Successful college writing, Eighth edition - Kathleen T. McWhorter 2020

Description
Patterns of development

Portraying People, Places, and Things

In this chapter you will learn to

✵ understand the purpose and function of descriptive essays

✵ use graphic organizers to visualize descriptive essays

✵ integrate description into an essay

✵ read and think critically about description

✵ plan, organize, draft, revise, and edit essays using description

Writing Quick Start

ANALYZE

Suppose the owner of a local restaurant that you go to often asks you to increase the restaurant’s presence on social media by praising the restaurant in an Instagram post or giving the restaurant a positive review on Yelp. You decide to include several photos of menu items, including the one shown here.

WRITE

Create an appealing description to accompany this photograph. Use words that will appeal to the readers’ senses of sight and smell, but also their senses of sound and even touch. You may even want to include a comparison that will help readers understand the dining experience.

CONNECT

As you wrote your post or review, you probably included lots of details that will make readers’ mouths water, such as details about how scrumptious the dish looks, its delicious aroma, the creamy texture of the dish’s sauce, and its delectable taste. You may also have chosen to include details about how the dining room looks, feels, and smells; how the waitstaff behaves with customers; and how customers react to the food, the service, and the ambience.

The review or post you wrote is a good example of descriptive writing. It includes details that appeal to the readers’ senses, enabling them to imagine tasting the food or visualizing the restaurant you described. In this chapter you will learn to use description to make your writing vivid and lively.

Description presents information in a way that appeals to one or more of the five senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) by creating an overall (dominant) impression or feeling. If you included concrete details and maybe an effective comparison in your Writing Quick Start, you wrote a successful description.

You use description every day — to describe a pair of shoes you bought, a flavor of ice cream you tasted, or a concert you attended recently. If you were an eyewitness to a car theft, the detective investigating the crime would ask you to describe what you saw.

Writers rely on description to present detailed information about people, places, and things and to grab and sustain their readers’ interest. When you write vivid descriptions, you not only make your writing livelier and more interesting but also indicate your attitude toward the subject through your choice of concrete words and specific details.

USING DESCRIPTION

IN COLLEGE AND THE WORKPLACE

✵ In a chemistry lab report, you describe the odor and appearance of a substance made by combining two chemicals.

✵ In an art history class, you visit a local gallery, choose a painting, and describe in a two-page paper the artist’s use of line or color.

✵ As a nurse at a local treatment center for burn victims, you record on each patient’s medical chart the overall appearance of and change in second- and third-degree burns.

What Are the Characteristics of a Description?

Successful descriptions offer readers more than just a list of sensory details or a catalog of characteristics. In a good description, the details work together to create a dominant effect or impression.

Description Uses Sensory Details

Sensory details appeal to one or more of the five senses — sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch — and help your readers experience the object, sensation, event, or person you are describing.

Sight

When you describe what something looks like, you help your reader create a mental picture of the subject. In the following excerpt, notice how Loren Eiseley uses visual detail — shape, color, action — and specific nouns and noun phrases to describe what he comes across in a field.

"The example reads, “I found a giant slug feeding from a funnel of pink ice cream in an abandoned Dixie cup. I could see his eyes telescope and protrude in a kind of dim, uncertain ecstasy as his dark body bunched and elongated in the curve of the cup.” In this example, “Dixie cup” is the noun phrase, ""funnel” and “ecstasy” are nouns. The words “pink,” “dark,” and “curve” are adjectives describing shape and color. The words “telescope,” “protrude,” “bunched,” and “elongated” are active verbs used to depict motion. The text in the bottom right corner reads, “Loren Eiseley, “The Brown Wasps.”  "

This description allows the reader to imagine the slug eating the ice cream in a way that a bare statement of the facts — “I saw a slug in a paper cup” — would not.

Sound

Sound can also be a powerful descriptive tool. Can you “hear” the engines in the following description?

"The example reads, “They were one-cylinder and two-cylinder engines, and some were make-and-break and some were jump-spark, but they all made a sleepy sound across the lake. The one-lungers throbbed and fluttered, and the twin-cylinder ones purred and purred and that was a quiet sound too.” In this example, the words “one-cylinder,” “two-cylinder,” “make-and-break,” “jump-spark,” “sleepy,” and “twin-cylinder” are descriptive adjectives. The words “throbbed,” “fluttered,” and “purred” are active verbs used to evoke specific sounds; some are onomatopoetic — they sound like what they describe. The text below at the right corner reads, “E.B. White, ’Once More to the Lake.’”  "

Smell

Smells are sometimes difficult to describe, partly because the English language does not have as many adjectives for smells as it does for sights and sounds. Smell can be an effective descriptive device, however, as shown here:

"The example reads, “manure, cut grass, honeysuckle, spearmint, wheat chaff, scallions, chicory, tar from the macadam road.” In this sentence, “manure,” “cut grass,” “honeysuckle,” “spearmint,” “wheat chaff,” “scallions,” “chicory,” and “tar” are nouns used to evoke distinct odors. All these words are underlined. The text below at the right corner reads, “Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses.” "

Notice how Diane Ackerman lists nouns that evoke distinct odors and leaves it to the reader to imagine how they smell.

Taste

Words that evoke the sense of taste can make descriptions lively. Consider this restaurant critic’s description of Vietnamese cuisine:

"The example reads, “In addition to balancing the primary flavors—the sweet, sour, bitter, salty and peppery tastes (ellipsis) —medicinal herbs were used in most dishes. (Ellipsis.)For instance, the orange-red annatto seed is used for its “cooling” effect as well as for the mildly tangy flavor it lends.” In this example, “sweet,” “sour,” “bitter,” “salty,” “peppery,” and “tangy” are descriptive adjectives of taste. The text below reads, “Molly O’ Nell, “Vietnam’s Cuisine: Echoes of Empires.”  "

Touch

Annie Dillard’s descriptions of texture, temperature, and weight allow a reader not only to visualize but also to experience what it feels like to hold a Polyphemus moth cocoon:

"The example reads, “We passed the cocoon around.(Ellipsis.) The pupa began to jerk violently, in heart-stopping knocks. Who’s there? I can still feel those thumps, urgent through a muffling of spun silk and leaf, urgent through the swaddling of many years, against the curve of my palm.” In this example, the words “heart- stopping” and “urgent” are descriptive adjectives of weight and texture. The phrase “to jerk violently” represents active verb and adverb and active verbs conveying temperature and motion. The words “knocks,” “thumps,” “muffling,” “spun,” “silk,” “leaf,” “swaddling,” and “curve” are nouns and noun phrases. The text below reads, “Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.”  "

Description Uses Active Verbs and Varied Sentences

Sensory details are often best presented through active, vivid verbs. In fact, active verbs are often more effective than adverbs in creating striking and lasting impressions, as the following example demonstrates:

"The example reads as follows. Original sentence: The team captain proudly accepted the award. In this sentence, “proudly” is an “adverb.” Revised sentence: The team captain marched to the podium, grasped the trophy, and saluted his teammates. In this sentence, ""marched,"" ""grasped,"" and ""saluted"" are verbs.  "

Using varied sentences also contributes to the effective expression of sensory details. Be sure to use different types and patterns of sentences and to vary their lengths.

For more on using active verbs and varying sentence types, patterns, and length, see Chapter 9.

EXERCISE 12.1

USING SENSORY DETAILS, ACTIVE VERBS, AND VARIED SENTENCES

Using sensory details, active verbs, and varied sentences, describe one of the common objects in the following list or one of your own choosing. Do not name the object in your description. Exchange papers with a classmate. Your reader should be able to guess the item you are describing from the details you provide.

1. A piece of clothing

2. A food item

3. An appliance

4. A plant

5. An animal

Description Creates a Dominant Impression

An effective description leaves the reader with a dominant impression — an overall attitude, mood, or feeling about the subject. The impression may be awe, inspiration, anger, or distaste, for example.

For more on thesis statements, see Chapter 5.

Let’s suppose that you are writing about an old storage box you found in your parents’ attic. The aspect of the box you want to emphasize (your slant, angle, or perspective) is memories of childhood. Given this slant, you might describe the box in several ways, each of which would convey a different dominant impression.

✵ “A box filled with treasures from my childhood brought back memories of long, sunny afternoons playing in our backyard.”

✵ “Opening the box was like lifting the lid of a time machine, revealing toys and games from another era.”

✵ “When I opened the box, I was eight years old again, fighting over my favorite doll with my twin sister, Erica.”

Notice that each example provides a different impression of the box’s contents and would require a different type of support. That is, only selected objects from within the box would be relevant to each impression. Note, too, that in all of these examples, the dominant impression is stated directly in a thesis statement rather than implied.

To write an effective description, select details carefully, including only those that contribute to the dominant impression you are trying to create. Notice that Dillard, in the paragraph above, does not clutter her description by describing the physical appearance of the cocoon. Instead, she focuses on its movement and how it feels in her hand.

EXERCISE 12.2

FOCUSING THE DOMINANT IMPRESSION

As you read the following paragraph, cross out details that do not contribute to the dominant impression:

All morning I had had a vague sense that bad news was on its way. As I stepped outside, the heat of the summer sun, unusually oppressive for ten o’clock, seemed to sear right through me. In fact, now that I think about it, everything seemed slightly out of kilter that morning. The car, which had been newly painted the week before, had stalled several times. The flowers in the garden, planted for me by my husband, purchased from a nursery down the road, were drooping. It was as though they were wilting before they even had a chance to grow. Even my two cats, who look like furry puffballs, moved listlessly across the room, ignoring my invitation to play. It was then that I received the phone call from the emergency room telling me about my son’s accident.

