instinct that provides family stability. A lime pickle may be a tiny condiment, but beware of its powers, for as we say in Mexico, "Chiquito pero picoso."
Lexicon for "The Half Sister"
One. Faustian Bargain, AKA Deal with the Devil: You're enticed to take a "free meal" when in fact it's not free; you lose your soul, your autonomy, your freedom, and become a slave to what appears to be the "easy life." As a slave, you live in the Land of Death.
In any Faustian Bargain, you give away more than you get in return. This is true of any addiction and is evident in this Ted Talk presentation about dopamine response in boys who've grown up with Internet addiction.
Martin not only wants a "free lunch," he's lost, a man with crushed confidence in his dreams and ambitions. This makes him vulnerable.
The father John Knowles sizes up Martin as easy prey on page 66. The sad sad daughter Charmian represents the malaise of settling for less than we deserve because of our lowered expectations.
Charmian's metaphor as death is further explored on page 69 in which we see she tends a garden: "Everything from potting azaleas to digging bloody great ditches with a bulldozer," as the father says, alludes to a graveyard churning up corpses.
To further Charmian's image as death we see on page 69 that she has a "dead eye" with "light out in its gray iris." Likewise, the light is gone from Martin with his curdled ambitions.
We see that Charmian the half sister keeps looking at Martin with "anguished sympathy" suggesting they are two peas on a pod, two members of the living dead.
In a Faustian Bargain, or Deal with the Devil, we see the following:
1. willed blindness or willed ignorance is asserted in order to settle in what appears to be the Womb Where Struggle Ends.
2. loss of self-possession, autonomy, and independence in order to conform to the Evil Power's ways.
3. a sense of recurring futility, failed dreams and learned helplessness that compel the individual to succumb to "the Bargain." The mentality is "My life is crap. I've got nothing to lose, so I might as well take what I can get."
4. Overwhelming fear and lack of self-confidence that compels the person to seek "rescue" from a force outside his or her self. Of course, this "rescue" is really a trap that further imprisons the person inside his or her protracted period of ignorance, also known as the Jahiliyyah.
5. We are seduced by the bells and whistles of the Trickster who in the end is an ugly monster, a Charmian. We all must steer clear of our own Charmian who is coming to get us. Take a culture that is seduced by the bells and whistles of the Internet and prefers virtual relationships to real relationships. We see this happening with the young generation in Japan.
6. We are most vulnerable to the Faustian Bargain when we've "hit an all-time low," a breakup, a form of rejection, a form of humiliation, a form of failure, etc.
Two. The Myth of the Alpha Male Past on page 64 in which Martin remembers, perhaps with exaggeration, that he was playing the guitar at college while surrounded by "beautiful spellbound women."
Three. The danger of a post-humous existence in the aftermath of failed ambition discussed on page 65. When we compare our present day life, one of banality and boredom, with the myth of past glories, we become depressed and seek a Faustian Bargain.
Four. The garden, which is really Martin's graveyard, is a Trickster, the promise of his youthful dream of playing the guitar and enticing beautiful women. Now it's something else, something very, very ugly. See page 69.
The Trickster in fiction takes us through four levels of emotion over and over and over again: earthly, angelic, mystical, demonic.
Five. Poser or Pretender, someone who lacks substance and lives to create an effect, an impression. See Martin on page 71 who wants to impress a woman at a health food restaurant who he thinks might be impressed with his invitation to Covent Garden opera house. Martin doesn't have the confidence to be real, so he's a poser and we learn a terrible lesson. When we become posers, we become empty shells, also known as ciphers, people with no value or importance.
Six. Futility on page 74 in which we see the futility of Martin's existence; his failure to connect; rather, he has a series of superficial relationships that never take off the ground. The repitition is so god-awful he can already anticipate the futility of a relationship before it happens. "Then all the usual crap would start." (past lovers, fights, falling in and out of love, etc., etc., etc.) In other words, he knows his life is complete BS. Thus is the "pattern of his life" and there's no reason for him to fall in love.
