About 80% of your essay should be your writing and 20% should be quoted, paraphrased, and summarized material.
4 Steps of MLA In-Text Citations
You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.
Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase. Use the templates:
Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.
According to . . . (very common)
Ha Jin writes . . . (very common)
Panbin laments . . .
Dan rages . . .
Dan seethes . . .
Signal Phrase Templates
In the words of researchers Redelmeier and Tibshirani, “…”
As Matt Sundeen has noted, “…”
Patti Pena, the mother of a child killed by a driver distracted by a cell phone, points out that “…”
“…” writes Christine Haughney, “…”
“…” claims wireless spokesperson Annette Jacobs.
Radio hosts Tom and Ray Magliozzi offer a persuasive counterargument: “…”
Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.
Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.
Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).
In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).
Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.
Comma Splices
A comma splice is joining two sentences with a comma when you should separate them with a period or a semicolon.
Incorrect
People love Facebook, however, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.
Corrected
People love Facebook. However, they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.
Corrected
Though people love Facebook, they fail to realize Facebook is sucking all their energy.
Incorrect
Patience is difficult to cultivate, it grows steadily only if we make it a priority.
Corrected
Patience is difficult to cultivate. It grows steadily only if we make it a priority.
Corrected
Because patience grows within us so slowly, patience is extremely difficult to cultivate.
You can use a comma between two complete sentences when you join them with a FANBOYS word or coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).
Correct
People love Facebook, but they don't realize Facebook is sucking all of their energy.
Student Comma Splices Part One (the second sentence feels like a continuation of thought from the first sentence, which it is, but it still requires a period before it)
- My department decided to set up another office for me to do my work, I was no longer sitting out front like the permanent receptionist.
- The permanent receptionist never spoke to anyone in the offices, he just answered phones.
- He said, “You have a few choices, they need a coordinator at the new jobsite or working the business side as a coordinator.”
- I was lucky, many opportunities came to me and now I had the required experience to get the job I wanted.
- There was no stopping me, all my achievements were completed on my own.
- I was promoted quickly, I went from coordinator to senior executive within a few months.
- The drug dealing lifestyle was insatiable to Jeff Henderson, he believed he could elude the feds.
- Our methods paralleled, my method was legal, his was illegal.
- Jeff Henderson rose to the top of his game, he had established his fortune.
10. Jeff Henderson had no choice, it was either work or stay confined in his prison cell.
11. She was going to marry her high school sweetheart, what better way to spend the rest of your life in bliss?
12. He asked me to marry him, he was a Marine after all stationed in Japan.
13. Her life was finally beginning, she could leave Los Angeles.
14. This was her life, she did what she wanted.
15. Now she had nothing, she had given up her job to move overseas.
16. Life was too much of a challenge, she accepted that fact.
To Avoid Comma Splices, Know the Difference Between Coordinating Conjunctions (FANBOYS) and Conjunctive Adverbs
Examples
Jerry ate ten pizzas a week. Nonetheless, he remained skinny.
Jerry ate ten pizzas a week, but he remained skinny.
Barbara didn't buy the BMW. Instead, she bought the Acura.
Barbara didn't buy the BMW, yet she did buy the Acura.
Steve wasn't interested in college. Moreover, he didn't want to work full-time.
Steve wasn't interested in college, and he didn't want to work full-time.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me. However, I do want you to help me do my taxes.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do want you to help me do my taxes.
I don't want you to pay me back the hundred dollars you owe me, but I do, however, want you to help me do my taxes.
I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid. Consequently, I think we should break up.
I feel that our relationship has become stale, stagnant, and turgid, so I think we should break up.
Students hate reading. Therefore, they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.
Students hate reading, so they must be tested with closed-book reading exams.
Avoiding Comma Splices and Run-Ons
Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because or restructure the sentence.
After each sentence put a “C” for Correct or a “CS” for Comma Splice. If the sentence is a comma splice, rewrite it so that it is correct.
One. Bailey used to eat ten pizzas a day, now he eats a spinach salad for lunch and dinner.
Two. Marco no longer runs on the treadmill, instead he opts for the less injury-causing elliptical trainer.
Three. Running can cause shin splints, which can cause excruciating pain.
Four. Running in the incorrect form can wreak havoc on the knees, slowing down can often correct the problem.
Five. While we live in a society where 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers are on the rise, the reading of books, sad to say, is on the decline.
Six. Facebook is a haven for narcissists, it encourages showing off with selfies and other mundane activities that are ways of showing how great and amazing our lives our, what a sham.
Seven. We live in a society where more and more Americans are consuming 1,500-calorie cheeseburgers, however, those same Americans are reading less and less books.
Eight. Love is a virus from outer space, it tends to become most contagious during April and May.
Nine. The tarantula causes horror in many people, moreover there is a species of tarantula in Brazil, the wandering banana spider, that is the most venomous spider in the world.
Ten. Even though spiders cause many people to recoil with horror, most species are harmless.
Eleven. The high repair costs of European luxury vehicles repelled Amanda from buying such a car, instead she opted for a Japanese-made Lexus.
Twelve. Amanda got a job at the Lexus dealership, now she’s trying to get me a job in the same office.