Description Uses Connotative Language Effectively

Most words have two levels of meaning: denotative and connotative. The denotation of a word is its precise dictionary meaning. Often, however, feelings and attitudes — emotional colorings or shades of meaning — are also associated with a word. These are the word’s connotations.

For more on connotation versus denotation, see Chapter 3.

As you write, be careful to select words with connotations that strengthen the dominant impression you are creating.

Description Uses Comparisons

Comparing the person or object you are describing to something your readers are familiar with can help them visualize your subject. Several types of comparisons are used in descriptive writing: similes, metaphors, and personification.

For more on simile, metaphor and personification, see Chapter 3.

EXERCISE 12.3

APPEALING TO THE SENSES

Write a paragraph describing an animal or pet. Focus on one sense or appeal to several. If possible, include a simile or a metaphor.

Description Follows a Method of Organization

Effective descriptions must follow a clear method of organization. Three common methods of organization used in descriptive writing are spatial order, chronological order, and most-to-least or least-to-most order.

For more on methods of organization, see Chapter 7.

✵ When you use spatial order, you describe a subject from top to bottom, from left to right, from near to far away, or from a central point outward. For example, if you are describing a college campus, you might start by describing a building at the center of the campus — the library, perhaps — and then move to surrounding buildings.

In writing a description using spatial order, you can use either a fixed or a moving vantage point. With a fixed vantage point, you describe what you see from a particular position. With a moving vantage point, you describe your subject from different positions. A fixed vantage point is like a stationary camera trained on a subject from one direction. A moving vantage point is like a handheld camera that captures the subject from many directions.

✵ Chronological order works well when you need to describe events or changes that occur over a period of time. You might use chronological order to describe the changes in a puppy’s behavior as it grows or to relate changing patterns of light and shadow as the sun sets.

✵ You might use either most-to-least or least-to-most order to describe the smells in a flower garden or the sounds of an orchestra tuning up for a concert.

✵ Clustering details by the five senses — how your subject looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels — might make sense for a topic such as a hot fudge sundae or a delicious meal at a restaurant.

The following readings demonstrate the techniques discussed above for writing effective descriptive essays. The first reading is annotated to point out how Joan Didion uses these techniques to make the Santa Ana winds and the resulting human behavior come alive. As you read the second essay, try to identify for yourself how the writer uses the techniques of descriptive writing to help readers imagine the Dreamland pool as it was to residents of Portsmouth, Ohio, in its prosperous past.

READING

The Santa Ana

Joan Didion

Joan Didion, a native Californian, is an award-winning American essayist and novelist, best known for her coverage of social and political issues in works like Slouching toward Bethlehem (1968), in which this selection appeared; The White Album (1979); and Political Fictions (2001). She is also the author of numerous novels (such as Play It as It Lays, 1970; A Book of Common Prayer, 1977; and The Last Thing He Wanted, 1996) and screenplays (such as A Star Is Born, 1976; True Confessions, 1981; and Up Close & Personal, 1996). The Year of Magical Thinking (2005), her memoir about the death of her husband and writing partner, John Gregory Dunne, won the National Book Award. More recently, she has published Blue Nights (2011), a memoir about the death of her daughter, and South and West (2017), which includes a description of a road trip she took through the South in 1970 and excerpts from her notebooks. She was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2013 for her lifetime contribution to American letters.

Before Reading

1. Preview: Use the steps listed in Chapter 2.

2. Connect: Have you ever experienced a tornado, hurricane, or other extreme weather event? If not, do you know anyone who has, or have you read about or seen coverage of such a weather event on television? What emotions did you experience before, during, and after the event?

While Reading

Pay close attention to how the writer appeals to the senses in her description of Los Angeles and its people when the Santa Ana wind blows in.

Details: Uses striking verbs and sensory details (appeals to the reader’s senses of sight and sound)

Dominant impression: Thesis identifies topic of description

1There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to the flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior.

Details: Chooses words with powerful connotations and appeals to reader’s senses of sight (yellow), sound (screaming), touch (glossy)

Dominant impression: Uses anecdote to reinforce main idea

Dominant impression: Examples (meek little wives; nausea; suicide) support dominant impression

2I recall being told, when I first moved to Los Angeles and was living on an isolated beach, that the Indians would throw themselves into the sea when the bad wind blew. I could see why. The Pacific turned ominously glossy during a Santa Ana period, and one woke in the night troubled not only by the peacocks screaming in the olive trees but by the eerie absence of surf. The heat was surreal. The sky had a yellow cast, the kind of light sometimes called “earthquake weather.” My only neighbor would not come out of her house for days, and there were no lights at night, and her husband roamed the place with a machete. One day he would tell me that he had heard a trespasser, the next a rattlesnake.

3“On nights like that,” Raymond Chandler once wrote about the Santa Ana, “every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen.” That was the kind of wind it was. I did not know then that there was any basis for the effect it had on all of us, but it turns out to be another of those cases in which science bears out folk wisdom. The Santa Ana, which is named for one of the canyons it rushes through, is a foehn wind, like the foehn of Austria and Switzerland and the hamsin of Israel. There are a number of persistent malevolent winds, perhaps the best known of which are the mistral of France and the Mediterranean sirocco, but a foehn wind has distinct characteristics: it occurs on the leeward slope of a mountain range and, although the air begins as a cold mass, it is warmed as it comes down the mountain and appears finally as a hot dry wind. Whenever and wherever a foehn blows, doctors hear about headaches and nausea and allergies, about “nervousness,” about “depression.” In Los Angeles some teachers do not attempt to conduct formal classes during Santa Ana, because the children become unmanageable. In Switzerland the suicide rate goes up during the foehn, and in the courts of some Swiss cantons the wind is considered a mitigating circumstance for crime. Surgeons are said to watch the wind, because blood does not clot normally during a foehn. A few years ago an Israeli physicist discovered that not only during such winds, but for the ten or twelve hours which precede them, the air carries an unusually high ratio of positive to negative ions. No one seems to know exactly why that should be; some talk about friction and others suggest solar disturbances. In any case the positive ions are there, and what an excess of positive ions does, in the simplest terms, is make people unhappy. One cannot get much more mechanistic than that.

Comparison: Uses contrast to highlight weather extremes; transition signals contrast

Details: Appeals to reader’s senses

Organization: Uses transitions to convey chronological order

4Easterners commonly complain that there is no “weather” at all in Southern California, that the days and the seasons slip by relentlessly, numbingly bland. That is quite misleading. In fact the climate is characterized by infrequent but violent extremes: two periods of torrential subtropical rains which continue for weeks and wash out the hills and send subdivisions sliding toward the sea; about twenty scattered days a year of the Santa Ana, which, with its incendiary dryness, invariably means fire. At the first prediction of a Santa Ana, the Forest Service flies men and equipment from northern California into the southern forests, and the Los Angeles Fire Department cancels its ordinary non-firefighting routines. The Santa Ana caused Malibu to burn the way it did in 1956, and Bel Air in 1961, and Santa Barbara in 1964. In the winter of 1966—67 eleven men were killed fighting a Santa Ana fire that spread through the San Gabriel Mountains. Just to watch the front-page news out of Los Angeles during a Santa Ana is to get very close to what it is about the place. The longest single Santa Ana period in recent years was in 1957, and it lasted not the usual three or four days but fourteen days, from November 21 until December 4. On the first day 25,000 acres of the San Gabriel Mountains were burning, with gusts reaching 100 miles an hour. In town, the wind reached Force 12, or hurricane force, on the Beaufort Scale; oil derricks were toppled and people ordered off the downtown streets to avoid injury from flying objects. On November 22 the fire in the San Gabriels was out of control. On November 24 six people were killed in automobile accidents, and by the end of the week the Los Angeles Times was keeping a box score of traffic deaths. On November 26 a prominent Pasadena attorney, depressed about money, shot and killed his wife, their two sons, and himself. On November 27 a South Gate divorcee, twenty-two, was murdered and thrown from a moving car. On November 30 the San Gabriel fire was still out of control, and the wind in town was blowing eighty miles an hour. On the first day of December four people died violently, and on the third the wind began to break.

Conclusion: Makes a final statement about how the Santa Ana affects life in Los Angeles

Comparison: Uses comparison to highlight the effect of the wind on people’s lives

5It is hard for people who have not lived in Los Angeles to realize how radically the Santa Ana figures in the local imagination. The city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself: Nathanael West perceived that, in The Day of the Locust; and at the time of the 1965 Watts riots what struck the imagination most indelibly were the fires. For days one could drive the Harbor Freeway and see the city on fire, just as we had always known it would be in the end. Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.

Visualize a Description: Create a Graphic Organizer

Seeing the content and structure of an essay in simplified, visual form can help you analyze a reading, recall key images as you generate ideas for an essay, and structure your own writing. Graphic Organizer 12.1 diagrams the basic structure of a descriptive essay. When you write an essay in which your primary purpose is to describe something, you will need to follow the standard essay format — title, introduction, body, and conclusion — with slight adaptations and adjustments.

✵ The introduction should provide a context for the description and present the thesis statement, which states or suggests the dominant impression.

✵ The body of the essay should present sensory details that support the dominant impression.

✵ The conclusion draws the description to a close and makes a reference to the dominant impression. It may offer a final detail or make a closing statement.

For more on creating a graphic organizer, see Chapter 2.

When you incorporate a description into an essay in which you also use other patterns of development, you will probably need to condense or eliminate one or more of the elements of your descriptive essay.

