ESSAY ASSIGNMENT



ESSAY ASSIGNMENT English 9

Mr. Castellano

Your next essay assignment is your choice. While we are working on Othello, I do not want the good writing skills you have been developing to get rusty. So you will have the choice to write any one (1) of the different kinds of essays we have written so far this year. These are the types of writing we have done:

• Personal Narrative: you tell a story about yourself. You focus on one fairly specific event, experience, person, etc.

• Descriptive Essay: you describe a person, place, or thing in specific detail, revealing your ideas and feelings about it.

• Expository Writing: most of the writing we do is expository. This is writing that explains and exemplifies a process or belief. When we did the expository essay, you wrote about a family tradition.

• Persuasive Writing: you try to convince your reader of the rightness of your belief or position about something.

Choose one of these types and write a good essay. Here is your chance to write about something you really like and are interested in. I have written some ideas below. We will work a little on the essay in class, but this is one I want you to do mostly on your own. At this point, you should be able to do the process yourself. Do all the things we have done all year: brainstorming; choosing a topic; forming a thesis; listing ideas and details; outlining; getting ideas down; writing a first draft; editing and revising; writing several drafts; proofreading. Work on your essay during the long weekend. All the sheets about the different types are on the web site. The essay should be 1-2 pages typed or 4-6 sides handwritten, double-spaced either way. It is due on Monday, 12 May. It is worth 100 points. Do your best.

SOME IDEAS

• Personal Narrative: Write about a significant person or experience in your life. Your thesis is the meaning that person or experience has in your life. You can write about an event that has happened this year.

EXAMPLE: The turning point of my freshman year was when . . . .

• Descriptive Essay: Describe a thing or place that is important to you. Be as specific as possible. You can describe an instrument, something in your room, a favorite place. EXAMPLE: The watch my Grandmother gave me is my most precious possession.

• Expository Writing: it might be interesting to write about how to do something: cook your favorite meal, play your instrument, do something in your favorite sport.

EXAMPLE: When I bake bread with my family, we all enjoy the pleasures of all five senses we use in making it.

• Persuasive Writing: pick a political or social position and argue your opinion.

EXAMPLE: The best person to be the next President is . . . .

Recently, I baked some bread with my daughters – the first time working with them, and my first baking in over ten years. Having been away from baking for so long, I proceeded hesitantly at first. But very quickly the process was, once again, very familiar. From the moment we started to assemble the ingredients, all the old feelings came rushing back: the rich, sour smell of the yeast fermenting; the awe before the rising of the dough; the tactile pleasure of the kneading. For years, baking bread had been a source of both spiritual and physical satisfaction, but it had slowly slipped away – along with several other mundane pleasures. Now, with the simple act of mixing some water, flour, yeast, and honey (a seeming game to my four-year-olds), I found this joy from the past instantly rekindled and alive.

What is so great about baking bread? For one thing, the utter simplicity captivates me. In a world of too much processing – and not just of our food – baking my own bread is a refreshing and rejuvenating break from artificiality and unnecessary complexity. As an urban dweller, I am always pretty far removed from the sources of my food and the means by which it is created. And, of course, I have all the typical fantasies about (someday) living off the land. But, thinking more realistically, I will probably never do that. In place of that, then, I take pleasure in working with these most elementary ingredients and producing something wonderful. Although the whole process of making bread takes hours (one of the many reasons I have slipped away from it), the process itself is quite simple: add the yeast to water; mix it with some flour; let it rise; kneed it; bake it. Beautiful.

Another joy of baking bread is the sensual pleasure that accompanies it. It engages each of the senses, not just the obvious one of the rich taste of warm, real bread when it first comes out of the oven. Mixing the yeast with the water produces an acrid, powerful odor. When I first baked, I found the odor quite distasteful. But it is a smell I have come to cherish. Having not smelled it for so many years, my recent encounter with it was wonderful. The sight of the rising of the dough is almost magical. Baking with my daughters only increased this aspect of the experience: they really believed it was magic. The solid, resounding thump of my knuckles on the crust of a well-baked loaf is akin to that perfect sound of the baseball coming off the bat: I cannot describe, but I know it when I hear it. But, for me, the greatest physical pleasure of making bread is the kneading. Again, in a world in which I often feel so isolated from contact with anything earthy, the feeling of the moist, warm dough beneath my fingers is delightful. It is real work, too, to knead the dough; in that sense, I feel that I am at least somewhat earning my daily bread. And that physical work that goes into the making of the bread only increases the joy I feel at the end of the process.

Although I may be stretching the point a bit, I do feel that there is also a spiritual pleasure to baking bread. For me, it is the joy of being fully attuned to the process of the making and being part of it from beginning to end. So much of what I do is product-oriented: I am less involved in the getting there and more concerned with the arrival. Of course, I do love the end-product of baking. But what makes it especially rich and joy-filled is that I cannot get there quickly. Baking bread compels me to slow down, to be attentive, to work with mindfulness: to be present to the moment. I cannot blame twentieth-first century life completely for that flaw. But I can say that so-called modern conveniences certainly get between me and truly experiencing the world around me.

I am practical enough (cynical enough?) to know that baking a few loaves of bread is not going to change the world. But I am also hopeful enough to believe it can help to keep me a little bit more in touch with my surroundings and, as such, make me a little less mechanized. There is also the joy I experienced in passing this pleasure on to my daughters. As they come of age in the 21st century, I am sure baking bread will seem more and more arcane. But I am also hoping it will be a refreshing piece of reality in a world more and more virtual.

underlined sentences or words: transitions bold sentences: topic sentences

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