Thirteen. While consuming several cinnamon buns, a twelve-egg cheese omelet, ten slices of French toast slathered in maple syrup, and a tray of Swedish loganberry crepes topped with a dollop of blueberry jam, I contemplated the very grave possibility that I might be eating my way to a heart attack.
Fourteen. Even though I rank marijuana far less dangerous than most pharmaceutical drugs, alcohol, and other commonly used intoxicants, I find marijuana unappealing for a host of reasons, not the least of which is its potential for radically degrading brain cells, its enormous effect on stimulating the appetite, resulting in obesity, and its capacity for over-relaxing many people so that they lose significant motivation to achieve their primary goals, opting instead for a life of sloth and intractable indolence.
One. You Can't Rise If You Don't Fall First:
Part of Redemption Is the Journey to the Dark Side or the Fall.
A common part of this darkness is a form of insanity called concupiscence.
We can define concupiscence as limitless, selfish desires that don't sate our appetites. To the contrary, the process of feeding our concupiscence only serves to make our desires greater than before. The result of concupiscence is insanity. For a recent example, we can look at Tiger Woods who is an example of concupiscence, which is the sum of temptation plus opportunity.
Some of us don't go completely insane in our quest to feed our desires. We mature, grow up, and join the adult world. Part of being an adult is knowing our limits in eating, spending, pleasure-seeking, etc.
In other words, being an adult is about conquering concupiscence.
When we mature and realize we must assert limits on ourselves, we often have an awakening to Existential Ache, the realization of two things:
One, we are not, as we once believed in childhood, the center of the universe.
Two, we come to realize that our desires will ALWAYS outstrip our capacity to satisfy them.
Failure to realize the latter principle of Existential Ache results in concupiscence, the futile struggle to appease our ever-growing appetites.
Concupiscence is stimulated by opportunity and imagination. We have the money to sate our appetites and we imagine the satisfaction of increasing our appetites while finding the necessary resources to satisfy those freshly honed desires.
Example of concupiscence:
A businessman travels frequently to Miami where he frequents a swanky club. The club's outer rim terrace is cluttered with women of the most exquisite beauty and pulchritude. But inside, it is rumored, in the VIP suite, the women are even more beautiful than the one's visible on the outside plaza. So the businessman pays the handsome fee to become a VIP and comforts himself with the thought that he, as an exclusive club member, has access to Miami's most lovely women.
Wrong. Rumors abound that there is an inner chamber, requiring a surreptitious descent down a trap door, where the women are even more outrageously beautiful than in the VIP room. Our troubled businessman pays the bouncer $500 and is escorted through the trapdoor where, once again, he is comforted with the belief that he has access to Miami's most beautiful women.
Wrong. Rumors abound about another trapdoor leading to a chamber of even more rarified beauties and another and another until the businessman collapses with the despair that Miami's most beautiful women will elude him forever. He shrinks with anguish, forgoes all interests and passions, and spends the rest of his life languishing in self-pity.
This is the story of concupiscence.
And it is the story of Jeff Henderson before he "falls" in prison where his opportunities to fuel his concupiscence have all but ended.
One. Concupiscence and Its Causes
1. Concupiscence is the search for happiness based on gratifying pleasure and ego without a moral compass. The result is moral dissolution, a fancy term for the loss of morality and sanity. Tennessee Williams became famous after writing the play A Streetcar Named Desire and lived in a fancy hotel where he had room service and escorts visit him every day. One evening he poured gravy over his banana split and realized he had become insane. He left the hotel, went to Mexico and resumed with his writing career.
2. Concupiscence is the pursuit of happiness without a moral compass; in other words, you have no vision of anything beyond gratifying your base appetites and therefore have a misguided definition of happiness.
3. When you have no vision beyond your base appetites, you are what we call “Bread and Circus,” which means all you desire is food and entertainment.
4. Concupiscence compels you to feed your irrational appetites, which wage war against your powers of reason. For example, one of my students knows a guy who lives in expensive Brentwood and drives a BMW but he has to eat his sister’s government cheese and other handouts because he has no money for food. That’s not a reasonable situation.
5. Concupiscence grows inside us when we have role models without a moral compass. In Jeff Henderson’s case, he sees all the major “players,” like T-Row, glory in the life of concupiscence.
6. Concupiscence grows inside us from the anger that is born from having a sense of deprivation: “I’m gonna get mine.”
7. The writer Jonathan Franzen gives concupiscence another name, Ache: Being overwhelmed by desires that always outrun our capacity to fulfill them.
8. Another cause behind concupiscence is vanity, also called the libido ostentandi: The need to show off. A rich woman in Argentina, a landlady, wears a body length mink coat at an outdoor bazaar where the temperature is 105 degrees. She wants everyone to know she is of a higher stature. She passes out and dies of heat stroke.
Another example: A student wrote an essay about his friend who, buying a BMW 5 series, had to work 2 jobs and drop out of El Camino College. The misguided young man’s didn’t know how depressed he was when he realized all his friends, the people who would be impressed with his BMW, could not see it since they were attending college. One day this BMW owner made a special trip to the college and yelled to his buddies to come look at his car but they had to go to his class and my student’s final vision of his friend was screaming from his BMW on the Crenshaw parking lot for someone to check out his car. No one cared.