GRAPHIC ORGANIZER 12.1 The Basic Structure of a Descriptive Essay

"The items in the left column of the chart are numbered here for clarity. Items bulleted here are attached to the associated numbered items by lines. Downward arrows connect the bulleted items. 1. Title. 2. Introduction (Bullet) Background setting, Dominant impression (stated or suggested in thesis). 3. Sensory Details and Comparisons (Bullet) Supporting details. (Bullet) Supporting details. (Bullet) Supporting details. 4. Conclusion (Bullet) Reference to a dominant impression, Draws essay to a close.  "

READING

Dreamland, Portsmouth, Ohio

Sam Quinones

Sam Quinones is a freelance journalist, a former Los Angeles Times reporter, and a storyteller. He is the author of Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic (2015), from which this selection was taken, as well as The Virgin of the American Dream: Guadalupe on the Walls of Los Angeles (2019). Before reading, preview and make connections by thinking of a special place or experience that lives within your memory. What makes it so special? While reading, highlight the details that help you visualize Dreamland.

1In 1929, three decades into what were the great years for the blue-collar town of Portsmouth, on the Ohio River, a private swimming pool opened and they called it Dreamland. The pool was the size of a football field. Over the decades, generations of the town grew up at the edge of its crystal-blue water.

2Dreamland was the summer babysitter. Parents left their children at the pool every day. Townsfolk found respite from the thick humidity at Dreamland and then went across the street to the A&W stand for hot dogs and root beer. The pool’s french fries were the best around. Kids took the bus to the pool in the morning, and back home in the afternoon. They came from schools all over Scioto County and met each other and learned to swim. Some of them competed on the Dreamland Dolphins swim team, which practiced every morning and evening. WIOI, the local radio station, knowing so many of its listeners were sunbathing next to their transistor radios at Dreamland, would broadcast a jingle — “Time to turn so you won’t burn” — every half hour.

3The vast pool had room in the middle for two concrete platforms, from which kids sunned themselves then dove back in. Poles topped with floodlights rose from the platforms for swimming at night. On one side of the pool was an immense lawn where families set their towels. On the opposite side were locker rooms and a restaurant.

4Dreamland could fit hundreds of people, and yet, magically, the space around it kept growing and there was always room for more. Jaime Williams, the city treasurer, owned the pool for years. Williams was part owner of one of the shoe factories that were at the core of Portsmouth’s industrial might. He bought more and more land, and for years Dreamland seemed to just get better. A large picnic area was added, and playgrounds for young children. Then fields for softball and football, and courts for basketball and shuffleboard, and a video arcade.

5For a while, to remain white only, the pool became a private club and the name changed to the Terrace Club. But Portsmouth was a largely integrated town. Its chief of police was black. Black and white kids went to the same schools. Only the pool remained segregated. Then, in the summer of 1961, a black boy named Eugene McKinley drowned in the Scioto River, where he was swimming because he was kept out of the pool. The Portsmouth NAACP pushed back, held a wade-in, and quietly they integrated the pool. With integration, the pool was rechristened Dreamland, though blacks were never made to feel particularly comfortable there.

6Dreamland did wash away class distinctions, though. In a swimming suit, a factory worker looked no different from the factory manager or clothing-shop owner. Wealthy families on Portsmouth’s hilltop donated money to a fund that would go to pay for summer passes for families from the town’s East End, down between the tracks and the Ohio River. East End river rats and upscale hilltoppers all met at Dreamland.

7California had its beaches. Heartland America spent its summers at swimming pools, and, down at a far end of Ohio, Dreamland took on an outsized importance to the town of Portsmouth. A family’s season pass was only twenty-five dollars, and this was a prized possession often given as a Christmas present. Kids whose families couldn’t afford that could cut a neighbor’s grass for the fifteen cents that a daily pool pass cost.

8Friday swim dances began at midnight. They hauled out a jukebox and kids spent the night twisting by the pool. Couples announced new romances by walking hand in hand around Dreamland. Girls walked home from those dances and families left their doors unlocked. “The heat of the evening combined with the cool water was wonderful,” one woman remembered. “It was my entire world. I did nothing else. As I grew up and had my own children, I took them, too.”

9In fact, the cycle of life in Portsmouth was repeated over and over at Dreamland. A toddler spent her first years at the shallow end watched by her parents, particularly her mother, who sat on a towel on the concrete near the water with other young moms. When the child left elementary school, she migrated out to the middle section of Dreamland as her parents retreated to the grass. By high school, she was hanging out on the grass around the pool’s ten-foot deep end, near the high dive and the head lifeguard’s chair, and her parents were far away. When she married and had children, she returned to the shallow end of Dreamland to watch over her own children, and the whole thing began again.

10“My father, a Navy Vet from World War II, insisted that his four children learn not only how to swim but how not to be afraid of water,” one man wrote. “My younger sister jumped off the fifteen-foot high diving board at age three. Yes, my father, myself and brother were in the water just in case. Sister pops up out of the water and screams … ’Again!’”

11For many years, Dreamland’s manager, Chuck Lorentz, a Portsmouth High School coach and strict disciplinarian, walked the grounds with a yardstick, making sure teenagers minded his “three-foot rule” and stayed that far apart. He wasn’t that successful. It seems half the town got their first kiss at the pool, and plenty lost their virginity in Dreamland’s endless grass.

12Lorentz’s son, meanwhile, learned to swim before he could walk and became a Dreamland lifeguard in high school. “To be the lifeguard in that chair, you were right in the center of all the action, all the strutting, all the flirting,” said John Lorentz, now a retired history professor. “You were like a king on a throne.”

13Memories of Dreamland, drenched in the smell of chlorine, Coppertone, and french fries, were what almost everyone who grew up in Portsmouth took with them as the town declined.

14Two Portsmouths exist today. One is a town of abandoned buildings at the edge of the Ohio River. The other resides in the memories of thousands in the town’s diaspora who grew up during its better years and return to the actual Portsmouth rarely, if at all. When you ask them what the town was back then, it was Dreamland.

EXERCISE 12.4

DRAWING A GRAPHIC ORGANIZER

Using Graphic Organizer 12.1 or 12.2 as a basis, draw a graphic organizer for “The Santa Ana.”

GRAPHIC ORGANIZER 12.2 The Structure of “Dreamland, Portsmouth, Ohio”

"The items in the left column of the chart are numbered here for clarity. Items bulleted here are attached to the associated numbered items by lines. Downward arrows connect the bulleted items. 1. Title (Bullet) “Dreamland, Portsmouth, Ohio” 2. Introduction/ Background (Bullet) A swimming pool called Dreamland opens. 3. Setting (Bullet) 1929 in Portsmouth, Ohio. 4. Dominant Impression (Bullet) Dreamland, which symbolizes the Portsmouth of more prosperous times, was a place of togetherness and fun, a sunny idyll. 5. Sensory Details (Bullet) Dreamland was the “size of a football field,” with “crystal-blue water.” (Bullet) Dreamland offered relief from “thick humidity.” People “sunbath[ed] next to their transistor radios” and set their towels on the “immense lawn.” (Bullet) Dreamland seemed to “magically” expand to accommodate people from all walks of life, “wash[ing] away class distinctions.” (Bullet) Season passes to Dreamland were a treasured possession, “often given as a Christmas present.” (Bullet) Midnight swim dances saw teens “twisting by the pool,” “new romances (ellipsis) walk[ed] hand in hand.” (Bullet) A whole life could be charted at Dreamland, from the shallow end to the lawn and then back, when the child became a parent. (Bullet) Memories of Dreamland are “drenched in the smell of chlorine, Coppertone, and french fries.” 6. Conclusion (Bullet) The town of Portsmouth, Ohio, has declined, but happy times at Dreamland live on in the memories of the people.  "

HOW WRITERS READ

DESCRIPTION

EXERCISE 12.5

READING CRITICALLY

Apply the questions in the “How Writers Read” box above to “Dreamland, Portsmouth, Ohio.”

Integrate Description into an Essay

Sometimes description alone fulfills the purpose of an essay. In most cases, however, you will use description in essays that mainly rely on a different mode. For instance, in a narrative essay, description helps readers experience events, reconstruct scenes, and visualize action. Although most of your college essays will not be primarily descriptive, you can use description in essays that explain the causes or effects of a phenomenon, compare or contrast animal species, or illustrate defensive behavior in children, for example.

Here are a few suggestions for combining description effectively with other patterns of development:

1. Include only relevant details. Whether you describe an event, a person, or a scene, the sensory details you choose should enhance the reader’s understanding of your subject.

2. Keep the description focused. Select enough details to make your essential points and dominant impression clear. Readers may become impatient if you include too many descriptive details.

3. Make sure the description fits the essay’s tone and point of view. A personal description, for example, is not appropriate in an essay explaining a technical process.

PREWRITING DRAFTING REVISING EDITING & PROOFREADING

A Guided Writing Assignment*

DESCRIPTION

Your Essay Assignment

Write a descriptive essay about something you can picture clearly or that you can readily observe. Choose one of the following to describe in detail:

✵ an unusual, striking, or surprising object

✵ a place that has significance to you, your family, or your cultural group

✵ a person who influenced you (for good or ill)

Examples: A robot you built from a kit; a playground you hung around in as a child; a teacher who changed your expectations about school or learning.

✵ * The writing process is recursive; that is, you may find yourself revising as you draft or prewriting as you revise. This is especially true when writing on a computer. Your writing process may also differ from project to project or from that of your classmates.

PREWRITING

1 Select a topic from the list on the previous page, or create your own.

Use one or more of the following suggestions to choose a subject to describe:

1. List one or more broad topics, such as An Unusual Object, A Place with Personal Significance, or An Influential Person. Then alone or with another student, brainstorm a list of objects, activities, or people that fit the assignment. Other prewriting strategies, like freewriting or questioning, may also help you generate topic ideas.

