Personal Essay Writing Assignment in response to The Things They Carried

Personal Essay Writing Assignment
in response to The Things They Carried

drawing by Christian Horlick

The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy. The writer seems to be speaking directly into your ear, confiding everything from gossip to wisdom. Through sharing thoughts, memories, desires, complaints, and whimsies, the essayist sets up a relationship with the reader, a dialogue – a friendship, if you will – based on identification, understanding, testiness, and companionship. The personal essayist must above all be a reliable narrator; we must trust his or her core of sincerity. We must also feel secure that the essayist has done a fair amount of introspective homework already, is grounded in reality, and is trying to give us the maximum understanding and intelligence of which he or she is capable. . . . How the world comes at another person, the irritations, jubilations, aches and pains, humorous flashes – these are the classic building materials of the personal essay. We learn the rhythm by which the essayist receives, digests, and spits out the world, and we learn the shape of his or her privacy. The essayist attempts to surround a something – a subject, a mood, a problematic irritation – by coming at it from all angles, wheeling and diving like a hawk, each seemingly digressive spiral actually taking us closer to the heart of the matter. (Excerpted from The Art of the Personal Essay edited by Phillip Lopate.)

The Assignment
Using one of the following prompts to spur your thinking, compose a personal essay (also frequently called a familiar essay) of at least 750 words. Be sure to give your essay a title. (Warning: do not answer the questions in your writing. They are intended merely to prompt your thinking.) No matter what you choose to write about, remember this: To be terrific, you must be specific!

I. Choices aren’t always easily made. Indeed, sometimes it’s hard to know which choice is right and which is wrong. The narrator of The Things They Carried faces a difficult choice on the Rainy River. He is undecided about whether to follow his moral convictions courageously and run to Canada or whether to do the cowardly thing and stay home because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed. Write about a time when you faced a hard choice or dilemma. What was the choice? How did you make your decision? What did you decide? Most importantly, how has that choice affected who you are?

II. Characters in The Things They Carried are tested – physically, emotionally, and ethically. His draft notice tests the narrator, for instance. Jimmy Cross is tested when he must carry the lives of his men. Norman Bowker is tested when he returns to the States after the war. Have you ever faced a test of character? When? What was that test? What did you learn about yourself? About others? Most importantly, what influence has that test had on who you are now?

III. Using references to people you actually know, to historical or to contemporary figures and to characters in The Things They Carried, compose an essay that tries to define the abstract idea of heroism or of courage. Be warned: This essay is the most difficult of all the choices. Why? Writers who try this prompt are typically tempted to stay way up on top of the mountain instead of coming down into the sea.

IV. Write an essay about the things you carry.

What Characterizes the Personal Essay?

entertaining and informal writing

revelation of something personal about the writer and his or her thoughts as well as construction of a meaning that is relevant for the reader (remember that O’Brien makes the distinction between "happening-truth" and "story-truth"; use "happening truth" in service of "story-truth")

suggestion of "so what?" or meaning through inference rather than explicit statement

showing rather than telling or explaining

the active voice of the verb

concrete details and anecdotes

reflection

Online Advice about Writing a Personal Essay
http://www.powa.org/informal/index.html (this one is strongly recommended)
http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/composition/personal.htm
http://cal.bemidji.msus.edu/english/morgan/courses/en2000f00/assignments/familiarEssayProject.html
http://www.madinpursuit.com/essayresources.htm

Exemplar Essays
Several essays written in response to this prompt over the last three years provide superior examples. The following personal essays may be found online: "Eaten Alive" by Devon MacDougall; "I Carry My Grandmother" by Emily Partin; "Welcome to My World" by Margaret Earthman; "Heart to Heart" by Jaehun Noh; "A Long Time to Realize, A Longer Time to Correct" by Grace Iorio; "Strong Arms" by Emily Stimpson; "Graveyard Contemplation" by Elizabeth Windham; "Hero" by Samantha Dotson; "What He Carries" by Christina Graves; "The Things I Choose" by Hallie Dyer; "Not Just an Indian" by DeeDee Banerjee; and "Greeting Strangers" by Swapna Reddy.