The Devil Is in the Details
Writing an essay is like constructing a building. They are similar from their overall strong and beautiful structures to their small units like bricks to the building and words to the essay. Grammar glues all the words together in nice order to make sentences, which are put in the structure to make a good essay. Like many other students who are not native speakers, I do not have a strong English foundation, but I am still able to make a great structure for my essays. However, much like people do not feel comfortable living in houses that look good on the outside but have holes in the walls, ugly light fixtures, and other terrible details on the inside, people do not like to read essays that have strong
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That means basically almost every word I speak or write involves tenses. For Americans, tense to their language is like breathing to our body. Something that is crucially important but we do not really pay attention to it since we are doing it way too often. By contrast, as a Chinese, whose language has nothing to do with tenses, I have to say I have struggled with tenses a lot. What has made me struggle the most in this essay is the special uses of the present tense. Rules for Writers explains that we should “Use the present tense when expressing general truths, when writing about literature, and when quoting, summarizing, or paraphrasing an author 's views.” (245). It sounds pretty easy, but I did get confused when I was writing the essay. In the essay, I spoke in general about the relationship between a father and a son. Since I wanted to write about the boy in his different ages, I felt so weird to use the present tense. At that point, it just did not make sense to me if I used the present tense to describe both his childhood and adulthood. So, here is a sentence I wrote, “But soon the boy went into his adolescence, and slowly realized that there are many things his dad did not know, and actually he was kind of outdated.” Now let us take a closer look to what Rules for Writers says about tenses. Tenses is only involved in the relation between when I am writing an event and when that event take place, which means it does not
The Importance of Writing Badly was written by Bruce Ballenger. His intended audience are students who are victims of strict English teachers as well as the strict English teachers, themselves. In his essay, Ballenger portrays that students are more focused on being grammatically correct than the message in their essays. This is because of teachers who grade strictly on grammar errors and punctuation. Ballenger says, “A colleague of mine, an Ivy League graduate, is among the self-appointed grammar police, complaining often about the dumb mistakes his students make in their papers. I don’t remember him ever talking about what his students are trying to say in those papers.” (Page 74). Bruce Ballenger has effectively argued and persuaded his intended audience with his use of ethos, pathos, and logos.
English class has never been my strong suite. I always had to work twice as hard in English then I did in any other class. Writing paper always had me stressed and overwhelmed, I felt discouraged in my work. l never seemed to be able to get to the level I wanted to. I would try my hardest and paid attention in class, but when it came to writing the paper none of that seemed to help. I think that my experience in English Composition 1 has helped gain and grow in some areas, but I don’t think that it highlights a well-written college essay. Some elements that I worked to improving was introduction paragraphs, tone, style, and thesis statements.
In Eric Larson’s work The Devil in the White City, he explores the historical occurrences of Chicago around 1893. More specifically it revolves around the World’s Fair meant to commemorate Columbus’ expedition in which he discovered the Americas. Larson researched the recorded information from letters sent and other works and tried to fill in the gaps of what may have happened. The two main plot points the book follows are that of Daniel Burnham, an architect working to make the fair happen, and H. H. Holmes, a serial killer who is using the fair to his advantage. The book also explores the Black City of Chicago and what holding the world’s fair would bring to Chicago given the context of the economic state of nineteenth century America. The following is an attempt to break down some of these key issues found in the pages of Larson’s work.
Carl Deuker was born in San Franscisco on August 26, 1950. He was raised in Redwood City, California. He is the son of Jack Deuker and Marie Milligan Deuker. He attended the University of California, Berkeley majoring in English. He describes himself as a classic second-stringer who wasn’t very athletic. Carl is currently teaching junior high English and physical science in Northshore School District outside of Seattle. He is also, the author of Heart of a Champion, Night Hoops, Painting the Black, High Heat, Runner, and Swagger. On the Devil’s Court was a YA book of the year in South Carolina.
Erik Larson has organized The Devil in the White City chronologically, alternating between the construction of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and the evolution of a serial killer. In doing so, Larson is able to explore the details of the fair in-depth, while keeping the interest of the reader. By using this organizational structure, Larson is also able to tell the gruesome tale of a serial killer without scaring away his audience. Overall, the pairing of these two stories helps to balance out the novel.
