During our lives we all have these moments of silence. This silence is triggering our thoughts to hear something else. At any moment the silence will hit you like a wave crashing down. It's the true meaning of the silence that we find the need, we want to know the silence. Through the memoir, Fathers, Sons, and Brothers, by Bret Lott, Lott has many experiences from childhood to adulthood with the secret silence. The silence gives another meaning to Bret Lott's life in his essays.
[adding example SOUND]
Reading the chapter Hugo, Bret Lott explains this silence when taping the windows up and putting x's on the wood. "The wind was up, shifting through the pine boughs, whispering and we only listened, no words between us," (121). It also happens to Bret when the family is living with Deno and Kathy, "...the wind out here-there'd been no wind all day long, simply an overcast sky-charged through the boughs, bent the pines side to side in big, slow arcs, the air through needles whistling furiously, and I wondered why no one else was up, no one else out here, startled from sleep by this sound. There were no clouds, only that moon, and these trees, and that wind," (124). Reading this section made me think of all the times each human being has those silences during hectic, or crazy times and we all ask ourselves why can I hear something else in the silence? There is a moment when we are by ourselves and that silence is irritating our minds. It's wrapped around our little finger, that sound in the silence we just can't seem to untie that thought. The silence is maybe a comfort to us to know everything is going to be alright, or help us to understand our thoughts.
[adding example from the essay WADMALOW]
Lott gives the reader the silences that fill his life, to help him remember his past. The silence is the magic mirror that brings the past alive in his thoughts. We all have some form of a magic mirror to help us remember our past. Lott is maybe telling his readers that we need some silence in our lives to remember the past, but also to help deal with the present. The silences are the peace that come with life that help us through good and difficult times.
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You have a really great thesis. Although it is unclear where specifically it is, I know exactly what your going for! Just remember to clearly state it. Also, don't forget to separate between paragraphs. You should simply discuss the impact of silence and introduce your thesis in the first paragraph, and then the rest should include your supporting quotes and why they connect to your thesis. You introduce really evident quotes, but don't really explain why they're evident. Don't forget to stay on topic. Stick to the text. Although quotes may remind you of something, for the purpose of this post make sure to just include what they say about your thesis. Through your analysis, you will give readers something they can relate to. I'm sure you will be able to find many more quotes that deal with the silence in Lott's lives, so I think this is a really great start and one that should be easy to extend!
ReplyDeleteBrendan here:
ReplyDelete1. You don't really have a thesis but I think you could form one out of this post. It seems that the theme of the post is silence or contrast of sounds and how it permeates his writing. Work a thesis from that, and I'm sure you could find more examples including the ones that you already have.
1b. You don't mention the title of the book until the second paragraph so you should probably move that up near the beginning along with the author's name.
2. Obviously you don't have a clear thesis, but you do have the reasoning for your would-be thesis. As for the introduction of your quotes, I think that they could be introduced better. Instead of ending your sentences with periods and then starting a new one with the quote, use colons instead. A couple of other essays where you could get some examples from would be probably "Sound" and "Wadmalow". Both deal with sounds and silence. You do have proper analysis for each quote but I think once you have a solid thesis you can easily connect the analysis to it.
3. Your summation seems to be overall sufficient.
4. Since there isn't really a solid thesis, I'll offer a counter-argument to my proposed thesis. One would be that Lott is also a very visual writer, describing things in great detail. You could then say that there are several sounds that accompany each of those visual memories.
5. As for grammatical errors, the first one I see is in the 4th sentence, the word "Its" should be "It's" if you mean the contraction "It is". In your second quote you meant "an" not "and". The end of the sentence after that second quote should probably be in quotations starting with "Why can I hear...". You last sentence I think has some tense agreement issues but I could be wrong.
6. Again, since you don't really have a thesis, it is hard to evaluate your proof versus opinion.
7. And the same goes for this question.