9. As I said before, concupiscence is the result of temptation plus opportunity. Jeff Henderson had both.
Two. Concupiscence and Its Effects: Moral Dissolution
1. If concupiscence goes its full course, we arrive at a condition of moral dissolution like Tennessee Williams mentioned above. Here’s another example: A man cheats on his girlfriend or wife once and feels the searing pain from his conscience. He cheats on her 1,000 times and feels nothing because his conscience has decomposed into what we call moral dissolution. In other words, he’s lost his soul.
2. Another word for moral dissolution is debauchery, which means the moral pillars that hold up your morality have fallen and your morality has fallen with them.
3. Ennui; you’ve filled your senses with so much pleasure that you can no longer feel anything. You have become incurably numb to life and now must suffer the desperation of needing to feel anything, no matter what the cost. This process is also called the “hedonic treadmill” in which you constantly have to spike the pleasure quotient before you adapt to the pleasure, become numb to it and have to spike the pleasure again. This cycle goes on and on with you always losing.
4. Nihilism; the death of meaning. There is no right or wrong. Life has no meaning. The world is merely a playground for your desires. The world is a giant margarita glass and you suck on the straw, slurp every last drop and then die. Hedonism always ends in nihilism.
Three. In addition to concupiscence, Jeff Henderson becomes a victim of his own success. One of the memoir’s major themes is that misguided success can be a great misfortune leading to insanity.
1. One of the major themes in Cooked is that in life when we think we’re rising, we’re actually falling. Henderson's redemption is not born from his rise to wealth but during his fall in prison.
2. The problem with success is that most of us have a misguided definition of it. If success is based on concupiscence, then the “success” we achieve will drive us insane.
3. Another problem with success is that it creates the illusion of invincibility. The more successful Henderson’s drug operation becomes, for example, the more safe he feels. He believes he is “untouchable.”
4. When we feel invincible we go into denial. For example, Henderson minimizes, to his detriment, his drug dealer associations, some of whom will be kidnapped and killed. He also underestimates the stupidity and back-stabbing nature of another one, which will result in his demise. Finally, Henderson is in denial about the feds’ suspicions regarding Henderson’s covert drug operations. The feds arrest him without even catching Henderson with any drugs at all because they have a long list of records, phone conversations, ancillary transactions, witness testimony, etc.
5. Another form of denial is moral denial. Henderson rationalizes that he is a drug dealer but he does so “strictly as a businessman.” He’s not about violence, taking drugs, or hanging out with gang bangers. But the fact of the matter is his operations are harmful, a painful fact he doesn’t realize until he’s in prison.
6. When our success generates easy money, we go insane because suddenly we lose our sense of value and hard work and our sense of goals. We live in Another Universe, one that most people don’t live in. The films City of God and Goodfellas illustrate this point.
7. When money is easy for us and we see the rest of the world “getting punked,” being forced to do real work to make their money, we start to feel so superior to the rest of humanity that we think we’re gods. We think this to our own detriment.
Review of when we think we're rising we're really falling:
One. Concupiscence
Two. Moral dissolution
Three. Misguided definition of success divorced from a moral code
Four. Denial
Five. Illusion of invincibility
Six. Insanity resulting from living a bubble of sycophants
Jeff Henderson's Fall Results in Too Much Denial
Some Denial Is Necessary for Sanity, But Too Much Denial Leads to Insanity and Moral Dissolution
We need a certain amount of denial to be sane. For example, we should not face the raw, bald reality of our most egregious personal defects and weaknesses.
Otherwise, we'll be bogged down in the paralysis of self-obsession and self-loathing and we would be worthless. Let's say we're not as kind as we'd like to be.
We can't go around muttering to ourselves, "I lack the milk of human kindness" over and over. Otherwise, we'll go insane.
Another example is ugly photographs of you. I'm talking about photographs that make you look so ugly you cringe and wince with disbelief.
Photographers say most of us are more photogenic on our left side.
THROW THOSE UGLY PHOTOS AWAY NOW! Before people put them on the internet.
If you walk around life with an image of yourself based on the ugliest photographs ever taken of you, you'll never leave the house; you'll never get a date; you'll die lonely.
Try to focus on the more flattering photographs of yourself.
Is this a form of delusion? Maybe. But it's a good delusion, one that preserves your sanity.
A personal example: I hate the sound of my voice when someone plays it back on a taperecorder.
Solution?
I DON'T LISTEN TO MY RECORDED VOICE.
Otherwise, I'll reel in self-disgust.
Take peanut butter as another example. It's full of cockroach parts, but we eat it without thinking about that disgusting fact.
Or when we eat meat. Few of us contemplate the agony the animals suffered to become meat on our plate.
Or cheap clothing. It's cheap because underage children are making it in third-world country at slave wages. Still enjoying your Gap T-shirt?
To a certain degree, self-delusions are necessary. Otherwise, we don't do much. We'll criticize every move we make.
Fly to a green summit on who to reduce the world's carbon footprint and the private jet you take is blowing carbons into the atmosphere.
