Essay Prompt
Are Francis Weed from "The Country Husband" and Connie from "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" victims of an adolescent culture's false "script" or are they their own worst enemy? Or a mix of both? Develop a thesis that answers this question in a comparison essay.
Critical Thinking Assessment for Next Essay
Assessment One: Your Introduction Paragraph
A problem is identified or introduced clearly and with all relevant information necessary for full understanding.
Recommended Method:
Write an introduction with a single-sentence definition of a general problem, an outstanding illustration, and a transition to your thesis, which will address the problem in a more specific way as it pertains to the story.
Assessment Two: Your Thesis and Body Paragraphs
Analysis, solution, or plan presents full, comparative, or original perspective.
Recommended Method:
Use an argumentative (with counterarguments) or cause and effect analysis thesis.
Assessment Three: Your Conclusion
Conclusion or synthesis is logical, well-informed, and strongly connected to relevant information.
Recommended Method for Conclusion:
Rewrite your thesis with an emphasis on emotional impact and showing the broader social and psychological ramifications of your argument or analysis. You can also do a "full circle" conclusion that returns to the illustration you used in your introduction paragraph. See the conclusion paragraph at Harvard Writing Center.
Problems to Define and Illustrate in Your Introduction Paragraph
"The Other Woman": Lack of metacognition (self-awareness) accompanies a dangerous abundance of self-deception. Clearly, you may want to define metacognition.
"You're Ugly, Too": Maladaptation (extreme coping mechanisms that eventually backfire) makes us our own worst enemies.
"Greenleaf": Pride isolates us, impedes us from seeing the truth, and creates a series of related pathologies that eventually ruin us.
"Where I'm Calling From": Alcoholism in the story points to a variety of problems: lack of metacognition, maladaptation, pride, self-deception, and self-sabotage.
"A Country Husband": What is a perpetual adolescent or a man-child?
"Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?": How does the story critique the cult of perpetual adolescence?
"Defender of the Faith": Define the conflict between tribalistic morality and individual morality. Or, for a different problem posed in the story, discuss the problem of "death by a thousand cuts," the slow, insidious evil that creeps up on you and entraps you bit by bit without your full awareness.
Essay Option #9 for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been" using cause and effect analysis
Develop a thesis that shows how the story is a critique of the Cult of Perpetual Adolescence. You can refer to Joseph Epstein’s “The Perpetual Adolescent” (available online) as a valuable resource to define your term.
How to be Specific in Your Thesis: Answer a Question That Is Relevant to the Essay Prompt:
Are Francis Weed from "The Country Husband" and Connie from "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" victims of an adolescent culture's false "script" or are they their own worst enemy? Or a mix of both? Develop a thesis that answers this question in a comparison essay.
What is the script of the Adolescent Cult?
One. Let popular culture define you as popular and appealing and desirable based on consumer images, representations of "ultimate femininity" and "ultimate masculinity." These representations are always changing. For example, former super model and overly skinny Cheryl Tiegs has made ignorant statements about full-figured model Ashley Graham, accusing Graham of promoting an "unhealthy lifestyle."
Two. Compare yourself to those that are popular and desirable as the basis of your wellbeing.
Three. Rely on mindless consumerism, not critical thinking, for your identity. Buy your way to a strong sense of self, popularity, and desirability.
Four. Drink the intoxicating nectar of youth to escape your problems and fears. But do so at your own peril, for the promise of eternal youth always entails a Faustian Bargain (deal with the devil) that will leave you lost and broken.
Five. Deny the wisdom narrative: According to Jung, we move from athlete, to warrior, to statesperson, to pure spirit. But in the Adolescent Cult, we remain fixated at the warrior stage.
Your Goals in Your Introduction and Conclusion:
Your introduction should introduce a problem such as the notion of perpetual adolescence, which is a culture that values youth over wisdom accumulated over time.
Your conclusion should return to your general problem by showing how your individual story analysis has broader social ramifications. Your conclusion should answer the question: "So what?" Why is an essay a big deal? Or rather what is the big deal about an essay? Why did it have to be written?