2. Picture the objects in your room or on your desk and ask yourself questions, such as “Who gave me that object?” or “Why did I buy [or make] it?”

3. Work backward: Think about the most influential people or most important values in your life, and then think about a place or object that represents them in your mind.

2 Consider your purpose and audience, and choose a perspective and point of view.

Ask yourself these questions:

✵ Will my essay’s purpose be to express myself, inform, or persuade?

✵ Who is my audience? Will readers need any background information to understand my essay? Have I chosen a person, place, or thing that I can write about honestly for this audience?

✵ What point of view best suits my purpose and audience? The first person (I, we) will work best if describing an object with personal significance or if your purpose is expressive; third person (it, they, he/she) will be most appropriate if describing something objectively, of if your purpose is informative.

3 Choose an aspect of your subject to emphasize, and collect sensory details.

Choose one trait or aspect of your subject to focus on.

Then record details that support the slant you have chosen.

1. Describe your subject to a friend, concentrating on the slant you have chosen, and make notes on your comments and your friend’s response.

2. Draw a quick sketch of your subject and label the parts.

3. Make a table and label each section with one of the senses. Then list the sensory details associated with your subject.

Generate comparisons. Think of appropriate comparisons — similes, metaphors, personifications — for as many details in your list as possible. Then select the one or two strongest comparisons and try to use them in your essay. Use at least two prewriting strategies to generate details. (More prewriting strategies appear in Chapter 4.)

4 Evaluate your details.

Reread your notes, highlighting the vivid, concrete details that will create pictures in your reader’s mind. Cross out the following:

✵ vague details

✵ irrelevant details

✵ details that do not support your slant

Then copy and paste the remaining details into a new document for easy access when drafting.

In small groups, share your ideas and details.

1. Have each writer explain her or his slant on the subject and provide a list of details.

2. As a group, evaluate each writer’s details in terms of her or his slant and suggest improvements.

DRAFTING

5 Create a dominant impression.

Your dominant impression should

✵ appeal to your audience

✵ offer an unusual perspective

✵ provide new insights on your subject

Description often includes an element of surprise; a description with an unexpected slant and new insights is more likely to engage the readers’ imagination.

Think of the dominant impression as

1. a thesis that conveys your main point and pulls your details together

2. a mood or feeling about the subject, which all the details in your essay explain or support

Team up with a classmate to evaluate each other’s dominant impression. Underline or highlight any problematic wording and give feedback.

6 Choose a method of organization.

Select the method of organization that will best support your dominant impression:

✵ If you are focusing on a person’s slovenly appearance, then a spatial (top to bottom, left to right) organization may be effective. If using spatial organization, also consider what vantage point(s) will provide the most useful information or from which vantage point(s) you can provide the most revealing or striking details.

✵ If you are describing a visit to a wildlife preserve, chronological order might be a useful method of organization (what you saw or experienced first, next, last).

✵ A most-to-least or least-to-most arrangement might work best for a description of the symptoms of pneumonia.

✵ If you are describing a chocolate chip cookie, you may want to organize by the five senses, clustering details about how it looks, smells, tastes, and feels in your mouth.

7 Write a first draft of your descriptive essay.

Use the following guidelines to keep your narrative on track:

✵ The introduction should set up your dominant impression, which you may choose to state in a thesis.

✵ The body paragraphs should include striking sensory details that support your dominant impression. Be sure to include enough details that readers can picture your subject but not so many that readers will get bored. Try to work your one or two strongest comparisons into your draft. Organize each body paragraph so that it focuses on a single topic, and use transitions (first, next, above, below, before, after) to make relationships among details clear. You may want to include a photograph (or video or audio file if presenting your description online), but remember that an illustration cannot substitute for a detailed, sensory description.

✵ The conclusion should revisit your dominant impression. You may also want to refer to the beginning of your essay or make a final observation about the significance of your subject.

REVISING

8 Evaluate your draft and revise as necessary.

Use Figure 12.1, “Flowchart for Revising a Descriptive Essay,” to help you discover the strengths and weaknesses of your descriptive essay.

FIGURE 12.1 Flowchart for Revising a Descriptive Essay

"The information provided is as follows. Question 1: Without looking at your essay, state the dominant impression in a sentence. Then highlight the sentences that express the dominant impression. Do they successfully convey the impression? If yes, proceed to Question 2. If no, use these revision strategies: (Bullet) Reread your essay. Make a list of the different impressions it conveys. (Bullet)Choose one impression that you have the most to say about, and brainstorm to develop additional details that support it. Question 2: Place a checkmark by each sensory detail. Does each detail support your dominant impression? If yes, proceed to Question 3. If no, use this revision strategy: (Bullet) Eliminate irrelevant sensory details. Question 3: Highlight your sensory details. Is your language vivid enough to help readers visualize the topic? Are the connotations of your language appropriate? If yes, proceed to Question 4. If no, use these revision strategies: (Bullet) Brainstorm additional sensory details. (Bullet) Replace passive verbs with active ones. (Bullet) Vary your sentences. (Bullet) Replace vague or inappropriate words with words that better support your dominant impression.  "

"The flowchart continues as follows. Question 4: [Bracket] each comparison—simile, metaphor, and analogy. Is each fresh and effective? If yes, proceed to Question 5. If no, use these revision strategies: (Bullet) Eliminate clichés. (Bullet) Brainstorm fresh comparisons or discuss with a friend. Question 5: Outline your details and examine your organization. Is it clear from your essay how the details are organized? If yes, proceed to Question 6. If no, use these revision strategies: (Bullet) Rearrange your details. Experiment to see which order works best. (Bullet) Add transitions to connect your ideas. Question 6: Underline each paragraph’s topic sentence. Check (tick-mark sign) the sensory details against the topic sentence. Does the topic sentence make clear what the paragraph is describing? If yes, proceed to Question 7. If no, use this revision strategy: (Bullet) Revise so that each paragraph has a clear topic sentence and supporting details clearly relate to the topic sentence. Question 7: Reread your introduction and conclusion. Is each effective? If no, use this revision strategy: (Bullet) Revise your introduction and conclusion so that they meet the guidelines in Chapter 6.  "

EDITING & PROOFREADING

9 Edit and proofread your essay.

Refer to Chapter 9 for help with

✵ editing sentences to avoid wordiness, making your verb choices strong and active, and making your sentences clear, varied, and parallel

✵ editing words for tone and diction, connotation, and concrete and specific language

Pay particular attention to the punctuation of adjectives.

1. Use a comma between coordinate adjectives that are not joined by and.

o — Singh was a confident, skilled pianist.

o Coordinate adjectives are a series of adjectives whose order can be changed (skilled, confident pianist or confident, skilled pianist).

2. Do not use commas between cumulative adjectives whose order cannot be changed.

o — Two frightened brown eyes peered at us from under the sofa.

o You would not write frightened two brown eyes.

3. Use a hyphen to connect two words that work together as an adjective before a noun unless the first word is an adverb ending in -ly.

o — well-used book

o — foil-wrapped pizza

o — perfectly thrown pass

Readings: Description in Action

STUDENTS WRITE

Sometimes, We Give

Maia Nault

Maia Nault wrote the following essay in response to an assignment that asked her to describe an encounter with someone who had made a lasting impression on her life. As you read, study the annotations that accompany the reading to discover how the essay illustrates the characteristics of effective descriptive writing as presented earlier in the chapter.

The paragraphs in this narrative are numbered 1 through 15.

Paragraph 1: A grimy, bearded man sat and squirmed between a heap of blankets and cardboard mats across the street, baking on the sidewalk, while the sun glared down mercilessly during one of summer’s hottest days. Heavy, lunchtime foot traffic bustled through one of the city’s busiest plazas as everyone hurried from their offices to the chilled, air-conditioned relief of their destinations. The air was thick and uncomfortable, full of car exhaust fumes and the smell of sweat, but I stood unmoving in the middle of the plaza. I ignored the people shoving past me, and stared worriedly at the homeless man across the street. No one was stopping to help him. I had never interacted with a homeless person before — what was the right thing to do? My options swam in panicked circles through my mind, and my eyes darted nervously from the homeless man to the passing crowds. That day, I was called upon to make decisions that would test my character.

The above paragraph 1 is the introduction. Nault builds toward her dominant impression by describing her reaction to a homeless man on the sidewalk. The same paragraph exhibits dominant impression through the thesis sentence, “That day, I was called upon to make decisions that would test my character,” which identifies the topic of the description.

Paragraph 2: From the minute I clambered out of bed, I knew that it was going to be a difficult day. I slept through my alarm, didn’t have time for breakfast, and forgot to pack my lunch the night before. On top of that, I managed to set myself up for a wardrobe malfunction. My pencil skirt was wrinkled, a hole the size of my dog’s face had somehow materialized in the armpit of my blouse, and I donned my go-to black flats without putting on a pair of socks to help my feet breathe. It was the fourth day of my internship, and I was desperate to make a good impression, though I seemed to be failing miserably. My sweaty toes squelched together in my

(The sentence continues on the next page.)

In the above paragraph 2, the phrase “My pencil skirt was wrinkled” appeals to the reader’s sense of sight and touch, and the phrase “hole the size of my dog’s face” uses comparison and simile to add humor and realism to visual details.

The essay continues from the previous page as follows.

Paragraph 2: flats, which were more like swimming pools by the time I got to work that morning. I could feel the makeup melting on my face, and my hair felt like a frizzy rat’s nest on top of my head. I was a disheveled mess.