Another example is natural disasters. Even though an earthquake, a tsunami or some other disaster can destroy us in the blink of an eye, we have to live our lives as if we have a good shot of living a full, healthy life. Otherwise, we'll be paralyzed by fear.
So we all engage in some denial to some degree.
Taking Denial Too Far
But there is a point where denial no longer preserves our sanity, that denial goes too far and plummets us into the depths of illusion completely disconnected to reality.
We see people on American Idol who think they have the talent to be superstar singers.
Such is the fate of successful drug dealer Jeff Henderson who believes, one, he's invincible and, two, he isn't doing anything wrong: He's just a businessman.
Sometimes When We Think We're "Rising," We're Really in Denial
Examples of Denial
- A woman sees gradual warning signs that her boyfriend is jealous and controlling, but she denies it and before she knows it, she is in the chapel about to give her vows, what will be for her a prison sentence of unbearable hell: physical beatings and psychological abuse.
- A man is a major drug dealer but minimizes the harm of his actions by telling everyone he is not a drug user, a gang-banger, or a killer. He’s just a “business man.”
- A man doesn't believe he has a snoring problem until his wife plays him a tape-recording of his sleep apnea.
- A man cheats on his girlfriend, convinces her that he did not cheat and has a hard time “forgiving” his girlfriend for questioning his fidelity.
- An El Camino student hangs out with college dropout buddies who never really grew up. Their lives center on “having a good time,” which is the usual fare of male bonding, bragging about their endless series of immature relationships, gossiping about their latest exploits, etc. This student can’t acknowledge that his “buddies” are emotional retards distracting him from his more important goals, such as succeeding in college. Even more disturbing, he fails to admit that his “buddies” are haters who want him to fail because crabs always pinch the top crab straddling the bucket and pull the crab back in before it can escape.
Two. The Causes of Denial
- When you lie to yourself enough times, you begin to believe that your lie is a truth. This is the beginning of insanity.
- When your whole life becomes a collection of lies that you’ve convinced yourself are truths, you are walking around Planet Earth with your head up your butt.
- Denial is also brought upon by the gradual worsening of a situation. You acclimate to gradual developments so that you don’t see what is happening to you or your don’t want to see it. We can call this Suffering Acclimation. The pain is so gradual we can get used to it.
- Acclimation allows you to adapt to an extreme situation so that is doesn’t seem extreme to you. Making $100,000 a month in easy money isn’t normal to us, but it was normal to Jeff Henderson during his drug dealing days. In other words, craziness becomes the “new normal.”
- Denial is caused by the ego, which says, “These things can’t be happening because of me. I’m essentially a good person. I don’t deserve this.” Such is Jeff Henderson’s position during his initial arrest and imprisonment.
- When the ego embraces denial to escape personal accountability, the result is nihilism, the death of morals and meaning. In other words, “you don’t give a damn about anything.” That’s nihilism. See page 110 in which Jeff Henderson says he doesn’t care about anything. He doesn’t want to get his life together. He just wants to lift weights and “kick it” with his homies. That’s nihilism.
- When you're surrounded by sycophants, they tell you what you want to hear, not the truth, so you live in a bubble of denial.
Jeff Henderson interview with Tavis Smiley (about 11 minutes)
Writing an Introduction About Your Personal Struggle with Denial
I’ve been working out most of my life. As a kid I remember family and friends looking at photographs of Arnold Schwarzenegger and other bodybuilders and exclaiming how “gross” and “freakish” these “musclemen” were. In contrast, I thought these bodybuilders looked normal. From my point of view, it was the average guy, a tomato with four toothpicks sticking out it, who looked woeful.
At 13, I was a Junior Olympic Weightlifting champion. At 19, I took second place in Mr. Teenage San Francisco. I know the confidence and satisfaction that results from looking muscular and lean and I know, ever since my metabolism slowed down in my early thirties, the chagrin and displeasure of having a Pillsbury Dough Boy coat of flab over my frame.
No time did I experience this humiliation more than in the summer of 2003 at the age of 42. My wife Carrie and I were walking back from the brunch buffet at the Sheraton Inn in Kauai where I had just ingested a 7,000-calorie breakfast of macadamia nut pancakes, French toast made with Hawaiian sweet bread, turkey sausage patties, and scrambled eggs with melted cheddar all washed down with several tall glasses of freshly-squeezed orange juice. As I strutted my 259-pounds outside the buffet room and past a hotel window, I saw the reflection of a portly gentleman, dressed in safari shorts and a turquoise tank top, which sported the striking image of the iconic sea turtle. This unsightly man I gazed upon looked like the stereotype of an overfed American.
I walked closer toward the bloated image and I was overcome by the shock and anxiety that the reflection was not some other guy for whom I could judge with gleeful ridicule but was me. I was that dude, the type of person whom I had mocked and scorned most of my life.
This was a huge moment for me, what literary people might call an “epiphany,” and I was fortunate to have experienced it. Most people are denied, or deny themselves, such moments of clarity. It is my belief that something like 95% of the human race walk around Planet Earth with their heads up their butts and this is how they die—never knowing what the hell is really going on. But on that summer day in Kauai when I saw that the corpulent man in the window was in fact me, my head uncorked from my butt and I was able to see reality for what it really was. And this reality—me being a chubster—was totally unacceptable. Something had to be done.
