A Different Kind of Essay

To many students, essays are known as very structured. There's the introduction, which has a hook, a little background, and then a thesis statement of some sort. Then there are the body paragraphs, which support the thesis statement and explain it more. Finally, there is the conclusion, which wraps it all together and says why everything that was just said was important. These are the types of essays we have been taught to write since elementary school, when we had to write about why we should be able to buy pizza over salad in the school cafeteria or what happened in the Revolutionary War. As I was reading through the essays in Essay Packet 1, though, I realized that these essays are different. They're more personal and some are even just stories, but told in a less narrative-like way.

An example of one of the essay not being what I expected was "Sunday" by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The essay starts off with a hook and little background information, but that is about as far as it got with what I expected out of an essay. The rest of it seemed more like a story, because there were characters, a lot of detail, and some quotes of what someone would say in certain situations. For example, he says, "The happiest I ever saw my aunts and uncles in the Coleman family was when they'd slowly eat their savory meals, washing everything down with several glasses of iced tea." From this little bit, I can picture people sitting around a table, taking in their food slowly and happily, making sure every last bit was enjoyed. The characters in the essay include his family, such as Mama and Aunt Marguerite. These characters have quotes and are explained well just in their quotes.

From reading these essays, I think I am going to enjoy this section of the class. It will definitely be something different that I am not quite used to, but it seems like the essays can be fun to read and possibly even write. They seem more personal than stories, so they help with understanding people, and they are more direct than poems, so they make it even easier to understand what the people want to say and who they are.