Nicki Buscemi, English 101
Paper 3 Sample Paragraphs
Essay Definition: The essay conveys an honest journey of growth in an area of the authors’ life;
this personal voyage is a vessel to support a larger life lesson. The truth of the essay lies in the
personal disclosures and memories of the author that are included intermittently with factual
information supporting the larger sociological, political or emotional lesson.
Excerpt #1 from the paper:
After reading the definition of an essay from a handful of other writers, followed by
reading a wide assortment of essays, my definition of an essay was constructed. One of the
definitions I read was written by Cynthia Ozick. Her definition stuck out to me due to the fact
that the characteristics she outlined were so oppositional to my own. Ozick exclaimed that an
essay is “a thing of the imagination.” After re-reading the essays, I am able to qualify Ozick’s
point about the imagination. While I do not think the essay is wholly from the imagination, it is
my understanding that, in order to push some of the subjects to the point of a new understanding,
the imagination must be used.
An essay can be imaginative but it is not imagined. The essay bears its truth from the
personal experience of the writer. Through personal disclosures and memories, the writer’s life
and voice becomes part of the page. In Chris Arthur’s essay, “(En)trance”, he uses the setting of
his childhood home, especially the pillars at the entrance of his home, to push and pull and play
with the realities of human experience. He starts his essay with a disclosure about himself,
setting us up for the style of his writing. He writes, “It was while thinking about the pillars at
Shandon that I realized I would never be the sort of writer I used to believe I’d become” (03).
Arthur starts his essay by revealing something about himself and about his life. While his writing
is filled with imagination, his purpose; exploring the boundaries of human experience and the
realization of the intricacies and layers of everyday experience, is rooted in a memory and
experience of his own.
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Excerpt #2 from the paper:
As noted before, I was opposed to parts of Cynthia Ozick’s description of an essay. For
example, she wrote that the information in an essay is not important and that, if there is an
opinion imbedded in the writing, to not take it seriously. Further, she wrote, a real essay has no
educational or argumentative value but is an expression of the free mind. This, to me, was the
part of her description that my description most contrasted with. Whether it seemed like it was
being screamed throughout the pages or subtly hummed underneath the sentences, every essay, I
have read, has had an underlying lesson.
To support these claims and values throughout the essay, the essayist’s have integrated
facts into their writing. The facts may be pathos filled and bias but are primarily based on
science, history or sociology. For instance, in “Portrait of a Masked Man”, while explaining the
historical context of the Zapatistas in Southeast Mexico, it is written: “Mexico city is perhaps the
third-largest metropolis in the world, with a soaring population of well over twenty million. A
city of unbridled consumerism, interlinking rackets, poverty” (Berger, 19). Berger’s factual
descriptions show the chaotic and malnourished way of life in southeast Mexico. Later, in the
same context he writes, “Each year one million Mexican peasants and indigenous people are
forced by poverty and landlessness to leave their rural homes and move to the capital or to other
cities, while their lands are taken over by corporate agribusiness” (19). He uses facts and figures
to support his plea about the impoverished and repressed indigenous people of southeast Mexico.