Jeff Henderson, too, suffers from having his head up his butt as he denies the evil of his "business endeavor," that of a silver-tongued drug dealer. We see that denial was just one factor that descended him deeper and deeper into a life of crime and made him believe that when he was rising, he was actually sinking. Conversely, when he thought he was sinking, he was actually rising. . . .
Perdition and Redemption
Review:
So far we’ve talked about Jeff Henderson’s Redemption Journey in terms of his Fall, which includes concupiscence, pursuing the good without a moral compass, and denial, the refusal to take accountability for one’s actions by relying on all sorts of rationalizations.
Redemption Reviewed
1. The Fall, misguided quest for goodness often resulting in the following:
concupiscence
we make rationalizations to justify our actions. We eventually believe our rationalizations and this is a form of insanity
denial or willed ignorance; we pretend that we don't know what we're doing.
moral dissolution, numbness
2. Denial of the Fall because of the some of the above reasons
3. Epiphany or revelation in which we realize our accountability for our Fall
4. Contrition: feeling badly for our misdeeds; this is part of perdition, suffering for our misdeeds.
5. reinvention: starting from zero (also part of our perdition) and building fortitude and hard work to create a new self. Reinvention is comprised of the following:
humility, starting at zero
fortitude
perseverance in the face of failure
discerning fruitful failure from futile failure
10,000 Hour Rule
6. Flourishing, blossoming at craft and personal life together
7. giving back, mentoring, other acts of atonement
Today we will look at the second part of the Redemption Journey: Perdition, which means suffering punishment for one’s crimes or misdeeds.
Reality sets in: crime and punishment or perdition
1. Jeff Henderson gets arrested and realizes he won’t have access to women the way he used to. This is a shock to his psyche.
2. He suffers another shock to his psyche. Once a powerful man who called the shots, he finds in prison that he is now powerless, beholden to guards like Big Bubba on page 79.
3. In prison, he has time to think about his life in ways he didn't before. For example, he wanted to be like T whom he worshipped as a sort of god. Ironically, he doesn’t realize until he’s in prison that he had become BIGGER that T and that being SO BIG put him on the feds’ radar screen and that was his downfall. 81
4. All Jeff’s life he’s been inculcated with the belief in the Homie or Gang Banger Code of Silence as if it were religious truth. But in prison, he discovers the No-Snitch Code has no real value because a homie will rat you out when it’s to his advantage. See page 151.
5. Jeff thought he was invincible but discovers a painful fact: The Feds had been watching him, not for several months, but for several years. He was digging his own grave for a long, long time. 87
6. Why me? Jeff is not a victim but he cries to Jesus and feels sorry for himself. In a state of perdition, he his helpless, beholden to the caprices of prison life.
7. He realizes a painful fact: Prison may have saved his life. One of the Twins, his supplier, got killed shortly after Jeff’s imprisonment. 89
8. Too late in the game, he discovers another painful fact: Anyone can get convicted who doesn’t get caught with drugs or money. 94
9. His perdition takes on palpable pain when he is given legal accountability for his crimes: 19.5 years. See page 100.
10. Only after he’s arrested does he discover another painful fact: There is no loyalty in the streets. It’s a myth. See page 152 after his homies steal all his stuff after he’s arrested.
What is Jeff’s attitude at the beginning of his prison sentence? Contrast with his attitude at the end of it (centripetal vs. centrifugal development)
1. Self-pity, victimization
2. Nihilism 110
3. Getting over, coast in life, do the minimum.
4. Universe of One 113. On page 192, he says “in prison everything is about you.”
5. No passion for marriage 114
6. He fluctuates between complacency and despair.
Future Goal and Redemption
We all have the drive for redemption; if this drive is frustrated, the drive does not remain dormant and neutral inside of us; to the contrary, this drive goes inward and poisons us.
Changing Our Definition of Success
When Jeff is able to redirect his energy from being a drug dealer to a chef, he finds redemption. All of us have a “life energy” that can be directed toward concupiscence, revenge, victimization or growth, maturity, and independence as is explained by Erich Fromm in this passage from Escape from Freedom:
It would seem that the amount of destructiveness to be found in individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness of life is curtailed. By this, we do not refer to individual frustrations of this or that instinctive desire but to the thwarting of the whole life, the blockage of spontaneity of the growth and expression of man's sensuous, emotional, and intellectual capacities. Life has an inner dynamism of its own; it tends to grow, to be expressed, to be lived. It seems that if this tendency is thwarted the energy directed toward life undergoes a process of decomposition and changes into energies directed toward destruction. In other words: the drive for life and the drive for destruction are not mutually independent factors but are in a reversed interdependence. The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness.
Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life. Those individual and social conditions that make for suppression of life produce the passion for destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from which the particular hostile tendencies--either against others or against oneself--are nourished.
In other words, Fromm is saying that we must flourish in a passion in order to direct our energy toward growth rather than re-direct that energy toward self-destruction such as concupiscent pursuits.
It’s only in prison that Jeff is forced to being the journey to redemption.