Stories and essays don't simply exist because it pleased the authors to create them. They exist because they have a compelling purpose.
Writing about Connie from the Joyce Carol Oates short story is a big deal because it's not just about a girl who gets into trouble with her encounter with Arnold Friend. It's about how we are all vulnerable to the Arnold Friends that mushroom across the United States of America. These false prophets of eternal youth are in reality liars and bullies.
As parents, we are at war with Arnold Friend because he is a metaphor for popular culture and popular culture, the false promise of eternal youth, contradicts the values parents try to instill into their children. That is the "so what" and the "big deal" of the story.
Essay Option #10 for "Defender of the Faith" using cause and effect analysis
Develop a thesis that explains the following: Nathan Marx wants us to know that he is world-weary and life-hardened, a man who “has seen it all,” but in fact he has not: He is not prepared to face the insidious evil of the homunculus parasite, Sheldon Grossbart, that kills us gradually, slowly, incrementally, through a thousand cuts. How does this slow death occur?
Acclimation to Evil Is Gradual
1. Denial and acclimation to evil; as we get comfortable with a certain level of evil, it creeps toward us in greater and greater amounts slowly robbing us of our freedom.
This process creates the term "evil creep"; we acclimate to evil as it rises (creeping) slowly and slowly until it's too late; humans tend toward denial because reality is too inconvenient to deal with.
Here are examples of denials that "speak" inside people's heads:
I don't need to work on my relationship even though my girlfriend and I barely speak anymore. That's normal. Right? You get past the "honeymoon phase" and then it's natural to be tense and bitter forever? I see it in other couples. I guess it's normal for us as well.
I don't need a colonoscopy even though there's a family history of colon cancer. I'll accept fate for what it is. Being a man is about accepting one's destiny.
I'm not fat. I've got reserves in case I get sick in the hospital.
I'm sick of people saying, "You can't eat this. You can't eat that." Hell, man, everything is bad for you. Screw trying to eat healthy. I'm going to eat what I please when I please where I please. You got a problem with that?
I don't have a spending problem. I need my new car and luxury condo payments; otherwise, I won't be able to find a girlfriend. And if I don't get a girlfriend I won't have anyone to show off this amazing body I've worked so hard to get at the gym all these years.
I study too hard. I need more balance in my life. I need to go out and play more often. Skipping tonight's study session will give me the strength to endure the entire semester. Better to do that than get burned out and drop out of school.
I know my husband beats me once a week, but at least he doesn't beat me every day like some women I know.
The above rationalizations help acclimate us situations that are not in our best interests. Before we know it, we've sunk into a rabbit hole, and we can't get out.
In your introduction:
Introduce the problem of "death by a thousand cuts." Your boyfriend/girlfriend does nothing egregiously bad or evil; however, he or she kills you with a thousand cuts that have the cumulative effect of suffocating you.
Another Essay Option #11 for "Defender of the Faith" using cause and effect analysis
In the context of the story, develop a thesis that analyzes the connection between tribalism and entitlement and how this connection clashes with individual morality.
Problem for your introduction:
We must face conflict between collective values of the tribe and individual morality.
Examples:
Do we hire our uncle, who we know is a bum, or do we hire someone, a relative stranger, who has been vetted as reliable and excellent for the job? Do we tell our wife about a male associate's infidelity when such a "betrayal" violates the Male Code?
Do we marry someone blessed by the tribe when we love someone else who is scorned by the tribe?
Do we sell out a cheating man by telling his wife and thereby betray the Man Code or do we follow our individual conscience?
Do we eat the ceremonial dog stew to please the tribe when our individual conscience makes us repelled at the thought of eating dog stew?
Do we shame someone on Facebook because all our friends have ganged up on some unfortunate person and we wish to gain these people's favor, or do we follow our conscience and ignore this madness?
Do we try to lose another 30 pounds, resorting to near starvation, because our Skinny Tribe looks "better" than we do, or do we content ourselves with the way we are?
