Tara Gillespie
Reading Prompt #1
According to Ballinger, every personal essay follows a certain form in some way. He makes many key points to prove his statement true and also provides a testimony for each point. There were two of his points I found to be very prevelant in the essays. His first point, “personal essays are usually written in the first person” is true for both “The Joy of Mudd” and “I’m a Believer.” In “The Joy of Mudd”, Black speaks in the first person in her experience of finally “discovering” her home in Hawaii, and how she saw a whole new side of the boring home she had always known. In Hogg’s essay, “I’m a Believer”, she also writes in the first person as she describes her fascination and experiences with Davy Jones and the Monkees. Ballinger’s second point is “the subject of the essay is often commonplace”, which is supported by the subjects of both essays. In Hogg’s essay, her subject was very simple, it was a band (The Monkees) and its lead singer, not some life altering event. Black’s subject of her essay was also very commonplace; it was her experience with her home in Hawaii. The event Black described, on the surface, was very commonplace, as Ballinger claims subjects of personal essays are, but Black inscribed a deeper meaning with her simple story. She took the simple event of working the lo’i, and associated a deeper meaning of finally feeling connected to her home, or just a “ home” in general.
Unlike Ballinger’s form of a personal essay, the thesis in both of the essays was actually stated in the essay rather than implied. The second to last sentence in Hogg’s essay, “I accept,finally, that this person I know so well I don’t really know at all…” states Hogg’s thesis. Her thesis is that although she feels connected to Davy Jones on a superficial level, she is still nostalgic for a deeper understanding of him as a person. She finally accepts that this deeper understanding will never be, and that she will always just be another fan. At the end of Black’s essay she says “I’m only at the beginning of a path I never expected to travel”. After reading the essay this statement almost blatently reveals her thesis with very little implication needed. Although, both essays do wait until the end to reveal their thesis statements (as Ballinger claims a personal essay should), there is minimal implication needed to unravel the thesis.
The controlling idea or the “so what” of the two women’s essays is remotely similar. In Hogg’s essay, her controlling idea is that things that appear to be, are not always tangible, and are sometimes better off that way. In Kenny Chesney’s most recent song “Better as a Memory”, he sings about how he is better as a memory to a certain women than as her actual man. How he feels in this song is how Hogg feels towards Davy, that the idea of this person is actually better than reality. Before Hogg actually meets Davy she has a preconcieved notion of his character, his mannerisms, and their conversation. To Hogg, Davy is “better as a memory” because Hogg can assosciate anything she wants with her imagination and Davy. In her imagination, Davy can be everything she expects and more. When she meets Davy in person she is a little less than satisfied with the man she had been imfatiuated with for decades. Davy falls short of her expectations, and is therefore “better as a memory.”
The controlling idea of Black’s essay is parallel to Hogg’s controlling idea. Unlike Hogg, Black discovered something that she didn’t know exsisted. With no preconcieved notion or any idea, for that matter, of what the fields of Hawaii had to offer her, she was not let down when the actual event occurred. Black was totally oblivious of the beauty of her home, but after her day in the fields something appeared for Black that had not always been. What appeared was a sense of home and a sense of belonging. “Joy of Mudd” also has a controlling idea of digging deeper and finding the beauty in one’s surroundings. After years of discontentment, Black finally found beauty in her home, and perhaps never saw her home the same again.
1 comment:
"Her thesis is that although she feels connected to Davy Jones on a superficial level, she is still nostalgic for a deeper understanding of him as a person. She finally accepts that this deeper understanding will never be, and that she will always just be another fan" I thought this as well but at the same time i believed she wanted to go with the wind in way. As he began to fade, she wanted to fade away (as a fan) as well. I also liked in your paper the part where you mentioned about Blacks writing that she was digging in the mud, quite literally and mentally.
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