Redemption and Flourishing
Flourishing is the opposite of concupiscence flourishing, from the Greek word eudaimonia: means to blossom, to become who we were meant to be.
When Jeff Henderson becomes an illegal “business man” being followed by the feds, rationalizing his illegal activities, and living on easy money, he’s not the person he was meant to be. He is rather a grotesque variation. We see his misshapen character in prison when he becomes the enraged, nihilistic, disaffected victim.
Only when he learns a passion and accepts his responsibilities as an adult, does he begin to flourish and he becomes happier than he was as a concupiscent drug dealer.
Taking a Close Look at Fortitude: The strength and tenacity to push forward in the presence of ever surmounting obstacles. What are Jeff Henderson’s obstacles to starting over?
1. Jeff Henderson discovers that the world is full of “haters and dream crushers” (crabs in a bucket). These are the haters who don’t want people with good intentions to be afforded a clean, fresh start because they want everyone to share in their failure and misery.
2. Others don’t trust us. Nor do they forgive us for our past deeds.
3. Often we have an inability to forgive ourselves for our past deeds creates baggage
4. Often we lack confidence: We fear that we may backslide into our old ways.
5. Often a past label like “convicted felon” creates a stigma that is extremely difficult to erase. We see the felon. We don’t see the husband trying to support his wife and two kids.
6. Jeff Henderson has to tone down his “stroll” and his muscles with baggy clothes to remove the hard gangsta look. See page 2
7. Jeff Henderson has to remain gracious and poised when he gets pooh-poohed by Caesar’s Palace, the very place that was happy to take his money when he was a dealer “back in the day.” Now Caesar’s is playing all high and mighty.
Centrifugal Motion or JH's Transformation
1. He sees he’s been blind and willfully ignorant about the consequences of his selling drugs. 115
2. He develops intellectual curiosity, reading eclectic material, various intellectual and religious doctrines. He doesn’t embrace one but rather picks and chooses as he sees fit. 124
3. He becomes engaged with others vs. being disaffected. 124
4. He finds a passion, cooking, that utilizes his talents.
5. He learns the humility of starting at the bottom and not getting things “easy” like when he was a dealer.
6. He learns a hard work ethic. It’s almost impossible to acclimate from easy money to hard work with low pay. But Jeff was always a hard worker.
7. Jeff found a mentor in Big Roy and later in Las Vegas a cook named Friendly. And then Robert at the Gadsby’s.
8. Jeff experiences contrition and regret on page 146: He is among the dregs of the world, exactly where he belongs, in the lowest rung of society: hell.
9. You must have a vision of a different life. See page 147.
10. He begins to take pride in his work. 147: Speed, taste, and presentation. 188
11. He undoes his wrong by talking to teens in Vegas. 165
Sample Analytical Thesis
Jeff Henderson's fall from grace and redemption are comprised of _______________, ____________________, ________________________, _________________________, and _________________________.
Sentence Fragment Review
Sentence Fragments
No main verb
Fragment
An essay with a clear thesis and organization.
Corrected
An essay with a clear thesis and organization has a stronger probability of succeeding.
Fragment
An education system based on standardized tests with no flexible interpretation of those tests
Corrected
An education system based on standardized tests with no flexible interpretation of those tests will inevitably discriminate against non-native speakers.
No main subject
Fragment
With too much emphasis on standardized tests targeting upper class Anglo students
Corrected
With too much emphasis on standardized tests targeting upper class Anglo students, No Child Left Behind remains a form of discrimination.
Fragment
With my fish tacos overloaded with mango salsa and Manchego cheese
Correct
With my fish tacos overloaded with mango salsa and Manchego cheese, they fell apart upon the first bite.
Fragment
Until you learn to not overload your fish tacos
Correct
Until you learn to not overload your fish tacos, your tacos will fall apart.
Examples of Student Fragments
People are never happy with what they have. Always trying to be something they're not.
Star Trek predicted what the future would be like. A world where an abundant supply of technology helps the human race.
Since being drawn to social media, we're together now more than ever. Not communicating with conversation but only connecting.
Don’t allow gerunds and participles to stand alone.
Having Facebook friends whose GoFundMe accounts that are always asking for money.
Babbling about the Presidential election.
Stuffing my mouth with cream cheese and bagels.
Examining the reasons for staying in college.
Running toward the buffet table.
Running toward the buffet table is dangerous. (gerund noun phrase)
Running toward the buffet table, Mo tripped and broke his wrist. (participle phrase modifies Mo, so it’s also called an adjective phrase)
Eating bucket-fulls of cashew and walnut pesto larded with Parmesan cheese.
Eating bucket-fulls of cashew and walnut pesto larded with Parmesan cheese can lead to a heart attack. (gerund noun phrase)
Eating bucket-fulls of cashew and walnut pesto larded with Parmesan cheese, Augustine was oblivious of his girlfriend who sat across from him at the table looking at his exhibition of gluttony with horror and disgust. (participle phrase that modifies Augustine).
Augustine dreams of eating a ricotta pound cake smothered with whipped cream and strawberries. (gerund noun phrase is the object of the sentence)
Faulty
Elliot was a vulgar philistine. Evidenced by a love of gold and sequin-encrusted toilets.