Do we drop out of college because our Male Tribe has declared higher education the bastion of sissies or do we follow our conscience and continue with our schooling?
In other words, what we're really talking about here is peer pressure.
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates
One. What toxic force informs the relationship between Connie and her mother?
In the first paragraph, we see that Connie has typical teenage vanity and the insecurity that compels her to check herself out all the time. Her mother, who feels washed up, is competitive and envious toward her daughter.
The mother “picks” at her daughter to the point that Connie wishes her mother were dead, and she herself were dead, and she says her mother makes her “want to throw up sometimes.”
While the mother may envy her pretty daughter, she prefers her to the sister June. We read that the mother and Connie “kept up a pretense of exasperation, a sense that they were tugging and struggling over something of little value to either of them.”
Youth is the highest currency in a world that idolizes the values of youth: beauty, infatuation, and ecstasy. However, youth is fleeting and ephemeral.
Intoxication with youth makes us shun the accumulated wisdom of age. When we're young, we often act like we're never going to die. Youth is a drug, and Americans want more and more of that drug.
Perhaps the most salient feature of American culture is that it provides the world with the Youth Drug in terms of fashion, music, dance, movies, etc. Even while America struggles economically, it continues to be the most influential cultural force in the world.
The youth industry--elective surgery, exercise, health, nutrition, fashion, music, technology--makes billions of dollars.
Our blind infatuation with youth has consequences: We live in a society that refuses the Maturity Narrative (athlete, warrior, statesperson, spirit) and fixates on Perpetual Adolescence (see Joseph Epstein’s essay).
“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is in many ways a condemnation of the Cult of Adolescence.
For Connie, the Mall, not Mom, is Mother's Milk. The Mall nourishes Connie. The Mall is Connie's drug dealer.
Parents will find that they wage war against popular culture.
Family values are about maturity and wisdom; in contrast, popular culture "values" are about the drug of eternal youth, seduction, attractiveness, infatuation, ecstasy.
All parents will find that they have a new enemy in their childrearing, and that enemy is popular culture. Why? Because popular culture is synonymous with the Cult of Perpetual Adolescence.
One of the story's painful ironies is that Connie's mother doesn't have an alternative value system to offer her daughter Connie. She is as adolescent as the Mall Connie worships. It's only that the Mall delivers adolescence much, much better. Her mom is a frumpy amateur, a Has-Been Priestess of Adolescent Values.
Whenever the parents try to out-cool popular culture, the parents lose every time.
Two. How does Connie’s sister reinforce the Cult of Adolescence?
Her sister June is “plain and chunky” and therefore relegated to the social hierarchy of hell, a lowly secretary at Connie’s high school, still living with her parents at twenty-four, unworthy of popularity and men’s attention.
June embodies what every woman fears becoming: an outcast with no social esteem or privilege.
Connie reinforces her beauty with all sorts of consumer products to shield her from descending into her sister’s hell.
In America, we teach women the Beauty Narrative:
Only a beautiful woman can take common man--a brutish animal--and make this male animal fall in love with her. By falling in love with a beautiful woman, brutish man undergoes a radical transformation from grizzly beast into Refined Spiritual Man. The story ends with man and woman on a sailboat, their hair blowing in the wind, looking at the sunset.
Connie's sister is not part of the Beauty Narrative. She is irrelevant. She lives in Hell.
The Beauty Narrative is a myth, a lie, a fiction created by Madison Avenue. It began after the Industrial Age when we started mass marketing and magazine ads.
Connie is a naive teenager, a vulnerable follower or acolyte of the Beauty Narrative. She and other members of the herd will subscribe to the Beauty Narrative and become mindless consumers.
They show a lack of critical thinking skills.
In the introduction of your essay, you could define the problem of the Beauty Narrative and how it affects teenage girls.
Part of this Beauty Narrative is its Either/Or Fallacy:
Either I become a beautiful goddess worthy of transforming Brutish Man into Romantic Man, or I am a Nothing relegated to a life of loneliness and irrelevance.
