Ahmet Caglar
May 15th
Final Essay
The authors, whom we read in this semester, and their essays were fascinating for me. I have never read them, actually, even never heard most of them before. Most probably, if I did not take this course I would have not read them at all. Fascinating does not mean, however, that I like all of them. I understand most of the stories but some that are written in an old English format. I could not totally grasp the message of some stories such as ‘The declaration of independence,’ ‘The death of the moth,’ and the other old English essays.
I have read almost all essays more than five times. As I read them, I developed a personal strategy to evaluate the essays. At first, for example, I figured out some vocabularies that I don’t know or I am not sure what it meant in essay, then I looked up dictionaries and tried to understand their meanings. Every so often, this was not enough though. If I don’t know more than one word in the sentence, I was asking another person who knows better than me. Sometimes this was not even enough, because of the ambiguity of the words or because of my incapability of understanding of the tutors. For instance, I did not understand the word ‘Spartan-like’ until our teacher told us in the class.
It was a great joy reading some of the essays because of their marvelous stylistic features. For example, I recommend that everybody should read ‘Dumpster diving’, ‘Me talk pretty one day’ and ‘Where I lived and for what’, which are clearly written and enjoyable readings. I think that clarity is an important characteristic for a successful essay. Unfortunately, this important feature is not achieved by the all authors whom we have read so far. Gloria Anzaldua frequently employs Spanish quotes throughout her article presuming that any reader can understand. But, at least, I could not. It was very boring for me try to understand what is going on. I have enough problems with my English! Plus Spanish! Oh my god! It was just ‘tough’ essay for me. But, it was interesting to learn her ethnic background though. More interesting thing was to compare the works of Anzaldua and Eric Liu. Actually, our all comparisons were better than plain essays; but, I earned an impression that making scholarly comparison was not an easy task.
George Orwell was a good start for me, because his topic drew my attention in the essay despite of British-English vocabularies. I though that my fellow students also enjoyed so much in reading. Yet, they seem not interested in Orwell as I anticipated: I observed that they did not even well respond to the teacher’s questions in the class.
Moreover, I, as a non-native American, don’t have enough knowledge as native students do about American history. Therefore, it was both a shocking and an enriching experience for me to read Frederick Douglass. I learned many historical facts of African American history. I amazed by the fact that many blacks were considered as beasts for a very long time in the so-called “land of freedom.”
Reading David Sedaris’s work was a more inspiring and thought-provoking practice. This is because, I think, Sedaris’s experiences were similar to my experiences of learning language; therefore, I have paid a special attention to every single sentence in his essay. I think that I grasped the author’s difficulties more than anybody in the class. One stimulating point for me was that he shows a great patience to his French teacher. He does not act in a way of regular American people. This point, here, is not clear to the reader. We can fairly understand that French is very important for him but he doesn’t explain why that much important.
As I mentioned above, it was a good opportunity to read these essays. I understood as maximum as possible; nonetheless, understanding does not mean that I can suddenly write my thoughts and feeling about the essays. Far from it. It is a small step. Every moment spent on homework essays are like having a cesarean section. Despite of all difficulties I encountered, I felt when I saw my work at the end was a great joy.