Corrected
Elliot was a vulgar philistine evidenced by a love of gold and sequin-encrusted toilets.
Don’t let prepositional phrases stand alone.
A prepositional phrase starts with a preposition.
Under the bridge, the Red Hot Chili Peppers rock star contemplated the emptiness of his life and wrote “Under the Bridge.”
In "Growing Up Tethered" by Sherry Turkle is talking about why more teens are more focused on their phones than real people.
In the above, get rid of the preposition "In."
Faulty
I enjoyed my run. In spite of your choice to abandon me and leave me to run alone in the rain. (prepositional phrase can’t stand alone)
Corrected
I enjoyed my run in spite of your choice to abandon me and leave me to run alone in the rain.
Don’t let an appositional phrase stand alone.
An appositional phrase is a the use of phrase to rename a noun.
My father, a military man, speaks in a loud, bombastic voice.
I listen to the loud voice of my father, a military man.
Faulty
Bo Jackson, the most freakish physical specimen of the last century, suffered a career-stopping hip injury. That sent his fans into mourning.
Corrected
Bo Jackson, the most freakish physical specimen of the last century, suffered a career-stopping hip injury, which sent his fans into mourning.
Faulty
My favorite athlete is Bo Jackson. The most freakish specimen of the last century.
Corrected
My favorite athlete is Bo Jackson, the most freakish specimen of the last century.
Faulty
I dreamed last night that I was sitting behind the wheel of a Lexus GS350. One of the greatest cars ever built.
Corrected
I dreamed last night that I was sitting behind the wheel of a Lexus GS350, one of the greatest cars ever built.
Faulty
In 1969, I swooned over my third grade classmate Patty Wilson. A pulchritudinous goddess from another planet.
Corrected
In 1969, I swooned over my third-grade classmate Patty Wilson, a pulchritudinous goddess from another planet.
Don’t let an infinitive phrase stand alone. An infinitive phrase is a “to verb,” which is not a real verb.
To know me is to love me.
Faulty
Working in his lab for ten years, Dr. Kragen was obsessed with creating a new type of Greek yogurt. To see if he could create a yogurt with 100 grams of protein per cup.
Working in his lab for ten years, Dr. Kragen was obsessed with creating a new type of Greek yogurt to see if he could create a yogurt with 100 grams of protein per cup.
Don’t let an adjective clause stand alone.
An adjective clause is that or which followed by a subject and a verb.
I like cars that feel like they’ve been built with care and precision.
Spotify, which I joined last year, has kept me from spending money on iTunes.
Faulty
I spend most of my listening time on Spotify. Which costs me ten dollars a month and saves me from spending up to $100 a month on iTunes.
Corrected
I spend most of my listening time on Spotify, which costs me ten dollars a month and saves me from spending up to $100 a month on iTunes.
Faulty
People who lard their salads with candied nuts.
Corrected
People who lard their salads with candied nuts have to admit they can only eat salad if they make it taste like pecan pie.
Faulty
People who cut you off and then drive really slowly as if they're trying to enrage you on purpose.
Corrected
People who cut you off and then drive really slowly as if they're trying to enrage you on purpose are passive-aggressive miscreants.
Faulty
People who sign up for community college classes and then ignore the syllabus.
Corrected
People who sign up for community college classes and then ignore the syllabus are more in love with the idea of going to college than actually going to college.
Faulty
People who think marriage will cure them of their immaturity and give them instant status as winners in society.
Corrected
People who think marriage will cure them of their immaturity and give them instant status as winners in society are delusional charlatans who are on the road to divorce.
Don’t let an adverbial clause stand alone.
An adverbial clause modifies a verb.
I like to do my kettlebell workouts when my twins are in school.
When it’s too hot to exercise, I slog through my kettlebell workouts.
Faulty
I tend to inhale gallons of rocky road chocolate chip ice cream. As a depressive reaction to “Lonely Night Saturdays.”
Corrected
I tend to inhale gallons of rocky road chocolate chip ice cream as a depressive reaction to “Lonely Night Saturdays.”
Don’t let any long phrase or clause be confused with a complete sentence.
Faulty
Although I studied herpetology and kinesiology during my stay in the Peruvian mountains while keeping warm in the hides of Alpaca and other mountain-dwelling bovine creatures.
Corrected
Although I studied herpetology and kinesiology during my stay in the Peruvian mountains while keeping warm in the hides of Alpaca and other mountain-dwelling bovine creatures, I feel I didn’t retain much information during my two-year stay there.
Find Fragments and Comma Splices
The other night I consumed a tub of Greek yogurt with peanut butter and honey so I'd have enough energy to watch a documentary about world hunger.
I wasn't really hungry, I was anxious. Whenever I get anxious; which is all the time, I eat like a demon.
Anxiety propels me to stuff my face even when I’m not hungry. The mechanical act of eating. Using my greedy hands to lift food to my mouth and then hearing my mandibles and molars crunch the food matter into mush, has a soothing effect on my anxieties—like giving a teething biscuit to a baby.