In the above paragraph 2, the phrase “my hair felt like a frizzy rat’s nest” uses comparison and simile to add humor and realism to visual details. The phrases “feel the makeup melting on my face” and “on top of my head” are sensory details that appeal to the reader’s sense of sight and touch.

Paragraph 3: I left the office around noon to buy lunch and spotted the homeless man a block away. One look at this crumpled soul in his threadbare, filthy clothes halted my pity party and put things into perspective; I looked and felt like a wreck, but the sunburnt man across the street was surely having a worse day than I was.

In the above paragraph 3, the phrases “crumpled soul,” and “I looked and felt like a wreck, but the sunburnt man across the street was surely having a worse day than I was” show comparison by using metaphor and contrast to highlight author’s connection with the homeless man.

Paragraph 4: Person after person walked past the homeless man, ignoring him completely. I pleaded with myself to do something, but the best I could manage was to drag my slippery feet around the block three times just to end up in the same spot again. I was nervous, stalling for time, and I couldn’t figure out why. A different kind of sweat broke out across the nape of my neck and slid down my back as I chewed my nail anxiously. Was I scared of standing out from the crowd? Would people judge me? Did any of that even matter?

In the above paragraph 4, the phrase “drag my slippery feet” is a sensory detail that appeals to reader’s touch. This paragraph also exhibits dominant impression as it uses questions to support main idea.

Paragraph 5: Then suddenly a wave of calmness washed over me. I took a slow, steady breath. No, I told myself. None of that matters. As my jittery mind became still, my legs mobilized. I wanted to do the right thing; I knew what that was because I knew myself.

The above paragraph 5 shows comparison through the metaphor “a wave of calmness washed over me.”

Paragraph 6: I am kind. I walked into a nearby grocery store and hoisted a plastic basket onto my shoulder. I am generous. I filled my basket with water bottles, bananas, peanut butter, bagels, vitamins, and sunscreen. I am resolute. I paid, marched out of the store, clenched my fists tightly around my shopping bags, turned on my sweaty heel, and didn’t stop until I was standing half a block from the homeless man. He sat on the sidewalk, leaning with his back against the side of a brick building, wearing a filthy, gray tank-top and dingy cargo pants with rips in the knees. His hair was dirty and wild, barely restrained by a flimsy elastic tie. He wasn’t begging; his exposed knees were pulled up to his chest and his head was cradled in his arms, hidden from view. His shoulders shook slightly from quiet sobs but he didn’t bother anyone passing him on the sidewalk.

In the above paragraph 6, the action verbs “hoisted,” “marched,” “clenched,” “cradled,” and “shook” are striking verbs that present details. The words “filthy,” “gray,” “dingy,” “dirty,” “wild,” “flimsy,” and “quiet” represent sensory details. The paragraph also exhibits dominant impression through the use of adjectives that appeal to the senses to support main idea.

Paragraph 7: I glanced up and down the sidewalk, assuring myself that there weren’t any creeps around and that this wasn’t going to turn into an ambush. My

(The sentence continues on the next page.)

In the above paragraph 7, “creeps” and “ambush” are words with powerful connotations.

The essay continues from the previous page as follows.

Paragraph 7: strategy was a simple one: approach target, complete a quick drop-off, leave target. No chit-chat, no surprises, no wasting time. Unfortunately, that plan dissolved as soon as he dragged his face up from his arms, scrubbed his dusty knuckles across his eyes, and fixed me with a watery gaze. His tears had cut paths through the grime on his face, leaving dark smudges on his cheeks. I imagined that, at some point, he may have had an attractive face. His eyes were tired but a pretty light green color, his long hair was greasy but blonde, and if it weren’t for the red, splotchy sunburn, he would have had clear, fair skin.

In the above paragraph 7, the phrase “tears had cut paths” shows comparison through personification.

Paragraph 8: I took a moment to process his features as we looked at one another, when an odd realization struck me. “You’re so young,” I blurted. I could feel my melting face light up with embarrassment, and he cracked a dry-lipped smile that revealed perfectly straight teeth. “Hello to you, too,” he responded. “My name is Michael.” His voice sounded a little congested from crying but was mellow and warm, with a pleasant tone that made me believe he enjoyed talking to people. From far away he looked old, grizzly, and emaciated, clinging to the ragged clothes that he must have filled out before hunger took its toll. I realized now that those assumptions were only based on a stereotype. Up close, he looked so different—not quite what I expected a homeless man to look like. He had no wrinkles, and he wasn’t skin-and-bones skinny. His face was youthful, though his unkempt beard covered quite a bit of it, and while he was a little on the thin side, he looked healthy and lean. There were no hard lines around his eyes or mouth, and he had big, bright eyes that shone through the sweat and caked-on dirt with a depth of intelligence and curiosity that I didn’t expect to see.

In the above paragraph 8, “a dry-lipped smile,” “voice sounded a little congested from crying,” “mellow,” “warm,” and “pleasant tone” are sensory details that appeal to reader’s sense of touch, sight, and sound.

Paragraph 9: I learned a little more about Michael each time I visited, every couple of weeks, to drop off more essentials. He was pleasant, with an easygoing disposition and a genuine smile. Our conversations were brief, as I was reluctant to delve too deeply into his life and even more reluctant to give away anything about myself, but he expressed his gratitude for the visits nonetheless. On my third visit, as I was leaving, I learned that Michael was a student about a year ago. His voice quavered as he told me about his studies; he used to be a history student, a junior in college, and he really loved to read. I remember watching his nose turn red and his eyes well up

(The sentence continues on the next page.)

The essay continues from the previous page as follows.

Paragraph 9: as he told me these things, and I was reminded of the first time I saw him, crying with his knees curled up to his chest. I walked away from him that day realizing that I could have been talking to one of my friends from school. He was my age — a college student — and in another life, he could have been just a regular guy on campus that I bumped into now and then. The thought made my chest tighten and my eyes sting; I couldn’t comprehend how this could happen to somebody so young and full of potential.

In the above paragraph 9, the phrase “crying with his knees curled up to his chest” is a sensory detail that appeals to reader’s sense of sight.

Paragraph 10: On my fourth visit, I brought with me a couple of novels from the giveaway pile in our office’s kitchen. Michael’s smile stretched across his face when I presented him with the books, along with another bag of food, and he reached for them eagerly. His happiness was palpable; tears sprang to his green eyes again and this time, I couldn’t help but to cry with him a little bit. He thanked me, so many times, and I waved goodbye as I turned to walk away. My heart felt light and happy, and I was proud of myself for being brave enough to help somebody.

The above paragraph 10 exhibits organization and the phrase “On my fourth visit” shows transition to suggest chronological order. The paragraph also exhibits dominant impression using description of feeling to support main idea.

Paragraph 11: I was a few steps away from Michael when a strong grip on my upper arm and a rough, gravelly voice stopped me. “What about me? Where’s my bag?” I craned my head back and stared wide-eyed into the wild, bloodshot eyes of another homeless man. This man was older, more wrinkled and worn down than Michael. He was wearing layer upon layer of ripped, dusty clothes the color of wet cement, and the strong smell of body odor sprung to my nose. I always checked before approaching Michael. How did I not see him? What did I miss? What should I do now?

In the above paragraph 11, the active verbs “strong grip on my upper arm,” “rough, gravelly voice,” “wide-eyed,” “wild, bloodshot eyes,” “older,” “more wrinkled,” “worn down,” “layer upon layer of ripped, dusty clothes,” “color of wet cement,” and “strong smell of body odor” are striking verbs that present sensory details, which appeal to reader’s sense of sight, smell, and touch.

Paragraph 12: Before I knew it, I was being pushed aside and shielded from the intruder. In one quick movement, Michael had managed to wedge himself between me and the other man, breaking his hold on my arm. “Leave her alone,” he warned firmly.

In the above paragraph 12, “shielded” and “intruder” are words with powerful connotations.

Paragraph 13: At least, I think it was a firm warning.

Paragraph 14: When I think about it now, I try very hard not to romanticize this encounter. Michael was certainly brave to put himself in harm’s way for me, but his voice trembled and his eyes and posture lacked the strength and durability that we expect from strong, heroic characters. Michael’s voice shook and broke as he told me to leave, to find a cop, and to not come back to this spot for a while. In truth, he didn’t seem at all confident in his decision to jump up and rescue me. Michael was not sure how to handle himself, and

(The sentence continues on the next page.)

The above paragraph 14 exhibits dominant impression as the topic sentence, “When I think about it now, I try very hard not to romanticize this encounter,” focuses on author’s feelings about the encounter.

The essay continues from the previous page as follows.

Paragraph 14: neither of these men were prepared to fight each other; the intruder had the same scared look on his face that Michael had. In the end, I was protected from one hungry, frightened man by another, equally hungry, frightened man. This wasn’t a climactic scene between a hero, villain, and innocent; we were three ordinary people caught in a very sad, confusing situation.

Paragraph 15: I never saw Michael again. I waited a couple of weeks before one day returning to his spot at lunchtime, but he wasn’t there. I left a bag of water bottles and bread on the spot where his cardboard mats and blankets used to be; I came back the following day to see that the bag was gone, but I have no way of knowing whether or not he found it. I think about Michael whenever I pass through that part of town, and I think about all the choices I made that led to that last encounter. We are sometimes called upon to make decisions, and in those weeks, I decided to be so many things: kind, generous, unwavering, frightened, flawed, and brave. I chose to be true to my character and in the end my decision to give, when others wouldn’t, helped me, too.

