Structure, Essays, and Arguments
Is essay writing a good way to test a person’s skill with the English language? This is a question that came up in our class about a week ago. There are both pros and cons of writing essays, and I shall touch both sides to the best of my ability (note: I am taking no sides in this blog).
On the yes side, essays could be considered very structured resume’s which are very useful to get a job. If your resume jumps all over the place and confuses people, you do not get the job. The same with essays. In some jobs, you have to write progress reports, worker reports, reports on reports, etc. An essay is very similar to these. Also, an essay proves your point of view, great for debating and researching or communicating in general. These are practical uses of writing essays. Now lets see the what it does for language. An essay tests your use of language. You have to find words that make sense and that convey your meaning to the best of your ability.
For the opposite, you can do that socially. You could discuss a point of view with your classmates, and you might have better opinions than if you did a structured essay and you talk more than you usually write. Also consider blogging: blogs have a flexible structure. A final point is that essays take a long time to write because of revisions. You could say that an essay is improved by everything else you do.
Does essays or blogs start improving everything else, or is it a giant circle? (Please comment: people will be interested to learn what you have to say)
*Feel free to comment on this essay
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Huck has three motives that determine everything that he does when he is faced with a decision. First off, he measures how much fun doing something will be. If he doesn’t want to do something, he thinks what would happen if Tom Sawyer was there. Or if Huck didn’t have time to make a decision, he would act with compassion and instinct.
Huck doesn’t like to do anything that isn’t fun, which gets him in trouble. Like many of us when we are young, Huck’s sense of fun is usually something that he could use his imagination in. Huck classifies “fun” as an adventure, something that could be potentially dangerous, or even something that gets him rich. An example in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck puts a dead rattlesnake skin in Jim’s bed. The reason he did this is because Jim thinks snake skins are bad luck. It seems Jim is proved right by “Well, by night I forgot all about the snake, and when Jim flung himself down on the blanket while I struck a light, the snake’s mate was there, and bit him.” As another example, in the last book Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn gets $6000 exploring a cave with Tom Sawyer because they saw someone suspicious in there.
Speaking of Tom Sawyer, he is Huck Finn’s idol and he knows what Tom Sawyer would do in almost any situation. When Huck discovers a shipwreck, Jim isn’t too keen on going but Huck said that Tom Sawyer would never miss an adventure like this: “Do you reckon Tom Sawyer would ever go by this thing? Not for pie, he wouldn’t.” Huck thinks Tom knows more than him, but in reality Tom Sawyer gets all his info from history books and storybooks and acts out what is in there. While running a “gang”, Tom mentions “ransoming people” but doesn’t know what it is. Huck sometimes gets annoyed by Tom Sawyer’s acting, and at one point while rescuing Jim he complains about Tom adding difficulties instead of taking the easy way out. Huck always loses these arguments with Tom, which is also why Tom is Huck’s idol.
Of course, being human, Huckleberry Finn has basic human motives: compassion and instinct which he uses in quick decisions. For example, Huck Finn discovers two people running away from an angry mob. For some unknown reason Huck chooses to rescue them and lets them join him on his adventure. Huck didn’t have time to think about whether or not he should save them, he just did something. Of course, they betray Huck in the end, which makes you wonder why he didn’t just drop them off at the nearest town. I believe one of those reasons was that he thought they would catch up to him and inflict some pain on him.
Seeking fun and adventure, imitating Tom Sawyer, or acting with compassion and instinct are what drive Huck in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
**This is my first extracurricular post
Next time: Odyssey of the Mind! (not actual title)
Far in the Future: Odyssey of the Mind 2!
Maybe: Odyssey of the Mind 3!