Anxiety compels me to engage in the practice of “preemptive eating.” The idea that even though I’m not hungry in this moment, I might be “on the road” inside my car far away from nutritional resources so I had better fill up while I can. In truth, I’m not “on the road” that often evidenced by the fact that my nine-year-old car has only 33 thousand miles on the odometer. Clearly, then, my impulse for preemptive eating is indefensible.
But you see, my anxieties exaggerate the circumstances, so that I have ample food reserves in my car—cases of high-protein chocolate peanut butter bars and a case of bottled water. All that unnecessary weight in the trunk compromises my gas mileage, but my anxieties are a cruel tyrant.
Anxiety is the reason that, in spite of my hardcore kettlebell workouts, I am a good twenty pounds overweight. Being twenty pounds overweight makes me anxious, and these anxieties in turn make me want to eat more.
Contemplating this vicious cycle is making me extremely anxious.
Good food makes me anxious.
Just thinking about good food can make me so anxious I’ll obsess over it in bed, so I’ll toss and turn all night. Like a heroin addict.
When I was in my early twenties, I ate donuts that were so good I wanted to drop out of college, give up on relationships, and hole myself up in my mother’s basement. Where I’d spend the rest of my life eating donuts.
I suffer from food insomnia. Meaning that fixating at night on a certain delicious meal I once had can prevent me from falling asleep.
There’s one food in particular that keeps me up at night—chocolate brownies.
Chocolate brownies are the best delivery system for sending an explosion of chocolate into the brain’s pleasure centers. Chocolate brownies saturate my brain with so much dopamine that after eating a brownie platter it’s not safe for me to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment. When I was a kid, I took cough medicine laced with codeine, and there was a warning label on the back: “Not safe to drive or to operate heavy mechanical equipment.” Chocolate brownie mix should have the same warning on the back of the box.
The best brownies mix I’ve ever had are Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies from Costco. I’ve purchased the same brand from other stores, but the Costco version is the best. Costco apparently uses its special powers to have Ghirardelli make an exclusive proprietary formula that is far superior to other versions, this fact has been corroborated by conversations I’ve had with Orange County housewives.
I don’t live in Orange County, and I don’t normally have conversations with housewives. That I talked with them about the superior quality of the exclusive Costco version of Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate Chip Brownies mix attests to the severity of my unhealthy dependence on food.
Costco does a good job of making you think about food. Before you even walk inside Costco, you smell the freshly baked cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip cookies, and cream Danish. The smell makes you run inside the store.
Chronologically speaking, I am supposed to be an adult, but like a kid I’m running toward the Costco entrance while pushing an empty shopping cart. I must be a scary sight. This 240-pound middle-aged bald guy aggressively pushing his battering ram into a giant food larder. Where he will pillage the spoils. I’m like an Old Testament warlord about to ransack a defeated city.
Correct the faulty parallelism by rewriting the sentences below.
One. Parenting toddlers is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that toddlers contradict everything you ask them to do; they have giant mood swings, and all-night tantrums.
Parenting toddlers is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that toddlers contradict everything you ask them to do, they have giant mood swings, an they have all-night tantrums.
Two. You should avoid all-you-can-eat buffets: They encourage gluttony; they feature fatty, over-salted foods and high sugar content.
You should avoid all-you-can-eat buffets: They encourage gluttony, they feature fatty, over-salted foods, and the lard everything with sugar.
Three. I prefer kettlebell training at home than the gym because of the increased privacy, the absence of loud “gym” music, and I’m able to concentrate more.
I prefer kettlebell training at home than the gym because of the increased privacy, the absent gym music, and the improved concentration.
Four. To write a successful research paper you must adhere to the exact MLA format, employ a variety of paragraph transitions, and writing an intellectually rigorous thesis.
To write a successful research paper you must adhere to the exact MLA format, employ a variety of paragraph transitions, and write an intellectually rigorous thesis.
Five. The difficulty of adhering to the MLA format is that the rules are frequently being updated, the sheer abundance of rules you have to follow, and to integrate your research into your essay.
The difficulty of adhering to the MLA format is that the rules are frequently being updated, the rules are hard to follow, and the MLA in-text citations are difficult to master.
Six. You should avoid watching “reality shows” on TV because they encourage a depraved form of voyeurism; they distract you from your own problems, and their brain-dumbing effects.
You should avoid watching "reality shows" because they encourage a depraved form of voyeurism, they distract you from your own problems, and they dumb you down.
Seven. I’m still fat even though I’ve tried the low-carb diet, the Paleo diet, the Rock-in-the-Mouth diet, and fasting every other day.
I'm still fat even though I've tried the low-carb diet, the Paleo diet, the Rock-in-the-Mouth diet, and the fasting diet.
Eight. To write a successful thesis, you must have a compelling topic, a sophisticated take on that topic, and developing a thesis that elevates the reader’s consciousness to a higher level.
To write a successful thesis, you must have a compelling topic, a sophisticated take on that topic, and a thesis that elevates the reader's consciousness to a higher level.
Nine. Getting enough sleep, exercising daily, and the importance of a positive attitude are essential for academic success.
Getting enough sleep, exercising daily, and maintaining a positive attitude are essential for academic success.
Ten. My children never react to my calm commands or when I beg them to do things.
My children never react to my calm commands or my lugubrious supplications.
Comments