The above paragraph 15 exhibits dominant impression and uses adjectives such as “kind,” “generous,” “unwavering,” “frightened,” “flawed,” and “brave” to reinforce main idea.

Analyzing the Writer’s Technique

1. Dominant Impression Describe Nault’s dominant impression. Is it stated or implied?

2. Sensory Language Which examples of sensory language did you find particularly strong and engaging? What makes them effective? Which, if any, are weak, and how can they be improved?

3. Comparisons The annotations point out some of the comparisons Nault uses to explain her topic. Identify several others. Which ones are particularly effective? Do any seem ineffective? If so, why?

4. Patterns In addition to description, what other patterns of development does the writer use? How do these patterns make the description more effective?

Thinking Critically about Description

1. Omissions Nault leaves out the name of the place where she works. What other information is omitted that might have given you a fuller understanding of her encounters with the homeless man?

2. Tone What is Nault’s tone? How does it affect your attitude toward the information that is contained in the essay?

3. Connotation One of the annotations (para. 7) points out a couple of Nault’s word choices with particularly rich connotations. What connotation does the phrase “drag my slippery feet” have in the context of paragraph 4?

4. Metaphor The phrase “crumpled soul” (para. 3) offers a vivid metaphor. What does Nault seem to be comparing? What would it lose if you were to translate the metaphor into less figurative language?

Responding to the Reading

1. Reaction In paragraph 4, Nault wonders why she was nervous when she first noticed the homeless man and ignored him by walking around the block. How do you react when you come face to face with a homeless person? Why do you think you respond as you do?

2. Discussion Nault notes that Michael did not look like the stereotypical homeless person to her. What other groups of people do you stereotype? Have you ever had your stereotype exploded by getting to know a member of the group?

3. Journal Write a journal entry about someone you befriended when others ignored him or her. How did you reach out to the individual, and what were the results?

4. Essay Nault’s personal encounter with Michael tested her character. Write an essay describing a time when you were called upon to make a decision that tested your character.

READING

I’m Not Leaving until I Eat This Thing

John T. Edge

Edge is the director of the Southern Foodways Symposium at the University of Mississippi and the editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. A James Beard Foundation award winner, Edge has written several books, including the Truck Food Cookbook (2012) and The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South (2017). Edge has also written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including the Oxford American, a literary magazine featuring southern writers. Before reading, preview and make connections by thinking about the most unusual food you have ever eaten. While reading, highlight particularly vivid descriptive words and phrases that convey the experience of eating pickled pig lips.

JUST-IN-TIME TIP

Interpreting Details

Edge conveys many of the details about eating pickled pig lips through the people he includes in his essay. Through Lionel, in particular, he is able to present useful information and vivid sensory details. As you read, it is easy to focus on the people, rather than on the details they reveal about the subject of the essay. Try making marginal notes indicating the qualities or characteristics being revealed. For example, in paragraph 6, you could note that Lionel provides the historical background about pig lips.

1It’s just past 4:00 on a Thursday afternoon in June at Jesse’s Place, a country juke 17 miles south of the Mississippi line and three miles west of Amite, Louisiana. The air conditioner hacks and spits forth torrents of Arctic air, but the heat of summer can’t be kept at bay. It seeps around the splintered doorjambs and settles in, transforming the squat particleboard-plastered roadhouse into a sauna. Slowly, the dank barroom fills with grease-smeared mechanics from the truck stop up the road and farmers straight from the fields, the soles of their brogans thick with dirt clods. A few weary souls make their way over from the nearby sawmill. I sit alone at the bar, one empty bottle of Bud in front of me, a second in my hand. I drain the beer, order a third, and stare down at the pink juice spreading outward from a crumpled foil pouch and onto the bar.

2I’m not leaving until I eat this thing, I tell myself.

3Half a mile down the road, behind a fence coiled with razor wire, Lionel Dufour, proprietor of Farm Fresh Food Supplier, is loading up the last truck of the day, wheeling case after case of pickled pork offal out of his cinder-block processing plant and into a semitrailer bound for Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

4His crew packed lips today. Yesterday, it was pickled sausage; the day before that, pig feet. Tomorrow, it’s pickled pig lips again. Lionel has been on the job since 2:45 in the morning, when he came in to light the boilers. Damon Landry, chief cook and maintenance man, came in at 4:30. By 7:30, the production line was at full tilt: six women in white smocks and blue bouffant caps, slicing ragged white fat from the lips, tossing the good parts in glass jars, the bad parts in barrels bound for the rendering plant. Across the aisle, filled jars clatter by on a conveyor belt as a worker tops them off with a Kool-Aid-red slurry of hot sauce, vinegar, salt, and food coloring. Around the corner, the jars are capped, affixed with a label, and stored in pasteboard boxes to await shipping.

5Unlike most offal — euphemistically called “variety meats” — lips belie their provenance. Brains, milky white and globular, look like brains. Feet, the ghosts of their cloven hoofs protruding, look like feet. Testicles look like, well, testicles. But lips are different. Loosed from the snout, trimmed of their fat, and dyed a preternatural pink, they look more like candy than like carrion.

6At Farm Fresh, no swine root in an adjacent feedlot. No viscera-strewn killing floor lurks just out of sight, down a darkened hallway. These pigs died long ago at some Midwestern abattoir. By the time the lips arrive in Amite, they are, in essence, pig Popsicles, 50-pound blocks of offal and ice.

7“Lips are all meat,” Lionel told me earlier in the day. “No gristle, no bone, no nothing. They’re bar food, hot and vinegary, great with a beer. Used to be the lips ended up in sausages, headcheese, those sorts of things. A lot of them still do.”

8Lionel, a 50-year-old father of three with quick, intelligent eyes set deep in a face the color of cordovan, is a veteran of nearly 40 years in the pickled pig lips business. “I started out with my daddy when I wasn’t much more than 10,” Lionel told me, his shy smile framed by a coarse black mustache flecked with whispers of gray. “The meatpacking business he owned had gone broke back when I was 6, and he was peddling out of the back of his car, selling dried shrimp, napkins, straws, tubes of plastic cups, pig feet, pig lips, whatever the bar owners needed. He sold to black bars, white bars, sweet shops, snowball stands, you name it. We made the rounds together after I got out of school, sometimes staying out till two or three in the morning. I remember bringing my toy cars to this one joint and racing them around the floor with the bar owner’s son while my daddy and his father did business.”

9For years after the demise of that first meatpacking company, the Dufour family sold someone else’s product. “We used to buy lips from Dennis Di Salvo’s company down in Belle Chasse,” recalled Lionel. “As far as I can tell, his mother was the one who came up with the idea to pickle and pack lips back in the ’50s, back when she was working for a company called Three Little Pigs over in Houma. But pretty soon, we were selling so many lips that we had to almost beg Di Salvo’s for product. That’s when we started cooking up our own,” he told me, gesturing toward the castiron kettle that hangs from the rafters by the front door of the plant. “My daddy started cooking lips in that very pot.”

10Lionel now cooks lips in 11 retrofitted milk tanks, dull stainless-steel cauldrons shaped like oversized cradles. But little else has changed. Though Lionel’s father has passed away, Farm Fresh remains a family-focused company. His wife, Kathy, keeps the books. His daughter, Dana, a button-cute college student who has won numerous beauty titles, takes to the road in the summer, selling lips to convenience stores and wholesalers. Soon, after he graduates from business school, Lionel’s younger son, Matt, will take over operations at the plant. And his older son, a veterinarian, lent his name to one of Farm Fresh’s top sellers, Jason’s Pickled Pig Lips.

11“We do our best to corner the market on lips,” Lionel told me, his voice tinged with bravado. “Sometimes they’re hard to get from the packing houses. You gotta kill a lot of pigs to get enough lips to keep us going. I’ve got new customers calling every day; it’s all I can do to keep up with demand, but I bust my ass to keep up. I do what I can for my family — and for my customers.

12“When my customers tell me something,” he continued, “just like when my daddy told me something, I listen. If my customers wanted me to dye the lips green, I’d ask, ’What shade?’ As it is, every few years we’ll do some red and some blue for the Fourth of July. This year we did jars full of Mardi Gras lips — half purple, half gold,” Lionel recalled with a chuckle. “I guess we’d had a few beers when we came up with that one.”

13Meanwhile, back at Jesse’s Place, I finish my third Bud, order my fourth. Now, I tell myself, my courage bolstered by booze, I’m ready to eat a lip.

14They may have looked like candy in the plant, but in the barroom they’re carrion once again. I poke and prod the six-inch arc of pink flesh, peering up from my reverie just in time to catch the barkeep’s wife, Audrey, staring straight at me. She fixes me with a look just this side of pity and asks, “You gonna eat that thing or make love to it?”

15Her nephew, Jerry, sidles up to a bar stool on my left. “A lot of people like ’em with chips,” he says with a nod toward the pink juice pooling on the bar in front of me. I offer to buy him a lip, and Audrey fishes one from a jar behind the counter, wraps it in tinfoil, and places the whole affair on a paper towel in front of him.

16I take stock of my own cowardice, and, following Jerry’s lead, reach for a bag of potato chips, tear open the top with my teeth, and toss the quivering hunk of hog flesh into the shiny interior of the bag, slick with grease and dusted with salt. Vinegar vapors tickle my nostrils. I stifle a gag that rolls from the back of my throat, swallow hard, and pray that the urge to vomit passes.

17With a smash of my hand, the potato chips are reduced to a pulp, and I feel the cold lump of the lip beneath my fist. I clasp the bag shut and shake it hard in an effort to ensure chip coverage in all the nooks and crannies of the lip. The technique that Jerry uses — and I mimic — is not unlike that employed by home cooks mixing up a mess of Shake ’n Bake chicken.

