The last section of essay packet #1 (Total Eclipse By Annie Dillard)

This weeks blog will focus on Annie Dillard's article from Teaching Stone to Talk, Total Eclipse. This specific section of the book focuses on language, diction, and communication. Dillard used pathos and her personal experiences to interest the audience and attach them emotionally to her writing. Many of her sentences where hard to dissect and find the real meaning but I can tell that Dillard intends for her audience to read between the lines, "I turned back to the sun, it was going. The sun was going, and the world was wrong," (Page 91). That line is so interesting to me, you can have the worst day of your life but the sun keeps moving and the billions of other people in the world, they keep living. When you put life into perspective and realize how small you are compared to everything around you, you are able to maintain a more serene mindset: sanity. Dillard's adjectives (language) was absolutely amazing, I could create vivid visuals and pictures in my head of what she was describing. Dillard describes her experience in 1979 as she traveled to experience an eclipse. She described the scenery as her eyes peeled out the window on the long car ride with her husband Gary. 

This writing was impressive, one of the few that i've enjoyed this semester and for an essay I enjoyed the risk that Dillard took to go in such depth with her personal stories to get her voice and adventures out there. The only bad thing I have to say about this is I feel as if she was "too" descriptive for me. She got her point across and then would continue on explaining when it was not necessary. This essay could have been several pages shorter and still the same, if not better quality, by getting to the point and deleting the filler words she used so frequently. By using her personal experiences to communicate with her audience and teach them something through her credibility she proved herself as an author in this article 

Essay Packet 1

The first story in this packet is called Red: an invocation, written by Lia Purpura, and the author focuses mainly on a fox. In a lot of these stories we read in this class the writers have an obsession with a particular person, place, thing, or animal. The whole story revolves around a fox and how, "red for the body of the fox isn't right, though when you look, as you might for long minutes if you've ever seen a fox before, not like this, you'd see, not red exactly, but how the color is a form, recognizable," (page 1).  I think a lot of these essays and fiction stories that we read are metaphors but they are not clear metaphors. Five different people can see this story mean five different things and I'm not the biggest fan of that kind of writing. I want it to make sense to me and this writers fascination with red and how it's not exactly the color of the fox but whenever they see red they think of a fox? It's just strange and not interesting, this story lost my attention quickly.

The second story in the packet was actually not awful, I'm surprised! It is titled Sunday, written by Henry Louis Gates Jr., the short essay is about how, "White people couldn't cook, everybody knew that!" (Page 2). The story gives the audience a great visual of an african american family cooking and eating all Sunday long: enjoying themselves. I was unsure how the author was going to finish this essay but I enjoy the route he took, he decided to end it on a line that was memorable and gave the story was meaning/lesson. "White people can't cook, that's why they need to hire us," (Page 2). I found this line so memorable and interesting, imagine being so young and hearing that from your aunt, it would give me no hope for the future. I can't imagine what those little kids grew up thinking for their future, they were basically expected to be slaves and stereotyped to exceed to be nothing better then that, it's sad.

The short essays were very similar to the fiction packet stories but definitely written better for the most part. I was kind of confused how the first few stories were about two-three pages and then the last story or two was extra long, there seemed to be no pattern to the chaos. But regardless I enjoyed the essay "Sunday" the best because it actually had a moral and a purpose, I was left understanding what the reader was trying to tell me and a lot of times I think that we analyze these stories so much in class that we completely lose the real meaning behind them and we leave thinking the stories mean something totally opposite then what the author was trying to portray.

Fiction Packet # 3

Fiction packet number #3 was assigned for this week. The Singing Fish is originally from a book and I looked at each part as a chapter. The language seemed as if it was translated because it didn't necessarily make sense at each part. The first sentence is a great example of how the text is translated, "One night Girl is so sound asleep sleeping that her sleeping body.." (page 8). That sentence is terribly written and not a good attention getter at all. I'm not sure why we are spending so much time analyzing these boring and poorly written articles, I expected to enjoy at least SOME of the readings we did. The sentences lose you because they are so repetitive and confusing for example, "There are these words there, too - these words - they have got to be words" (page 8). That sentence is incorrect in every way. Why is girl capitalized? is it someones name or are they doing it for emphasis? I was very unimpressed reading this article.

Falling Girl had great diction and visual. The first two paragraphs did a good job at catching my attention, I found it interesting how in the beginning of the article she was 19 and at the end she was an old women. I took this as time flies by without us even noticing, I felt as if the women was not necessarily "falling" but more so a metaphor for "falling". When I started reading this I thought that she was trying to committee suicide but as I read further I noticed it was more of a lifecycle being explained, possibly a midlife crisis? I say this because in the middle of the article she says, "She spitefully noticed that another girl was falling about thirty meters above her. She was decidedly prettier than Marta and she wore a rather classy evening gown" (page 32). She seems upset as she compared herself to other people and it leads me to believe that she is feeling like time passed too quickly and she wishes she wasn't becoming so old.

I don't like these packets, they are not good pieces of writing or something that are enjoyable to read. Maybe i'm the only person who feels that way, but this packet seems as if it is written by a child and I know i'm not the only one who agrees with that fact. I want to be a journalist and was hoping this class would teach me about creative writing or how to be a better writer; quite frankly, I am very disappointed in all of these packets and readings.