Three. What kinds of values does Connie’s family evidence?
Society offers us limited choices in our life path:
We can be slackers.
We can be mindless consumers.
Or we can be Destiny Seekers, in search of a higher purpose or meaning.
Clearly, Connie’s family members are mindless consumers.
They don’t communicate much with one another. They shop. The husband works and is disaffected and withdrawn at home. The mother is envious of Connie. The other daughter June is looked upon as a failure because she has fallen short of society’s beauty standards.
Any spike in happiness afforded by consumerism is always followed by a return to a base level of existence resulting in numbness and depression.
Mindless consumers attempt to ratchet up their consumer pleasures by getting more and more stuff, but all these initial happiness spikes are always followed by a crash.
In other words, mindless consumers are doomed to misery, dumbness, and depression.
Four. What does it mean when we read that for Connie, “Everything about her had two sides to it, one for home and one for anywhere that not home”?
She has cultivated a duplicity or two-faced existence speaking to her lack of integrity. She has her affected innocence at home and her affected seductress role in public.
The seductress role gives her a sensation of power and makes her feel grownup and superior to her parents whom she despises.
The power she feels when she wears her seductress costume, with all its meretricious jewelry, is addictive. She gets a rush. Additionally, the attention she receives is addictive and is an escape from her horrible home life.
Her life at home is ennui (boredom); her life at the mall is ecstasy (addiction).
Connie’s double life is signified by going across the highway, “ducking fast across the busy road,” to a sort of Hell’s Highway where they exist in a forbidden underworld.
In this underworld, predatory males flirt with the teenage girls and condition the girls to make their sole identity their roles as seductress.
Five. What sense of addiction and intoxication pervade the story?
The trifecta of youthful beauty, consumerism, and rock music saturate the cells of the teenage girls and make them both ecstatic and vulnerable.
As you read the story, you will see rock music pounding inside the brains of the young girls over and over in what we call a repeating motif. We read that the girls are always listening to music “that made everything feel good: the music was always in the background like music at a church service, it was something to depend on.”
Six. What evidence is there in the story that Arnold Friend is the Devil?
The first thing he says is “Gonna to get you, baby.” An aging devil posing as a teenager uses the colloquialisms and vernacular of the young generation.
He’s a fake.
His hair appears to be a wig.
His gold jalopy is a chariot from hell. The code numbers seem to be a reference to something salacious and deviant.
His tight jeans are stuffed into boots, which are described as the hooves of a goat, another image of the devil. In another description we read his boots come out at an odd angle, leftwards, suggesting, again, a hoof.
His boots appear to have elevating properties and the short man devil has trouble balancing on them.
His hawk-like nose sniffs at her like “she were a treat he was going to gobble up and it was all a joke.”
He rattles off all of Connie’s friends’ names and boasts, “I know everybody.” And to underscore this fact, Arnold has a scary, uncanny comprehension of what is going on at the family barbecue.
His eyelashes look painted with tar. He lies and says he’s 18 when in fact he looks much older.
Connie sees his face as a mask.
Arnold’s minions are little waif demons, members of the homunculus family.
Seven. Explain the story’s title.
Near the story’s end, Arnold says, “The place where you came from ain’t there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are now—inside your daddy’s house—is nothing but a cardboard box I can knock down any time.”
“Where Are You Going?” This is the land of lost innocence and the devastation of nihilism, the existential vacuum resulting from a consumer society enthralled with the cult of youth.
“Where Have You Been?” This is the past land of mythic innocence, America’s love affair with a land that is “Little House on the Prairie” and “The Walton’s.” We’re chumps to believe in all that mythology. We are a nation of evil consumers who relied on slavery to catapult our economy into a world power.
Commentary
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"
“Defender of the Faith” by Philip Roth
One. Why does the narrator Sargeant Nathan Marx say he is “fortunate enough” to travel “the weirdest paths without feeling a thing”?