Study Questions
- What is the connection between the Knowles’ garden and Martin’s childhood dream of becoming a guitarist and how does this connection inform the story’s theme? We act in ways that affect our lives on a massive scale by being compelled by our unconscious. When we're ruled by our unconscious, we're showing a lack of metacognition.
- What evidences stagnation, and even possible mediocrity, in Martin’s guitar career? See top of page 65. Also on page 67, Martin now sees the guitar as a way of “simply paying the rent.” In our misguided calculus we sometimes move from one trap into an even bigger trap. "Don't run from the fox into the mouth of the tiger."
- What class differences are evident on page 65? The refinement of the family vs. the crudeness of Martin. Or at least this is how Martin sees it, giving him a sense of inferiority. Ascending to a higher social class is a common chimera rendered well in the original film The Heartbreak Kid (1972).
- What garden metaphors, thorns included, suggest a curdled milk of false bounty in the story? See page 65. (sorry for mixing my metaphors) The garden is a sign of the Trickster.
- How is John Knowles, like Morton Dowell from “An Anxious Man,” a devilish figure? See page 66. Both are Tricksters taking their victims from the earthly, to the angelic, and to the demonic. Clearly, John is eager to dump his daughter on someone. He feels no parental duty to her, only shame and inconvenience; therefore, he is a devil figure.
- What do we make of Charmian based on her description as a strange woman in a shapeless brown dress? Is she the Priestess of Broken Dreams, Mediocrity, Grotesque Complacency, and the Easy Life (which is never easy)? Are we all tempted by some abhorrent variation of a Charmian, some deformed chimera? See page 67 and 68. One of her gray eyes is dead with no light in it. Clearly her “landscaping business” is a ruse; she has mental problems. The family will recluse her on a distant cottage property and need someone to tend to her. That someone is Martin.
- What is the story’s theme? When we are stagnant, we descend into a condition of ennui (the soul becomes bored, apathetic, and lethargic) and when we suffer ennui, we are susceptible to the devil’s marketing and packaging of any variation of Charmian.
- What is the most perverse aspect of the story? It appears that Martin is physically attracted to Mrs. Knowles and would marry Charmian, a repugnant woman, in order to be close the woman he truly desires.
- When we read on page 70, that Martin feels uncomfortable under Charmian’s transparent gaze, what is suggested? That perhaps Martin sees a reflection of his own spiritual death? Could the penetrating eye be the God’s Eye judging and condemning him for his character deformities?
- What evidences more character faults in Martin on page 71 and 74? He wants to go to opera to impress Rebecca. He is superficial, vain, and lacking in confidence. Then we see Martin’s fantasy of controlling the submissive Charmian. Then we see that Martin disciplined himself to not fall in love. Why? He’s afraid of losing control, of living life fully? But he’s controlled by his fears. He’s controlled by his need to control. He fails to see the irony.
- What does the story’s conclusion say about free will? Martin is no dummy. He know he is being judged as a candidate to take on damaged goods. He is fighting not to go to the opera, the beginning of the end of his life.
Review Faustian Bargain
In a Faustian Bargain, or Deal with the Devil, we see the following:
1. willed blindness or willed ignorance is asserted in order to settle in what appears to be the Womb Where Struggle Ends.
2. loss of self-possession, autonomy, and independence in order to conform to the Evil Power's ways.
3. a sense of recurring futility, failed dreams and learned helplessness that compel the individual to succumb to "the Bargain." The mentality is "My life is crap. I've got nothing to lose, so I might as well take what I can get."
4. Overwhelming fear and lack of self-confidence that compels the person to seek "rescue" from a force outside his or her self. Of course, this "rescue" is really a trap that further imprisons the person inside his or her protracted period of ignorance, also known as the Jahiliyyah.
5. We are seduced by the bells and whistles of the Trickster who in the end is an ugly monster, a Charmian. We all must steer clear of our own Charmian who is coming to get us.
6. We are most vulnerable to the Faustian Bargain when we've "hit an all-time low," a breakup, a form of rejection, a form of humiliation, a form of failure, etc.
