Essays & An Explication
“True education is a kind of never ending story — a matter of continual beginnings, of habitual fresh starts, of persistent newness.”
J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
An Overview
Through the experience of writing, revising, rewriting, and editing these documents, I was able to develop my skill researching and analytically reading sources. Whether a poem, a biography, a journalistic work, or a novel, each text contained deliberately chosen words and images meant to evoke certain ideas from readers. Deep and careful reading was necessary to catch, understand, and respectfully and accurately portray these authors' decisions in my own writing. From the reading and writing involved in creating these documents, I also gained a fuller and deeper understanding of others' perspectives on life, relationships, and societal expectations. The essays and explication are attached in pdf form following the descriptions of each assignment for your reading convenience.
Healing “Our Own Wronged Flesh”: Rest and Flesh as Evidence of God’s Grace
This essay was written in an Honors course titled Poetry as Theology. During the class we read and discussed W.H. Auden's "Horae Canonicae," which is a series of seven poems titled after the practice of keeping the canonical hours of prayer of the Catholic Church. The poems have a layered setting: the original Good Friday, our current day, and every day to come. My essay explores "Nones," the poem that takes place just after Christ's crucifixion (read the poem), and how Auden's ideas about the sacred nature of the physical body coincide with the nature of God in the poem.
Read the essay (pdf). |
Jacob Riis's Compassion for the Genuine WorkerIn the course United States History: 1877-1920, we analyzed the various methods activists in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era utilized to combat the unique social problems that resulted from the rapid industrialization, urbanization, and immigration of the time period. Journalist and photographer Jacob Riis decided vividly exposing the terrible conditions of tenement housing to the middle class to shake them out of complacency would be an effective means of initiating societal change, so he published How the Other Half Lives in 1890. In this essay I argue, based on the text and David Leviatin's commentary, that compassion was the driving force behind the creation of the book.
Read the essay (pdf). |
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