He wants us to know that he is world-weary and life-hardened, a man who “has seen it all,” but in fact he has not: He is not prepared to face the insidious evil of the homunculus parasite, Sheldon Grossbart, that kills us gradually, slowly, incrementally, through a thousand cuts. This is the story’s theme--slow death by parasitic evil.
Our downfall is often not an immediate catastrophe. Rather, our downfall gradually overtakes us such as consumerism: “How in the hell did I get here?”
Two. What is the theme of tribalism and entitlement?
We often gravitate toward those whom we perceive as belonging to our tribe in part because they invite feelings of favoritism and entitlement.
Such behavior is corrupt, sycophantic, narcissistic, and immoral.
We call this cronyism and nepotism.
Marx tries to repel Grossbart from crossing the line by demanding to be called “Sergeant,” but Grossbart gradually weakens him with his sycophantic whining.
In contrast to favoritism, the story presents us the moral code of the meritocracy, treating people on their merits alone. No one should get special treatment, “for the good or the bad.”
Fairness based on merits is a religious principle. To be a “defender of the faith,” as the title suggests, means to show fairness, not favoritism. Therefore, to give special rights to those who belong to our tribe is a compromise of our defense of our faith.
Captain Barrett is skeptical of Grossbart’s motivations: “Seems awful funny that suddenly the Lord is calling so loud in Private Grossman’s ear he’s just got to run to church.”
Lots of people would rather attend a religious service than clean their barracks. We can infer, then, that Grossbart is a fraud and a mountebank trying to take advantage of the fact that he and Marx are of the same religion.
Marx makes the fatal error of opening the door to Grossbart. Once he opens the door, by acquiescing to Grossbart’s request, the boundary between them is vanished, and now Marx is vulnerable to the demon homunculus.
An authority figure needs a healthy distance between him and his subordinates, as does an athlete between himself and his competition. Bob Gibson, star pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, never fraternized with the other National League players when they played together on the All-Star Team because he knew he would pitch against them in games that counted. He wanted his competition to be scared of him, not familiar and comfortable.
Keeping a distance between others in certain situations is necessary.
We call this the Respect Zone. Certain boundaries are not crossed. I don’t go into my doctor’s office, sit on his desk, and call him by his first name in front of the patients.
If I do, I’ve crossed the line. I’ve moved out of the Respect Zone and into the Familiarity Zone. I assume we’re familiar (perhaps we play tennis together) and I can be “chummy” with my doctor. But in doing so in front of his patients, I violate the Respect Zone by moving into the Familiarity Zone.
If I get too familiar with my doctor, not paying my bill because, after all, “we’re friends,” I’ve moved beyond the Familiarity Zone to the Take for Granted Zone, the zone that affords the least respect.
This is where our demon homunculus Grossbart is maneuvering by getting Marx to do the first favor.
Three. What evidence is there that Grossbart is not motivated by religious piety?
At the religious service, we read, “I thought I heard Grossbart cackle, ‘Let the goyim clean the floors!’”
Grossbart is gloating and wallowing in the juices of privilege and entitlement. He is revolting, an example of faith gone bad.
Marx has evidence that his actions are not defending the faith.
Four. Do the favors stop at prayer services in place of cleanup duty?
No, prayer services are followed by requests for kosher food. Grossbart’s mom calls a congressman to make a stink about the Jewish soldiers not having access to kosher food.
Grossbart lies and says the goyim or gentile food is making him throw up.
Army duty is being downgraded to “summer camp.”
The Captain is not amused. He says, “There’s a goddam war on, and he wants a silver platter!”
Then Grossbart and his fellow Jewish soldiers want to up the ante. Not only do they want special services and special kosher food, they want to make sure they’re given assurances that they’re not transferred to the battlefront in the Pacific.
The rationale is that they don’t want their parents to worry about them.
They want Marx to enable them to be spoiled children while the rest of the soldiers fight a real war.
Grossbart relies on pathological lying to get his way. First he says he throws up; then he changes the story so that it is Halpern who is throwing up. He can’t keep his stories straight. And he’s a whiner. We can conclude that this demon homunculus has become a disease to his unit.
