Julie Orringer's "Pilgrims"

                The short-story Pilgrims is about your everyday average family of four going to thanksgiving at the house of a family that they do not know that well seemingly. The story is told from the perspective of the eldest child, a young girl named Ella. The one thing that would make this family different than most families is that their mother has cancer and has been going through chemotherapy. The house that they go to is full of strange people to Ella and her brother Benjamin. It seems as if they have just recently met these people because if they had known them for a while why would they not have brought their children over there before. The thing that appears to have brought all these people together is that either they themselves have cancer or some illness or that their spouse is suffering from cancer. The thing that is continually talked about when describing each person is what their hair looks like, whether it is bald, patchy, or wiry. Also the people’s eyes are described frequently as being dark. These descriptions seem to serve the purpose of telling who has gone through chemo, who is starting to go through chemo, and also to show just how tired these people are from all the treatments and sleepless nights. It is evident that Ella and her family have not always lived an eaten like they do now and it is only because of their mothers failing health. It seems as if Ella’s mother was the first to make the switch to a healthier and more ritualistic lifestyle because she jumps right in with all the cooking, chants at the dinner table, and is completely aware of how to meditate. Ella father on the other hand seems as if he is just recently making the switch to this new lifestyle. Whenever the group is doing anything he is always looking around to others, unsure of what to do next. Ella and Benjamin unlike everyone else’s children are not made to eat the ways their parents do, possibly because even their father does not want to live this way himself. A common theme of this story is that while all the parents are hard at work trying to be physically and spiritually healthy they do not seem to find time for their children. The children do not get any of the attention because their parents are too tired and the children end up spending most of their time alone. There is irony in the fact that while the parents are so focused and cautious about their health and dying from cancer that the death that does occur is of Clarie falling from the tree house because the parents were in the house meditating. The young girl is hidden in the yard and no one is any the wiser.

First-Day Writing

            My previous academic writing included many different styles of papers and writings. But, before all of that I was taught all the rules and the proper way to format for a modern language association or MLA style paper. I also learned the basics of a five paragraph essay. There were many rules involved such as the first sentence of your introductory paragraph had to be an attention getting device or AGD. It needed to be a quote or a question or anything that would get the reader thinking and wanting to know more. The next couple sentences were supposed to explain very roughly what was going to be talked about in the essay. Then the final sentence of the intro paragraph was the thesis statement. With the next three paragraphs were meant to be used as examples to help support the thesis. Then the final paragraph was simply to wrap things up and pull the whole essay together by referencing to the thesis and also the AGD. Some other smaller details of the MLA style that I learned were such things as to never write from the first person view point and to not use conjunction. In my academic writing I wrote essays telling about different books like the Hobbit and the Maus books were I would have to talk about what I thought was the main points of the books. I also wrote several research papers of which I had to include a certain number of credible sources and use only certain search engines. I wrote several papers that were of a topic of my choosing and some that were chosen for me such as a paper on the life of British author Daniel Defoe. The way that my essays were graded seemed to be based mainly around how the information was presented and were the points well backed up. Obviously the essays had some grading for the grammar and punctuation used. I found this style of writing fairly easy, not because I see myself as a good writer, but simply because of the way that they are formatted makes it easier to know what to put next.

I have never written any writing that was posted for a public audience to read, but I have written for speeches that were spoken to an audience. I took a public speaking course previously in which I was required to speak for a group. The audience was simply my fellow classmates and I had to make two research based speeches for the class. I way in which the writing was put together was the same as any other academic writing with an AGD, a thesis, several points to back up the thesis, and a conclusion that wraps the whole thing up and ties any loose strings. The only difference is that it is only required that it be in the form of an outline and to exclude any extra that might make the speech to long or make the speaker look down too often. Other forms of writing that I have down for a public audience would be making videos that I have made for classes. The premise of most of these videos was to create a product or use a pre-existing product and make some sort of commercial using various sales techniques like band wagoning or sex appeal. The main way these videos relate to academic writing is in a persuasive essay they are both trying to convince or change to audience mind about something. The idea of public writing is both very intimidating and exciting. The idea of presenting my work and thoughts to others for them to judge is quite nerve racking but also the idea of others enjoying what I have to say is very redeeming.

When it comes to choosing a novel to read just for pleasure I do not really have any particular authors or even types of books I gravitate to. If I were to choose a style that would be my favorite kind of book to read it would have to science fiction and fantasy simply because they authors have created an entirely new world that you as the reader can enter. Another thing that I enjoy in the novels that I choose are when the author has created a character that compels you to keep reading to find out more about them. It is not always the main character or even a fictional character, sometime a real person can be just as interesting to learn about. It seems to me that a lot of the time writers and poets speak about the body in its magnificence or from a perspective of disgust towards a particular body. Considering that the theme of the course is the way the human is perceived I think that I will begin to see the human body in different ways throughout the many readings. Also the course theme will be able to tie into my interests fairly easily because my major is human nutrition and I am very interested in the function and capabilities of the human body.