The Causes of Self-Delusion (taking us away from metacognition)
1. The unconscious: forces we cannot see that spring from unknown needs and desires and fears. Often these desires and fears project into delusions such as a compulsion to collect brief cases (organization from chaos) or search for the perfect bed (search for lost mother).
Sometimes we suffer from unconscious bias such as recently reported about science professors in their bias against female science majors.
2. Vanity is another cause of our self-delusions based on its very definition: excessive and exaggerated esteem and estimation of our powers, skills, talents, "good looks," etc.
3. Chimera, as we said in the first lesson, is a mirage that we chase because we are in love with the chase, but not the acquisition. We are too often in love with an idea about life but not life itself. Chimeras are always unconscious manifestations. The most common chimera is the "velvet trap"; it appears like paradise from the outside but offers hell within.
Another form of the Velvet Trap is the myth of Hakuna Matata, the land of no worries.
Often a chimera is a symbol of our broken dreams. For example, in the short story "The Half Sister" the lonely Charmian is the Priestess of Broken Dreams, a chimera who draws Martin into her lonely world where his guitar playing will be subsidized by Charmian's rich father.
HomeTown Buffet is a place of Broken Dreams, the dream of getting full. It is a feeding hut where metacognition doesn't exist. All the blood is out of the brain and in the belly.
Patrick Malloy's or some other night club is the Dream of Connection and Eros. Let's put it this way: Do good things happen to people who are in bars drinking at 3 A.M.?
And yet the people at HomeTown Buffet and Patrick Malloy's are empty and depressed.
When we pursue the chimera, we commit a Faustian Bargain, a deal with the devil, that demands every fiber of our being but gives little.
4. Lust or concupiscence makes people use other people but the user wants to feel good about himself so he rationalizes his behavior.
5. Stewart from "The Natural Order" represents the chimera of Eternal Youth, Unlimited Possibilities, and Hedonistic Paradise.
Sample Thesis Statements
James Lasdun's stories show us that the tragedy of the Faustian Bargain is that once we are seduced by a false paradise, we submit our will to that sacrifice resulting in _____________, ____________, _______________, and _______________.
Ennui or the existential vacuum makes us vulnerable to the Faustian Bargain in four ways, not the least of which is ____________, _______________, _____________, and ________________.
The characters in Lasdun's short story collection are woefully lacking in free will evidenced by ________________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
Richard from "The Incalculable Gesture" and Abel from "The Natural Order" are both victims of the demonic, which is the result of overreacting to a crisis, feeling a sense of existential irrelevance, demanding a scapegoat to hide their personal responsibility, and wallowing in self-pity.
“The Natural Order” Lexicon
One. Devil Spreads Seeds of Discontent. See page 24 in which Stewart says a wedding ring announces that a person is someone else's property. Stewart stirs the pang of envy and regret in Abel's heart.
On page 28 we see that Abel feels the need to justify his oppressive existence, that being a married man, a parent, was to choose a "freakish and bizarre approach to life."
He now wondered, on page 29, if his married life was that of a deliberate choice, a good thing, or "passive acquiescence," a bad thing.
Feeling inferior, he begins to dress up and groom, emulating Stewart and we wonder if all the grooming and fashion from the advertising world is to stimulate our Dionysian lusts and impulses.
Abel will wear a crimson disco shirt, which I would call meretricious, cheap and garish in its allure.
Two. Unbridled, Radical Individualism and Masculinity, an untamed beast who is possessed with a "ceaseless and exclusive preoccupation with sex" (25).
Three. Family life vs. satyr (Pan or Billy Goat) life represents the war between Apollonian and Dionysian Forces. See this other link about Apollonian and Dionysian Forces.
Stewart embodies the Dionysian spirit as we read on page 31: "under the man's crassness a fine, bright flame seemed to burn in him. One was almost physically aware of it: a steady incandescence of sexual interest in the world, the lively brightness of which was its own irrefutable argument."
In contrast, Abel feels disabled, like his life is "domestic contentment," not present with joy but absent of pain (31).
