Annotations on Personal Essays

Superman and Me

• “I learned to read with a Superman comic book.” I appreciate how the piece starts with this sentence because I enjoy it when, right off the bat, a statement is made that grabs the reader, and pulls them in immediately – I think this is an effective tactic for personal essays
• “…I realized that a paragraph was a fence that held words.” I believe that making very creative and descriptive sentences like these are extremely effective in personal essays because they allow the reader to understand something in the mind of someone else. Similes and metaphors are perfect because they act as a kind of translator which allows the audience to see something the same way you do, which I think is greatly what personal essays are all about
• The paragraph metaphor continues and proves to be an important aspect of understanding the essay as the author continues from then on
• The essay addresses stereotypes indirectly which  seems to be the topic of the essay. I feel the exigence of the author lives here as well
• Uses reading/books as a way to tackle stereotypes and proceeds to share the personal development that came along with that recognition and application

The Decline and Fall of

the English Major

• First off, the essay came off as an open letter to me, I am not sure why
• “So says a new report on the state of the humanities by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences…” It is possible that the essay is written so logically includes evidence that I feel a point is being made, or that the author has something to prove
• “STUDYING the humanities should be like standing among colleagues and students on the open deck of a ship moving along the endless coastline of human experience.” I appreciated the inclusion of this metaphor because I found the essay to be fairly rigid and non-creative
• I felt like the essay fell flat and I personally did not enjoy it very much because it sounded like a report type of essay rather than a personal one, I longed to hear more about the author’s personal experiences beyond the fact that they teach students who don’t know how to write, and then older students who are better at it
• I just thought this personal essay wasn’t very personal at all

Only Daughter

• In psychology, people use distinction to further contrast opposing ideas or in order to narrow down a wide range of data into a small, detail-oriented group in order to allow for a study to be more telling and interesting. I think the author here begins her essay by addressing this idea of distinction, and the idea that with increasing distinction, comes more detail and knowledge
• “But the truth is, I wanted him to interrupt” I like the attention to detail and just how personal this essay is because I believe when the writer opens up it creates a bridge that connects the reader and the author
• She is writing to the public who is uninterested in reading in order to “woo”
• “And on the floor, one black sock and a plastic urinal that I didn’t want to look at but looked at anyway.”I think the attention to detail is carried through all the way to the end of the essay. Everything that is put into an essay like this is purposeful, there is a reason she chose to include the things she did, everything has a purpose and I think that purpose was to create a bigger picture, on the reader can imagine him or herself – this is what I believe a personal essay should be

DAD

• “THE FIRST MEMORY I have of him – of anything, really – is his strength.” Again, similarly to Superman and Me, I believe the opening statement draws the reader in quick, which I like
• “His powerful hands, then age 33, wrapped all the way around my tiny arms, then age 4, and easily swung me up to his shoulders to command all I surveyed” I love the descriptive language as it puts me in the world the author describes
• Again with the powerful beginning statements: “When my cat killed a bird…” sometimes you don’t care that there isn’t an extremely smooth transition statement connecting one paragraph ton the next because the first sentence of the next paragraph is so enticing that it doesn’t matter and you just want to keep reading – I strive to write this way
• I liked how the author addressed the fact that as he got older, his father didn’t tell him what to do anymore – as the father-child relationship develops and progresses, we too as the reader, progress with the essay
• I like the topic because he addresses in a way how as we get older, we often begin to see our parents more and more as people and not just parents
• This piece gave me the shivers

How does this piece present similarities or differences between what you know is characteristic or expected of  the open letter, the “personal” essay, the autobiography and the memoir?

I have selected DAD as the piece of my main focus to discuss because I felt that it fully encapsulates the epitome of what a personal essay should be like. I think the point of personal essays is to get personal, and when a personal essay does not do that, it doesn’t do it for me. It is amazing how a personal essay can be about someone completely different from the author themself, yet say so much about the author in addition to the person they are discussing. I thought The Decline and Fall of the English Major fell short in this area because it didn’t really seem personal at all. I could take that the author had a particular stance on the subject and I was able to fully understand their opinion, but I didn’t believe this said much about the author as a person. It was also really difficult to agree with and understand everything the author of The Decline and Fall of the English Major was saying because there was barely any personal evidence to back it up with. Anyone can say anything about their opinion if they have legitimate evidence to back it up with like they did, but without that personal detail or focus on the author’s morals or values, I think as a personal essay, it fell flat for me.