In fact, Captain Barrett reveals that Grossbart is motivated by false piety. Barrett says to Grossbart, “When you were in high school, Sergeant Marx was killing Germans. Who does more for the Jews—you, by throwing up over a lousy piece of sausage, piece of first-cut meat, or Marx, by killing those Nazi bastards? If I was a Jew, Grossbart, I’d kiss the man’s feet. He’s a goddam hero, and he eats what we give him.”
The lies get worse. Marx figures out that Grossbart wrote the letter to the congressman. His mother and father barely read and write in English.
Marx realizes that people who use religion to manipulate others for their own selfish gain are vile, unctuous, hypocrites.
Five. How does Grossbart embody the BS Principle of Diminishing Returns?
Grossbart exerts more time and energy BS-ing than he’d have to do to perform his assigned duties and responsibilities; however, he is so blinded and tantalized by the false promise of entitlement that he becomes dependent on a BS lifestyle.
Grossbart is forging letters, communiqués, and other sycophantic documents to push his agenda. He is a complete parasite.
Six. After Grossbart lies low for a while, what kind of shenanigans does he create for Marx?
He gets alone with Marx in a dark movie theater and first asks for one favor; then he asks for two favors. He wants to know where the unit is going and if there’s a chance he could go back to New York.
He lies and says going back to the States will afford him an opportunity to have Passover dinner with his family.
Worse, Grossbart wants Marx to break the rules and let him go on leave during the basic training.
It’s at this point that we see the demon inside Grossbart. He points his finger and hisses at Marx for reading the congressman’s letter, which in fact he desired Marx to read because of the letter’s abject sycophantism directed toward Marx.
Grossbart is a man of multiple layers of BS.
Then when Marx denies Grossbart his favor, Grossman compares Marx to Hitler.
Grossbart’s fraud continues when he musters a self-righteous, tearful pose and proclaims his religion makes him different. We see narcissism and tribalism in his refusal to be like everyone else and cooperate in the war effort.
He accuses Marx of closing his heart to his own.
Marx breaks down and gives Grossbart the visitation pass.
Grossbart abuses the privilege and wants to take his friends. He’s like a little child.
Max breaks down again and lets all three go.
Seven. How does Grossbart push Marx over the edge?
He lies about the dinner with his Aunt. He buys Chinese food. Marx then discovers Grossbart pulled strings to get assigned to New Jersey. Marx must impede Grossbart’s manipulations, and he does so. He will now have to live with his conscience.
Essay Option #10 for "Defender of the Faith" using cause and effect analysis
Develop a thesis that explains the following: Nathan Marx wants us to know that he is world-weary and life-hardened, a man who “has seen it all,” but in fact he has not: He is not prepared to face the insidious evil of the homunculus parasite, Sheldon Grossbart, that kills us gradually, slowly, incrementally, through a thousand cuts. How does this slow death occur?
Grammar: Dangling Modifiers
Rewrite the following sentences to correct the dangling modifiers:
1. Larded with greasy fries, the waiter served me a burnt steak.
2. Mr. McMahon returned her essay with a wide grin.
3. To finish by the 4 P.M. deadline, the computer keyboard blazed with the student's fast typing fingers.
4. Chocolate frosted with caramel sauce, John devoured the cupcakes.
5. Tapping the desk with his fingers, the school clock's hands moved too slowly before recess.
6. Showering the onion rings with garlic salt, his sodium count spiked.
7. The girl walked her poodle in high heels.
8. Struggling with the tight jeans, the fabric ripped and made an embarrassing sound.
9. Turning off the bedroom lights, the long, hard day finally came to an end.
10. Piled high above the wash machine, I decided I had better do a load of laundry.
11. Standing on the hotel balcony, the ocean view was stunning.
12. Running across the floor, the rug slipped and I collapsed.
13. Writing anxiously, the essay looked littered with errors.
14. Mortified by my loss to my opponents, my baseball uniform sagged.
15. Hungry after a day of football, the stack of peanut butter sandwiches on the table quickly disappeared.
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