See the Satyr's Tool Kit on page 30: jars, tubes, bottles, vials, oils, lotions, etc. (my favorite passage)
At the story's end, when Abel crosses the line and commits adultery, he is full of "unfamiliar savage jubiliation," part of the Dionysian spirit.
In a marriage based on love, not dynasty, as we read in Tim Parks' essay "Adultery," marriage is afflicted with the "collision of sacred and profane, the scenes of domestic bliss undermined by evident allusions to more disturbing emotions: serpents and harpies warning rapturous newly-weds of obscure calamities to come."
In other words, the marriage of dynasty, business, family, is an older, stronger form of marriage. Marriage of love is a newer type that is more vulnerable to the need for passion and ecstasy.
This hunger for ecstasy comes from the god Dionysus who "loosens and unties," creating chaos. "Dionysus is the river," we read in Parks' essay, "we hear flowing by in the distance, an incessant booming from far away; the one day it rises and floods everything, as if the normal above-water state of things, the sober delimitation of our existence, were but a brief parenthesis overwhelmed in an instant." In other words, passion is a tsunami that destroys the nest we've spent years building.
Four. Lies of omission: On page 33, Stewart flirts with a woman and tells her he lives in Connecticut, a truth, but doesn't tell her he's a husband and a father.
Five. Moral Inversion: to justify wrong behavior by turning the tables, as it were. Look on page 36 where Abel says to not have an affair, to not betray his wife would be a sin because he would be wasting a golden opportunity. Life doesn't offer many incredible moments to have great sex with another human being; what a waste to squander such an opportunity, he tells himself. He's BSing himself now.
Six. Like Martin from "The Half Sister," we see that Abel suffers from squandered dreams, lowered expectations, recurring futility, self-pity, and self-loathing (failed playwright) and wants to medicate himself with something: a sexual affair perhaps. See page 37.
Seven. The One-Armed Man. He represents hyper-masculinity (war prisoner and sniper who had his trigger finger smashed and we see him chopping goat; there must be a rich metaphor in there somewhere) on one hand and crippled limitations on the other. Is he an image of Stewart the Satyr?
Eight. Slippery Slope and the Moral Abyss. On page 47 we read "it was impossible to get a sense of the scale of what he was confronting," which is a life of denial, lies, of living an outright, perpetual lie. This is the gorge or the abyss. This is nihilism, the death of meaning.
- Stewart, who is hostile to marriage, represents what chimera to Abel. The chimera of unlimited opportunities and possibilities (more tech, more misery); all windows are open (ironically when you try to get through all the windows you fail at passing all of them). In fact, Stewart is a man-child beholden to concupiscence, desires that get worse when we try to feed them.
- Most guys are familiar with a Stewart type. We both hate and admire the Stewarts of the world. Women despise them and justifiably so, for should we not hate that which can make us helpless and destroy us? Explain men’s ambivalence toward the Stewart. We want to be like him; at the same time, we know he’s evil and selfish, what we might call a sexual conquistador. We'd never want the Stewarts of the world to date our daughters, our sisters, and our mothers. See page 26. Abel is in shock and anger at Stewart's blunt arrogance and need to show off about his conquests, but he envies Stewart at the same time.
- On page 29, we see Abel go down the slippery slope of self-delusion. Explain. We begin by watching Abel emulate Stewart’s dress code, that of a lascivious satyr. Abel claims to reject Stewart’s philandering while wanting to salvage Stewart’s good qualities, but in reality Abel is becoming the very image of the man he despises. And that is the beginning of descending into the abyss. Evil knows no compromise. Once we start down that road . . . In fact, by page 31, we see that Abel admires the flame of robust vitality that roils beneath Stewart’s exterior. He is a man of vitality who embraces life; indeed, Stewart has an appetite for life and lives life fully. He has now been idealized, put on a pedestal. Putting undeserving creatures on a pedestal is very dangerous and self-destructive.
