Hi!
I stared a new thread because it is a new assignment even tough is related to an old one.
The assignment is :
Write an essay of approximately 500 words. Your essay should demonstrate sound organization, solid development, correct spelling, and strong control of the mechanics of grammar.
Write your analysis then reactions or response to some sentence or thought in the assigned essay, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" (p. 447 in Webb reader or in the "Readings" section of this module).
You might decide to argue for or against Thoreau's stance, or you might want to apply one of Thoreau's insights to modern life: Be as creative and insightful as you would like. Just show me that you can make sense of a complicated reading, that you can write an organized and competent essay, and that you can think!
Does adulthood takes away the true spirit of life?
According to Henry David Thoreau, "Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more closely than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think they are worthier by experience, that is, by failure." (The resourceful reader 450) Thoreau's words convey a sense of nostalgia to a much simpler world. Childhood is often remember to a world of cotton candy, ferries wheels, being amazed at fire works, just running and running without ever getting tired, a world of discovery. When we are children we live life at is best. So, what changes in our lives? Is it because we grow up? Does adulthood takes away the true spirit of life?
Children are problem free. For example, when I was 5 years old my whole family went to Miami. It was my first time on an airplane and I was really exited. Unfourtunally, there was some turbulence, and my father was really scared of what my first experience on an airplane would leave on me. The funny thing is that I laughed all thru the turbulence. And when my father asked me why I was not scared, I told him that the worst thing that could happened is that we will fall. I also told him that if we fell it would be on water so it would not hurt. My father laughed realizing in that moment that children are so naïve that they live every experience to the fullest.
Children, who play life, know how to live it better that the rest of us, who subsist with such seriousness. Society creates in us a concern for things that are truly unimportant. Everyday newspapers give us more and more things to worry about. On that same page, advertising lures us into buying more and more things we don't need. For instance a better phone, a larger TV, a new microwave, among other things, even though the old one does the same thing. Too much insignificant things and not those things that are truly important concern people. What Thoreau is trying to explain is that we need to simplify our lives. We need to stop complicating things to the point that they are stressed out, dissatisfied, and unhappy.
For example, my friend Nancy works everyday, from 5am to 5pm and goes to college from 6pm to 10pm getting all stress out and tired so that she can start doing her homework at night sleep a few hours and do the same thing over and over again. You would think that she does relax on Sundays. But no! She goes to work on Sundays too. She is immerse in work, and getting financial status. She does not enjoy the simple things like a beautiful Sunday morning, or the advantages of sleeping late on weekends. Nancy buries herself in everyday problems, and forgets to live. We need to imitate children who are free from the economic endless pursuit, and free to be inspired by nature.
One day she will look back to those small little mistakes made along the way to adulthood, mostly in our day-to-day relationships with our loved ones. Such mistakes, we keep calling experience, are what makes us assume we are growing up. The sad part is that we can only realize we've lost "the spirit of life" in hindsight, when we have become "experienced". I encourage people to be more like Thoreau "simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!" (447).
I need help with the citation for this essay, I read "Where I Lived, and What Lived for" in The Resourceful Reader. How should I put in MLA format?
There are multiple guides to citing in MLA format online that you can find via a google search. For instance, is the very first web site at the top of the list. Also, Office 2007 has an auto-cite feature that can be set to many different citation formats, including MLA.
It's good to know the basics of MLA citation. In general, provide the author's last name and the page number in parenthesis at the end of the sentence or phrase (but before the punctuation mark) unless you have named the author in the sentence itself, in which case only the page number is required. Then, provide full citation information on a "Works Cited" page, using the format specified by one of the online MLA style guides or the MLA style guide in your textbook or writer's handbook.
The essay is coherent until the last paragraph, the beginning of which does not follow from what has gone before. Your sentence structure is generally good, but you sometimes leave the endings off verbs. That kind of mistake is very jarring to the reader, so watch out for it:
...goes to college from 6pm to 10pm getting all stressed out...
She is immersed in work...
My only quibble with the content of the essay is that not all children are free from worry. Children living in extreme poverty or in otherwise stressful or abusive circumstances do not live the idyllic life you depict. Indeed, since children do live life so fully, they may suffer more than adults in similar circumstances. It might be good to acknowledge this, if only by adding some sort of qualification to your statement about children living problem-free lives.
A few other comments:
- The list of images of childhood is very evocative but the elements in the list do not agree in form.
The sentence that begins, "For instance..." is a fragment.
"Everyday" is an adjective. If you mean to say that someone goes to work every day or that the newspaper tells us something every day, do as I did and separate those words.
Threre are plenty grammar errors.
For example:
- convey a sense of nostalgia *for*
- childhood is often remembered *as* -- Simone noted the issue with consistency in form already.
- "subsist with seriousness"; subsist is not the right word here
-"We need to stop complicating things to the point that they are stressed out, dissatisfied, and unhappy." The things are stressed out, dissatisfied, and unhappy?
Scratch that, and let it suffice that there are at least 30 grammar errors (rough estimate).
Your final paragraph is extremely difficult to make sense of.
You make a good enough case, and write lucidly enough, so I won't poke my fingers in the pores in your reasoning.