The Devil and Daniel Webster Movie In the movie and the short story, "The Devil and Daniel Webster", written by Stephen Vincent Benet, there is illustrated the battle between the forces of good and evil. Although the story allows the reader to mentally picture the scenes and the movie does the depicting for the viewer, there are several similarities in each script. Some of these similarities are the way the characters are depicted and the final scene. There are several incongruous scenes between the short story and the way the movie unfolds. The differences are the amount of time that is spent on the character development, also there are some scenes added into the movie such as the harvest dance and the reminder of the
Time Setting: The Devil's Shadow by Clifford Lindsey Alderman occurred in the late seventeenth century from 1692-1693. This is the time period that the Salem Witch Trials occurred. The principle plot of the story rested on the occasions paving the way to the Salem Witch Trials, the trials themselves, and the consequence of the trials. Point by point records of witch executions, the real trials, and the occasions that created the trials were examined in the story.
While attending public schools english teachers did not begin teaching students the proper method to create a essay until the sixth grade. I never understood writing, because the stress of the state test, the teachers only taught what will earn students a successful score. In lectures, we learned to create and revise an essay. The teacher trusted student to be accurate in their corrections. By analyzing Richard Straub’s document, I have gained knowledge on where to put place my comments, how to criticize an essay and goals a responder should encounter.
The story I had read was the Devil and Daniel Webster it was written by Stephen Vincent Ben’et. This story is a lot alike most of his other stories discussing what it means to be an American. Also this story is one of his most famous stories it combines folk-lore and history also it has been made into a play and so to be coming out a movie.
In the Stephen King novel “The Man in the Black Suit”; Nathaniel Hawthorne's story “Young Goodman Brown” the devil appears. The depiction of the Devil’s characterization in both short stories shatter Brown’s life; although Gary manages to not let the Devil control his entire life. The Devil’s tries and inflict evil on innocence in both short stories has a big effect on Young Goodman Brown and Gary.
People have different ideas of a good essay. Essays that are interesting to the readers. For an essay to be considered a good essay, it has to be entertaining, the readers should be able to picture an image in their mind. For many others, they may have different ideas about what a good writer is. For example, I don’t like it when writers give out too much information. They will describe things and go on and on about it. Others might like this, but I don’t like it when the writers do this. Most writers have one of the qualities that I think makes a good writer. They don’t have to have all three qualities for me to think that it’s a good essay.
In "The Demon Lover," by Elizabeth Bowen, Kathleen Drover returns to London from her house in the country in order to gather some things that she and her husband had abandoned during the bombings of the war. It is a humid, rainy day in late August and her once familiar street is now mostly deserted. The caretaker of her house is supposed to be out of town for a week and her arrival is assumed unknown. Mrs. Drover enters the old musty house and discovers a letter addressed to herself and it is marked with the present date. Curious to know if the caretaker is back in town and a little annoyed by the letter seeming to have no urgency in being mailed to her, she proceeds upstairs to her old bedroom to read it. In utter shock and complete
Guns. Pain. Blood. Tears. Regret. These words represent a mass genocide. These words represent the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a mass genocide of the European Jewish people caused by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The destruction of the Jews began in Germany and eventually hatred towards Jews was spread all over the world. Over 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust and constantly people were injured. The central idea of the Holocaust was that it had a negative impact on most people who were involved. The theme of the Holocaust is all people should be treated fairly and humanely. During the Holocaust, Jews were treated unfairly and the genocide had a negative impact on the people involved.
John Milton’s Paradise Lost is an epic poem that describes the fall of Satan and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Satan is the protagonist of Paradise Lost and has several characteristics in which readers may identify with him. Throughout the poem, Satan is not only a tragic hero but also the key character that drives the plot and portrays many flawed human qualities. As an angel fallen from the high esteem of God and a possessor of hubris that leads to his downfall, he represents a tragic hero but also a character in which readers may identify with.
Writing essays have never been easy for me. Describing my thoughts and feelings just don't seem to turn into the right words I want to say. Coming up with a theme and an argument is hard to convey, making the reader see what I'm truly trying to say. The hardest parts of writing essays for me is coming up with the right things to say that correlate to my argument and doing so under a short period of time.