- On page 31, what doubt haunts Abel about his marriage? That domestic life was a way of hiding from life, from being a member of the walking dead, a fake life. Abel is a charlatan and an impostor, a sort of eunuch. Stewart in contrast is an adventurous Billy Goat. In Abel’s newfound perverted “wisdom,” having affairs is a sign of moral superiority evidencing a man overflowing with life. Living in a marriage is being a slave inside a prison, a castrated man pretending to be happy. He begins to believe in his own B.S. Very dangerous.
- Does Abel cheat on his wife in a state of frenzied intoxication or calm acceptance? Explain. See page 35 top. Worse, than cheating on his wife, he realizes he no longer loves her. Now this happens BEFORE he cheats on her. Abel lives in two parallel universes: The universe he really lives in and the universe he WANTS to live in. That is his chimera.
- On page 46, how does the scene evidence that Abel’s cheating temptations are more about vanity than lust?
- Explain the metaphor of wilderness and dizzying heights in the story? They are about the loss of a moral foundation and the vertigo and self-loss that results.
Some Major Comparison Points
Fashion choices rebel against conformity and age: men choose to dress like teenagers as a sign that they're in denial of their age.
Peter Pan Syndrome: fighting life's natural narrative, what Aristotle called a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Jung's Four Stages of Life Vs. Teenage Stagnation
Athlete
Warrior
Statesperson or Statement
Spirit
Teenage stagnation glorified by novels (Catcher in the Rye), music, movies (Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Judd Apatow), sports, cult of self-esteem.
We've become a culture of narcissism under the veil of "staying young."
Concupiscence, infantile desire: Stewart never grows out of the stage (a toddler's stage); Abel regresses to it.
There are toddler foods in America: Hot Pockets, pizza, HomeTown Buffet
Essay Options
Essay 1 for 150 points: 1,400 words typed and 3 sources: Hard copy and turnitin upload due no later than start of class on March 1:
Option One
Comparing at least 3 stories from Lasdun’s collection, develop an analytical thesis that shows how Joseph Epstein’s online essay “The Perpetual Adolescent” supports the assertion that Lasdun’s characters self-destruct under the weight of their adolescent fixation.
By perpetual adolescence, we meaning the following:
Chasing Eros instead of maturing.
Chasing the ego's needs instead of maturing.
Adulating or worshipping the culture of youth while shunning the wisdom of maturity
Chasing the compulsivity of youth and never learning the self-control of maturity.
Chasing the hedonism of youth instead of finding connection and meaning.
Pursuing Dionysian impulses instead of Apollonian ones. Some say that all literature is about the conflict between Dionysian and Apollonian forces.
Be sure your essay has a minimum of 3 sources.
Sample Outline
Introduction: I would define maturity in the context of Carl Jung's 4 Life Stages: athlete, warrior, statement, spirit. I would give an example of someone I know or a character in fiction who has achieved this kind of maturity. 250 words.
In my second introduction paragraph I would contrast my definition of maturity with a definition of perpetual adolescence defined by hedonism, nihilistic aimlessness, self-pity, and cycles of futility and learned helplessness. I would give a personal example of someone I know or a fictional character who is mired in this kind of immaturity. 250 words.
Thesis Paragraph: Abel from "The Natural Order," Martin from "The Half Sister," and Clare from "Peter Kahn's Third Wife" are victims of self-induced perpetual adolescence evidenced by ____________________, _______________, ____________________, ________________________, and _________________________. 100 words.
Paragraphs 3-7 would elaborate the mapping components provided in the thesis paragraph. Each paragraph would be 150 words for 750 words.
My final paragraph, my conclusion, is a brief, dramatic restatement of my thesis.
Total words is approximately 1,400 words.
Option Two
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: How do characters in Lasdun's "love stories" reach the demonic state? (cause and effect thesis)
By "demonic" I mean several things:
They go mad as they become disconnected from others and living inside their head, the condition known as solipsism.
They become irrational so that they are incapable of maturity, which means having the faculties of love and reason.
They have no boundaries with others, so that they are “clingers,” as we discussed last class, people capable of symbiotic relationships, which render both people emotional cripples.
