From Journal to Essay- Embalming

I do not think embalming is a good thing because I feel it presents the deceased as something they were not. After having read the essay on embalming, it all seems very much like science fiction.  I was honestly disturbed hearing about how the morticians prepped the bodies. Everything that went on was very gruesome, yet when friends and relatives see the body, it looks decent. I feel that embalming is bad because it distorts one's memory of the deceased because the last image of the person will be what they looked like after being embalmed which is clearly not what they looked like before. While friends and family may not want to see what the deceased really looked like, it is the truth and should be dealt with rather then masked by gross procedure's and make-up. People are no longer paying their respects  to the deceased but rather a body filled with chemicals and a face that is masked with make-up and by procedures that beneath the veneered surface is made up of many mutilations.
Embalming is very expensive and for what? To have the deceased look like someone they were not? It falsely represents those who have died and can cause a huge financial toll on the family. Furthermore, the "behind-the-scenes" action is so unknown that people are not aware of how disturbing it is and thus are willing to pay for this or agree to it unknowingly when they hand over the body to the mortician.
Overall, while I understand that some people want their loved one to "look good" for the last time they will ever see them, I believe that they should see the deceased as they had existed so what exists in their memory is an accurate representation rather than a mask that shields the true terrors of embalming.

Compare and Contrast Essay

I prefer the CITY LIFE

Trending or Trashy?

My essay from one of the many prompts on page 227 is: here

Structural Element of The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society

While I am not sure whether or not commenting on the placement of examples and the presence of examples counts as commenting on a structural element, that is what I am going to do. In The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society Kozol uses an assortment of examples that truly demostrate the challenge of being illiterate. The variety of examples assisted in 3 the essay much more powerful. Because there are so many different examples,  the esssay is relateable to a wider array of people. The examples use everyday settings to show the frequency of the problems that come as a result of illiteracy. There is a great parallelism between  the frequency of examples in the passage and a frequncy of the challenges illiterates must face everyday.
The examples are all relatively short and to the point. This, rather than diminish them, makes them that much stronger. They stick out and are more powerful than they ever could have been because of this slight structural difference. When reading something, it seems that, on occasions such as this, the longer a sentence goes on, the less power it retains. For example: "Illiterates cannot read traffic signs and therefore cannot travel" or "When illiterates are driving they cannot read traffic signs so they can't leave town because they won't know where they are going" ...which is more powerful? While this may be up for some debate, when I am reading an essay I find that the shorter length of the examples makes more of an impact. It keeps the reader engaged and demands the reader's attention.

We Are Cool

My essay based off of one of the short stories/essays that we read is: here

Response to Greasy Lake

I found that Greasy Lake was overall a comical story. In the opening, the narrator tries to present himself and his two friends as "bad characters". As he is describing himself it is clear that he is in no way truly bad. He borrows his mother's car, and drinks fruity alcohol. He and his friends were trying to be bad. I thoroughly enjoyed the description of the narrator's friends.  My favorite was when he described Digby as a dangerous character who even "allowed his father to pay his tuition to Cornell". This, if anything serves as a reason for why they are NOT bad. Not only did Digby do well enough to even be accepted to Cornell, but he comes from a middle to upper class family where his father can afford to pay his tuition for him! There is not a single thing "bad" about that. Furthermore, the boys cannot even manage to consume hard alcohol but rather, drink "lemon-flavored" gin.

            I enjoyed how the narrator blamed the dropping of the key as the impetus for all the trouble they got in.  There were many ironic themes and instances in this essay, and the key certainly was not excluded. When the narrator needed the key most of all, he could not find it, but once it was no longer urgent, the key seemed rather obviously placed on the ground. The most prevalent example of irony is the boys themselves; they attempt to present themselves as bad, when in reality they are rather nerdy. After having been beaten up, raped a girl, and encountered a dead body, the narrator tries to think of excuses to tell his mom, and the best he can come up with is that he was playing chess. The fact that his mom would even believe this further goes to show how nerdy the boys are.

The story reminded me of the movie Project X.  The boys believe themselves to be dangerous, but once they encounter the sort of mischief they were looking for, they were nowhere near prepared to handle it. These are boys who are used to doing well in school and now want to try and “live a little”. They end up getting into more trouble than they anticipated. In a way it is similar to the “Little Boy Who Cries Wolf” after claiming to be bad and have these adventures they end up face to face with actual trouble. I found it really funny, in a rather morbid way, when the narrator falls on top of a corpse in the lake. This experience just seems downright disgusting. While it is creepy, it is comical at the same time.

                Overall I enjoyed Greasy Lake, and while there were frightening moments, it was overall rather comical and enjoyable.

                                                                                                                                                                                    

Gentle Waves

My thing/deeper topic essay = here