The first narrative that I read was the
story of Heath Hardiman’s “Built for Speed”. In his story, Heath mainly talks
about how running has changed himself throughout his life. He starts off his
story with a strong hook rather than a simple fact or statement: “While running, do you ever just take the time to admire the
wind in your hair or that awkward bead of sweat that just trickled down your
back? Is this what you consider running or is it something more? For me running
is more than just a sport, it is a lifestyle.” Through this opening sentence,
Heath implies his theme of the story, and interests readers to follow along his
story. Then he writes some descriptive scenes that shows how he started to get
interested in running, how he overcame his sickness through running, and what
he have learned from running etc. Heath not only uses very descriptive words and
sentences to let the audience not get lost in his story, but also uses ethos
and pathos in his writing. Heath appeals to ethos when he put some details of
his scene, such as the description of the track coach with Philadelphia accent
or the name of the school that he went. Heath appeals to pathos, when he talks
about his grandfather who had loved him so much. However, throughout the whole
story, Heath is pretty successful at drawing readers into his story with
intriguing opening sentence and expressing his theme through the vivid scenes
in his life.
The second narrative that I
read was the story of Tina Cui’s “Telephone”. In case of Tina’s narrative, she
starts her story with the situation of her talking on the telephone with her
mom. Using good imageries, Tina puts a lot of details to make her story look
more vivid and picturesque: “Now, nervously scratching off the red paint on
this ancient school payphone…” In her essay, Tina writes about her relationship
with her mom and her connected by the telephone or old red payphone. Reading
Tina’s essay, I felt great empathy toward the situation of phone call with mom.
As a student who study abroad and leave the parents behind, I enormously
reflected Tina’s experience to mine. While the tone or the voice of the author
is quite indifferent toward her mother in the first half of the story; however,
as Tina notices how her mom has sacrificed her lives when she was young to send
Tina to U.S. and how lonely her mom was in China alone, Tina’s tone and voice
becomes lighter and loving than before. Of course, Tina uses the 3 appeals to
make her writings to be seemed more elaborate and emotional. Among the 3
appeals, Tina uses pathos a lot such as when she had felt homesick, or when she
described her mother’s feelings left alone. Tina develops her theme as she
writes up the story: to “love” her mother in a way that her mother could like. Overall,
Tina’s essay is so rich and deep when illustrating the issues with her mom.
Until now, it is the most reflective essay to me. It has greatly influenced my
thoughts about the relationships with my families.
The third narrative that I
read was Matt Donaldson’s “Sports”. In his essay, Matt primarily writes about
the lessons that he learned from various sports that he had played throughout
his life. As like the other group members, Matt also has an absorbing and
compelling hook at the introductory paragraph. In the main body paragraphs, Matt
introduces many different kinds of sports he played and many life-long lessons
he learned from those sports. Matt had played soccer, swimming, baseball, and
golf. And through these sports, Matt had learned how important it is to work
with others cooperatively, to be competitive in his area, to manage time
wisely, and to be patient, etc. When Matt tries to explain the feeling or the
situation directly to the audience, he uses very good comparisons. For instance,
In his narrative, Matt says, “I did not swim because I thought it was fun but
more for the ribbons we got if we won, it’s like going to McDonald’s, kids
don’t actually like the food but they do want the toy that comes with it.” Matt
also uses vivid and alive comparison when he describes himself at the swimming
training club where going to the restroom was never allowed. He says, “Have you
ever been on a long car ride and you are stuck in traffic but you have to go to
the bathroom, this is how it was but I could not get out.” With these usages of
comparisons and analogies, Matt draws the attentions of the audience and makes
his voice and tone more like of humorous tone. In general, Matt’s narrative is
well written; however I agree to Heath’s comment on the last paragraph. I think
it would be better if the transition from the former paragraph and the last
paragraph was smoother.
The final personal narrative
that I read was Brandy Bateman’s “Your Senior Class President.” In her essay,
Bateman focuses on the leadership that she learned through her experience of
being a senior class president in high school. She begins her essay with the
scene of senior class president announcement. Before submitting the class
president application form to the office, she started to think if she could
handle all the jobs, charges, and responsibilities that she had to have in
order to be a class president. After being elected, Bateman lists few things
that she has to plan as a class president and shows the audience few scenes or
happenings when preparing for these events: t-shirt designing contest, spirit
week event, senior trip, fundraising, prom, and the graduation speech. While
she explains this fun but overwhelming events, she uses some interjections within
her description such as: “PHEW! A sigh of relief.” and “Oh lord, I knew that
would be a good time, and probably lead to more people coming to watch the
show, so why not?”
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