They become blind to their own self-destruction so that they have no self-awareness or metacognition.
They chase a pipe dream or a chimera and obliterate themselves in the process.
They become bitter at their wasted life and realize they've squandered their existence on a cheap dream. They're overcome, as a result, with self-hatred and remorse.
Consider, their madness as the result of the Faustian Bargain, settling, the dream of eternal adolescence, and the chimera for a comparison essay that includes at least 3 stories, "The Half Sister," "An Anxious Man," "The Natural Order," and "Peter Khan's Third Wife." Be sure your essay has a minimum of 3 sources.
Option Three
Analyze two stories in terms of the Faustian Bargain described in the essay "Love People, Not Pleasure," by Arthur C. Brooks. Be sure your essay at least 3 sources. You may use the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" as a source and as a story comparison.
Sample Thesis Statements
James Lasdun's stories show us that the tragedy of the Faustian Bargain is that once we are seduced by a false paradise, we submit our will to that sacrifice resulting in _____________, ____________, _______________, and _______________.
Ennui or the existential vacuum makes us vulnerable to the Faustian Bargain in four ways, not the least of which is ____________, _______________, _____________, and ________________.
The characters in Lasdun's short story collection are woefully lacking in free will evidenced by ________________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
Richard from "The Incalculable Life Gesture" and Abel from "The Natural Order" are both victims of the demonic, which is the result of overreacting to a crisis, feeling a sense of existential irrelevance, demanding a scapegoat to hide their personal responsibility, and wallowing in self-pity.
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.”
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.
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 ________________.
It is my purpose in this essay to show you why I'm correct on the subject of the death penalty. My proofs will be _________, _______, _________, 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:
It's good for us to have our feelings hurt.
You've never really lived until someone has handed you your __________ on a stick.
Men who are jealous are cheaters.
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 _______________.
John Taylor Gatto opens his essay “Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, 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 are 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 __________________.
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.
We read that in the latest study by the Institute for Higher Education, Leadership & Policy at Cal State Sacramento that only 30% of California community college students are transferring or getting their degrees. We have a real challenge in the community college if 70% are falling by the wayside.
Five. Use an anecdote (personal or otherwise) to get your reader’s attention:
When my daughter was one years old and I was changing her diaper, she without warning jammed her thumb into my eye, forcing my eyeball into my brain and almost killing me. After the assault, I suffered migraine headaches for several months and frequently would have to wash milky pus from the injured eye.
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.”
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.
In front of the buffet is a sign of rules and conduct. One of the rules urges people to stand in the buffet line in an orderly fashion and to be patient because there is plenty of food for everyone. Another rule is that children are not to be left unattended and running freely around the buffet area. My favorite rule is that no hands, tongues, or other body parts are allowed to touch the food. Tongs and other utensils are to be used at all times. The rules give you an idea of the kind of people who eat there. These are people I want to avoid.
But as I walk to the gym from my car, which shares a parking lot with the buffet patrons, I cannot avoid the nauseating smell of stale grease oozing from the buffet’s rear dumpster, army green and stained with splotches and a seaweed-like crust of yellow and brown grime.
Often I see cooks and dishwashers, their bodies covered with soot, coming out of the back kitchen door to throw refuse into the dumpster, a smoldering receptacle with hot fumes of bacteria and flies. Hunchbacked and knobby, the poor employees are old, weary men with sallow, rheumy eyes and cuts and bruises all over their bodies. I imagine them being tortured deep within the bowels of the fiery kitchen on some Medieval rack. They emerge into the blinding sunshine like moles, their eyes squinting, with their plastic garbage bags twice the size of their bodies slung over their shoulders, and then I look into their sad eyes—eyes that seem to beg for my help and mercy. And just when I am about to give them words of hope and consolation or urge them to flee for their lives, it seems they disappear back into the restaurant as if beckoned by some invisible tyrant.
The above could transition to the topic of people of a certain weight being required to buy three airline tickets for an entire row of seats.
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 well-being that you might think?
What is the difference between thinking and critical thinking?
Comments