18I pull from the bag a coral crescent of meat now crusted with blond bits of potato chips. When I chomp down, the soft flesh dissolves between my teeth. It tastes like a flaccid cracklin’, unmistakably porcine, and not altogether bad. The chips help, providing texture where there was none. Slowly, my brow unfurrows, my stomach ceases its fluttering.

19Sensing my relief, Jerry leans over and peers into my bag. “Kind of look like Frosted Flakes, don’t they?” he says, by way of describing the chips rapidly turning to mush in the pickling juice. I offer the bag to Jerry, order yet another beer, and turn to eye the pig feet floating in a murky jar by the cash register, their blunt tips bobbing up through a pasty white film.

Understanding the Reading

1. Reasons According to the author, why are there no live pigs at Farm Fresh Food Supplier?

2. Details What are the ingredients in the “Kool-Aid-red slurry”?

3. Explanation How are pig lips different from pork brains, feet, and testicles?

4. Thesis What is the author’s thesis? Is it stated or implied?

5. Vocabulary Explain the meaning of each of the following words as it is used in the reading: carrion (para. 5), demise (9), cauldrons (10), bravado (11), and flaccid (18).

Analyzing the Writer’s Technique

1. Dominant Impression Express the essay’s dominant impression in your own words.

2. Comparison Explain the comparison between the contents of the potato chip bag and Frosted Flakes.

3. Conclusion Evaluate the essay’s conclusion. If the essay had ended with paragraph 12 instead of paragraph 19, would the conclusion have been more effective or less so? Why?

4. Audience What audience is the author addressing? What details help you determine the audience?

5. Title The title of Edge’s essay is very vague. Why do you think the author chose this title? If you had to create a clever title for this essay, what would it be?

Thinking Critically about Description

1. Omitted Details What details are omitted from this essay that might have been included?

2. Connotation What is the connotation of the phrase “quivering hunk of hog flesh” (para. 16)?

3. Details How does the way in which the author describes eating a pig lip affect the way that you might view eating one?

4. Sensory Detail Which examples of sensory language did you find particularly powerful and engaging? What makes them effective?

5. Attitude What is the author’s attitude toward those who eat at Jesse’s Place?

Responding to the Reading

1. Reaction How would you react if a waiter accidentally served you the wrong dish — a plate of pig lips — and you unsuspectingly took a big bite?

2. Journal Do you have a favorite food? Write a journal entry that describes the food in vivid detail.

3. Discussion In small groups, discuss the nastiest, most disgusting foods that you have ever eaten and your reaction.

4. Essay Lionel Dufour’s daughter spends her summers selling pig lips to convenience stores and wholesalers. Suppose you were asked to spend next summer selling a food product that many people might find distasteful or repulsive. Write an essay in which you describe the three most important selling features of this food. Be sure to use words that appeal to the senses.

Working Together

Collaboration Suppose you were to open a restaurant that specialized in dishes featuring beef tongue, chitlins (hog intestines), brains, chicken feet, or mountain oysters (pork testicles). Working with a partner, create a name for the restaurant and a thirty-second radio advertisement for its grand opening.

READING: DESCRIPTION COMBINED WITH OTHER PATTERNS

Underground Lair: Inside a Chicken Processing Plant

Gabriel Thompson

This selection is from the book Working in the Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs (Most) Americans Won’t Do (2010). The book (and this excerpt from it) describes Thompson’s experiences working undercover at jobs staffed mostly by undocumented immigrants. Thompson has also published several other books — There’s No José Here (2006), Calling All Radicals (2007), America’s Social Arsonist (2016), and Chasing the Harvest (2017) — as well as numerous articles in publications including New York magazine, The Nation, and The New York Times. Before reading, preview and make connections by thinking about your experiences, or those of a friend or family member, working a low-paying job. While reading, identify the dominant impressions Thompson creates and the strategies he uses to reinforce it.

JUST-IN-TIME TIP

Focusing on Sensory Details

Thompson conveys information about his job and surroundings by using many of the characteristics of descriptive essays. Use the following chart to analyze and evaluate Thompson’s use of sensory details. Highlight the descriptive nouns, noun phrases, and adjectives as well as the active verbs and adverbs that Thompson uses to convey the experience of working in a chicken processing plant. After reading, analyze his use of these characteristics to create a dominant impression.

Give several examples for each type of characteristic used, including the paragraph numbers for reference. The first one has been done for you.

1Superhero comics aren’t complete without an evil genius. Often he seeks to construct the ultimate weapon to hold the world hostage; if he’s really deranged he simply wants to use it to end human civilization. Since the construction of the weapon must be clandestine, work goes on belowground or behind hidden doors. Walk through the door and an immense world of nameless and undoubtedly evil scientists are at work, tinkering with mysterious equipment while wearing smocks and continuously checking devices.

2That’s the image that immediately comes to mind when I push through the double doors that separate the break room from the plant floor. This isn’t a workplace: This is an underground lair. In the first room, workers scurry around in plastic blue smocks akin to a surgeon’s, carrying buckets of chicken pieces. Others lean over a long conveyor belt that moves a continuous stream of meat, their feet planted as they arrange the pieces in a line. We weave our way around large metal machinery and step through a frothy puddle of foam that spews from a thick hose on the cement floor. The smell is a mixture of strong industrial cleaner and fresh meat. To my left is a chest-high cylinder filled to the brim with chicken bits; while it captures my attention, I step on what feels like a sponge and lift my foot to find a piece of pink meat, now flattened. Up ahead, I can see from the puffs of condensation coming from his mouth that Lonnie is saying something to our group — the temperature is frigid, probably in the low forties — but I can’t hear anything. I remove my earplugs and am greeted by the roar of machinery. It’s not a piercing noise, more of a loud, all-encompassing rumble: Think of the sound you hear when putting your ear to a seashell and multiply by a hundred. I put my earplugs back in.

3We walk beneath a doorway and the full scale of the processing floor is revealed. I see no walls in front of me, just open space filled with workers standing in various areas without moving their feet. Hundreds of dead and featherless chickens are hanging upside down from stainless steel hooks, moving rapidly across my field of vision. I hear a beeping sound and step aside from a man driving a scooter-like contraption, which is carrying a container of steaming chicken meat (the contraption turns out to be a pallet truck, and the steam is actually from dry ice). As we cross the plant floor we pass beneath a line of chickens, whirling along more steel hooks; liquid falls from their carcasses and lands with chilly plops on my scalp. Hopefully water. In front of us dozens of workers are slicing up chickens — the debone department — but we proceed further, until we’re standing aside a blond-haired woman in her forties who, like Lonnie, is wearing a hard hat.

4“This is your supervisor, Barbara,” Lonnie tells us, “but she won’t be needing you tonight.” He tells Ben and Diane to follow him and motions me to stay put. When he returns he leads me through another doorway. “You’re going to work in a different department today, but check in with DSI tomorrow,” he says. Lonnie deposits me at the end of a line where boxes are being stacked.

5The nearest person is a skinny white man with the hood of his Alabama football sweatshirt pulled tight over his head. I stay quiet, feeling slightly intimidated by my new coworker, who has deep lines cutting across his gaunt face and is missing a few front teeth. But when he turns to me he flashes a friendly smile. “How long you been here?” he asks.

6“About five minutes.”

7He lets loose a squeaking chuckle, his shoulders bouncing up and down. “I’ve only been here two weeks.” Kyle, it turns out, is my neighbor. He lives in a trailer with his wife and two kids about half a mile from where I’m staying. “Been right at that trailer for eighteen years, on land that was my granddaddy’s. I worked in the plant four years, then quit. Now I’m back … don’t know exactly why.”*

8Kyle normally works in DSI, but he says that today they’re short people in the IQF department, another mysterious trio of initials. In IQF, bags of chicken wings are stuffed into boxes, taped, and shoved down on rollers to us. Our task is to stack the forty-pound boxes onto pallets. Once a pallet is stacked with forty-nine boxes — seven boxes to a row, seven rows high — a pallet driver whisks it away and we start loading up another. This is almost identical to the stacking of lettuce boxes completed by loaders on the machine, except that the pace here is much slower. I help Kyle do this for twenty minutes, until the machine at the front of the line breaks. A black woman with short blond hair, who has been taping the boxes shut, lets out a good-natured curse. It takes several minutes for a group of men to fix the machine; several minutes later it breaks down again. Over the coming month, I’ll occasionally be asked to help out in IQF, and during almost every shift the machine breaks down — hourly. For this reason alone, it’s considered a good place to work (as one of the “good” jobs, it also doesn’t have a single immigrant working in the department).

9With nothing to do, Kyle and I take a seat on the rollers. “You ever work in debone?” I ask him.

10“Way back when I started, they tried to get me on there. Stayed a month. They told me I couldn’t work fast enough so they shifted me out. I made sure I wasn’t working fast enough too. Run you like slaves over there. I already knew how they did, though, ’cause my old lady was on the debone line for years.” Now, he tells me, she’s working at Wal-Mart.

11The machine is finally fixed and we return to stacking boxes. After thirty minutes the black woman who was cursing the contraption asks me to come up and tape boxes. I’m happy for the change in scenery, but this task soon becomes tedious. My job is to shake the box so that the bags lie flat, then pull the two top flaps together and shove it through a machine that tapes it shut. Cutting lettuce confirmed in my mind that much of what we call “low-skilled labor” is in fact quite difficult. But at the chicken plant, I’m already learning, many of the jobs are designed so that a person off the street, with minimal instruction, can do them correctly the very first time. I’m sure this is considered a “breakthrough” by the managerial class, but all it does is leave me bored within fifteen minutes.

