In the personal essay from Hogg and Black, both demonstrate the features of form Ballanger discusses. They also stray away from these features as well. Right off the bat for both essays you can see that they are written in the first person. The ”I” gives that away, and that is the first feature of form from Ballanger, but it makes sense, because without the first person, you do not get the personal effect.
The second feature of form is where the two differ a little. This feature is the humbleness of the topic. Black does demonstrate this form, seeing as how the topic boils down to the title itself, “The Joy of Mud”, and mud is quite the humble topic. On the other hand you have Hogg who gets imbedded in a forbidden or distant love, and comes to a greater realization from it. The essay may be about the Monkees, Davy specifically, but it is more about love, between the author, and the unknowing Davy. Love is not the humblest of topics.
After this both authors get back to the basics and follow Ballanger’s ideas almost exactly. For both of the essays the thesis is nowhere to be found at the beginning of the essay. In fact I would argue that the thesis from Hogg does not show up until the last or second to last sentence. “I accept, finally, that this person I know so well I don’t really know at all…” (Hogg 10) It is here where we get the main idea, that, we don’t really know people as well as we think we do. This thesis is not until the second to last sentence. For Black it is the same way. Both essays just skip the thesis and jump straight into narratives about the past.
According to Ballanger on page 94, “…the writer often reports what has happened to her as means to account for what happens.” This is Ballanger’s fifth feature and both essays display this very well. An example of this is almost the entire Hogg essay. She writes the whole time about her experiences seeing Davy, but when the time comes, she realizes that all the events she experienced, so did everyone else, and Davy, had to repeat the process over and over. That is why she is able to understand at the end why he smiles for everyone, but is not the person she thinks she knows. Black is the same way. What happens to Black is she does many things, from Working at a Mexican restaurant, to climbing the O’ahu mountains, to following old Hawaiian traditions. She uses these accounts of her past, to get to where she wanted to be, in the mud. Along the lines of this same feature Ballanger, discusses how the authors of the personal essay relies on memory and observation most of all. This is fairly obvious in both, as they are telling stories of their past, and those are stories only they could know, or have in their memory. Hogg, delves deeper into this idea on page 4, “As, my infatuation grew, I culled any information i could find about the Monkees.” This is pretty much Hogg telling us she used her observational skills to get the point across.
The last feature from Ballager is probably the most frequent, aside from the first person of course. That feature of form is, the author shifts back and forth between then and now. You can see how this could be frequent as both authors are telling stories from the past, however; they do differ a little. Hogg Starts from the way back, progresses to the past, then close to the present, then recent events, or even the present. Aside from a few exceptions, Hogg mainly stays on this path, and does not really “jump” from time slot to time slot. Black is a little different. Black does jump around a little more than Hogg. “I spent two years waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant…” (Black 4) With spent being the key word, then on the very next page from Black, “As the afternoon cools down…” You can tell she has gone back to the present time. Black does this quite frequently. Each essay has a controlling idea, or “so what” you could say. Hogg’s idea is, like before, we don’t really know people as well as we think we do, as her whole essay is her discovering that Davy is not the man of her dreams. Black’s so what, is that we should get back to our roots, in this case, getting back into the mud. I felt both essays got their point across very well and followed Ballanger’s ideas very closely.
Citations
Hogg, Charlotte. “I’m a Believer.” Clackmas Literary Review 4.1 (Spring 2000): 83-89
Ballanger, Bruce. The Curious Reader: Exploring Personal and Academic Inquiry, Second Edition.
Black, Catherine. “The Joy of Mud.”
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2 comments:
I disagree in that the subject of the first story is humble. It is not about love it is about childhood idolization. Even at 15 she says; “I didn’t fantasize about kissing him or becoming his girlfriend” she goes on to say that she idolized him because “he wasn’t threatening in anyway”. Sure maybe Hogg’s actions do “catapult her beyond ordinary” but Ballenger still places that in the realm of Personal Essays. Also while I agree with your selection as what the thesis could be, I took a different meaning out of it. I see it as more along the lines of at some point one much relinquish their childhood inhibitions.
I think its interesting how you consider the "mud" in Black's essay to be a metaphor to her roots, and that this comparison challenges readers to go back to where they came from. Personally, I interpreted it differently. I believed the message Black was trying to tell her readers was to not let life fly by, but to stop and appreciate it in every moment wherever you may be. I don't think either of us are right or wrong, though. We both bring unique personal experiences to our interpretations and its cool that we can look at the same essay and get something totally different out of it.
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