12Sometime after 2:00 a.m., I’m told to take a break. I hang up my gloves and white smock on a hook and walk away from IQF. A minute later I’ve pushed through one swinging door and walked beneath two other doorways, and I’m watching an endless line of carved-up carcasses fall into a large container. I have no idea where I am. To my left, dozens of immigrant men and women are cutting up chickens with knives and scissors. I approach one woman who can’t be much taller than four feet, and ask her in Spanish if she can tell me how to get to the break room. She looks at me and shakes her head.

13“She doesn’t speak Spanish,” another woman says, in Spanish. “You go straight down that row and make a left.” I hear the two speak in what sounds like an Indian dialect, thank them both, and follow her directions.

14The break room is mostly empty, but I notice Ben sitting alone in a corner booth. We’re both struck by how disorganized everything seems to be. Like me, Ben has been hired for one department (debone), transferred to another (DSI), and then relocated once more, with unclear instructions along they way. He doesn’t even know the name of the department that he’s in. “Whatever it is, they have me standing and watching chickens go by.”

15“That’s it?” I ask. “Are you supposed to do anything?”

16“Uh, I think like maybe they said to look for mold.”

17“Mold? The chickens have mold?”

18“Not yet anyway. I haven’t seen any. I’m looking for green stuff.”

19“And if they have mold, what do you do?”

20“I dunno.” Ben pushes his sliding glasses up, beginning to look concerned. “I hope that’s what I heard. I’m pretty sure somebody said something about mold.” He looks at his watch and stands up. “I gotto go.”

21By now there are perhaps fifty people sitting in nearby booths, with about an equal number of whites, blacks, and Latinos, who are mostly gathered in self-segregated groups. One wall is plastered with what are meant to be inspiring corporate messages in Spanish and English, illustrated with geometric shapes and arrows. The “Cornerstones of Continuous Improvement” are written at each point of a large triangle: “Quality, Process Improvement, Teamwork.” Next to this diagram is a more detailed “14 Points of Continuous Improvement,” which include quizzical tips like “Drive Out Fear.” Workers pass these grand pronouncements without pause, but they take note of a yellow flyer taped to the wall that reads “Taco Soup Wednesday Night.”

22I’m joined a few minutes later by a white man in a flannel coat who tells me that he’s been on the debone line for five months. He snorts when I tell him that I’m impressed he’s lasting so long.

23“It’s work release,” he says. “The only reason I’m here is ’cause they locked my ass up.” I don’t ask what landed him in prison, but he does reveal that after the death of his father, he went on a number of epic alcohol binges. “Can’t do that anymore ’cause I’m locked up and got myself a bleeding ulcer. But I’ll tell you one thing,” he says before I depart, “once I’m free you ain’t never gonna see me step foot inside a chicken plant again.”

24I use the bathroom and manage to find my way back to Kyle and the boxes. He is seated on the rollers, hood pulled even lower on his head to ward off the cold, while a mechanic tries to get the machine back up and working.

25For reasons that aren’t explained, IQF is released earlier than other departments. As I walk toward the break room at 7:40 a.m., I meet a stream of men and women heading in the other direction, getting ready to begin the day shift. I swipe my ID card to sign out, am hit by the bright sunshine of another scorching day, hop on my bike, and pedal home. Kyle has agreed to pick me up tonight, so I don’t have to worry about getting run over by a chicken truck. Back in my trailer I eat a quick breakfast of cereal and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, type up my notes, and lay down. The sun is streaming through the window, my trailer shakes each time a truck loaded with live chickens passes, and my neighbor’s roosters are engaged with a dog in some sort of noise competition. I can’t be bothered; I fall asleep instantly.

✵ * A note here on accents. Kyle, like many native Alabamans at the plant, speaks in a very heavy and melodic drawl. It was beautiful to hear, but that beauty soon becomes distracting when I attempt to render it accurately on the page. For example, when he told me he had been at the trailer for eighteen years, it sounded to my ears like: “Been rahht at tha-yat trawla’ for eightee-yin years.” For the sake of readability, I will not try to capture every nuance of the local dialect. One final point to illustrate the strength of the country accent: It took me a week of hanging out with Kyle before I finally realized that his name wasn’t, in fact, Kyle. It was Gil. Later, when I listened repeatedly to a message he left on my cell phone, I realized that it wasn’t Gil, but another name entirely. Here, he will remain Kyle. [Thompson’s note.]

Understanding the Reading

1. Reasons Why does Thompson mention and describe the two posters in paragraph 21? What is the significance of the poster describing the food?

2. Details In paragraph 8, Thompson mentions stacking lettuce boxes. How would he know about this job?

3. Reasons Why is the IQF a good place to work?

4. Details What erroneous assumption does the author make about the woman of whom he asks directions to the break room (para. 12)? Why did he assume this about her?

5. Vocabulary Explain the meaning of each of the following words or phrases as it is used in the reading: deranged (para. 1), clandestine (1), lair (2), gaunt (5), and pronouncement (21). Refer to a dictionary as needed.

Analyzing the Writer’s Technique

1. Dominant Impression What dominant impression does Thompson convey in this essay? Is it stated or implied? Explain your answers.

2. Title What is the significance of the essay’s title?

3. Descriptive Language How does Thompson’s descriptive language allow you to understand and picture the processing floor (para. 3)? What words and phrases are most descriptive in this section?

4. Patterns What patterns other than description does Thompson use in this essay? What purposes do they serve?

Thinking Critically about Description

1. Connotation What connotation does the word lair suggest (para. 2)?

2. Detail Why does the author make a point to say that Kyle’s wife left the plant and went to work for Walmart?

3. Connotation Why does the author put the word breakthrough (para. 11) in quotations?

4. Objective/Subjective Is the essay objective, subjective, or a mixture of both? Explain your answer.

5. Tone Describe Thompson’s tone in this essay. What information does his tone convey that is not directly stated?

Responding to the Reading

1. Reaction The author attempts to blend in with the other workers at the plant. Do you think that he is successful in doing so? Why or why not? Give examples from his behavior or his words that support your answer.

2. Discussion What do you think Thompson learned as a result of his undercover experience in the chicken processing plant?

3. Journal Thompson writes that much of what we call “low-skilled labor” is actually very difficult. Discuss some low-skilled jobs that you know about and explain what makes them so difficult.

4. Essay Write an essay in which you describe the worst job you or someone you know has ever had. In addition to describing the job, explain why the job was so bad.

Working Together

1. The poster in the break room of the chicken plant was entitled “14 Points of Continuous Improvement.” Working with a small group of your peers, list fourteen changes that could be implemented in that plant in order to create a better work environment.

2. Many businesses have a catchy advertising slogan that draws the public’s attention to their company. Working with a small group of your peers, brainstorm slogans that you hear on TV or radio. Then assume that you are Gabriel Thompson, and you want to create a slogan for the chicken plant that will “tell it like it is.” Make sure your slogan is simple, catchy, and honest. Be prepared to share your slogan with the class and explain its significance.

Apply Your Skills: Additional Essay Assignments

Using what you learned about description in this chapter, write a descriptive essay on one of the topics listed below. Depending on the topic you choose, you may need to conduct research.

For more about locating and documenting sources, see Part 5.

To Express Your Ideas

1. Suppose a famous person, living or dead, visited your house for dinner. Write an essay describing the person and the evening and expressing your feelings about the occasion.

2. In “Dreamland, Portsmouth, Ohio,” the author describes a place and what it meant to the townspeople of Portsmouth. Write an essay for your classmates describing a place that you visited as a child that still evokes fond memories.

To Inform Your Reader

3. Write a report for your local newspaper on a local sporting event you observed or participated in.

4. Write an essay describing one aspect of your life or that of your community that changed as a result of the Covid-19 virus.

To Persuade Your Reader

5. Write a letter to persuade your parents to lend you money. The loan may be to purchase a used car or to rent a more expensive apartment, for example. Include a description of your current car or apartment.

6. “Sometimes, We Give” describes a homeless man and one woman’s response to him. Write a persuasive essay taking a position on the responsibility Americans (or their government) have toward the homeless.

Cases Using Description

7. Imagine that you are a product buyer for a cosmetics distributor, a food company, or a furniture dealership. Write a descriptive review of a product recommending to the board of directors whether to distribute it. Use something that you are familiar with or come up with your own product (such as a new cosmetic, an advice book on nutrition, or an electronic gadget for the home). Describe the product in a way that will help convince the company to accept your recommendation.

8. Write a brief description of your ideal internship. Then write an essay to accompany your application for your ideal summer internship. The sponsoring agency requires every applicant to submit an essay that describes the knowledge and experience the applicant can bring to the internship and the ways that the position would benefit the applicant personally and professionally.

SYNTHESIZING IDEAS

WORKING LOW-PAYING JOBS

Both “Underground Lair: Inside a Chicken Processing Plant” and “I’m Not Leaving until I Eat This Thing” describe food-processing plants. Thompson works in a chicken processing plant, and Edge reports on a plant producing pickled meat products.

Analyzing the Readings

1. Compare how Thompson and Edge feel about the processing plants. How does each author reveal his or her attitudes? How are they the same, and how do they differ?

2. As a writer who is researching jobs that most Americans won’t do, Thompson works “undercover,” but Edge merely visits the plant. How do you think these differences affect the essays and the authors’ reported experiences?

Essay Idea

Write an essay describing a workplace you know well, and describe it to create a dominant impression. Then explain whether your experiences were more similar to those of Thompson or Edge — or why they did not resemble those of either.