Robert Boyers: A Beauty

Robert Boyers wrote the essay "A Beauty" for the literary magazine Agni to describe the most beautiful man he had ever met. When I first read the title of the essay, I assumed it would be about a woman or a piece of artwork, but it ended up being about a man named Charles Newman. Boyers met him in the 1970s when Newman was approaching forty years old and editing the journal he founded, TriQuarterly. Newman was also a gifted novelist. Boyers became friends with Newman, but Newman's beauty never went unnoticed by Boyers or anyone else they encountered. Along with describing the most beautiful man he's ever met, Boyers wrote this essay to explain the effect of beauty on people and to be read by adults of all ages and gender. In order to fully achieve his purpose he uses his friend as an example throughout the entire story. Many younger women liked to flirt with Newman and he enjoyed doing it back. Boyers also explained that the beauty had an effect on Newman himself. When Newman got married for the fourth and last time, he was also dating another girl across the country. Because he was so good looking, Boyers had the confidence to be in a relationship with more than one woman. It was actions like this that made Boyers only base his opinions of Newman's beauty from the outside. I think that Boyers only partially achieved his purpose. He did a wonderful job of describing his friend, which I believe was the main reason for writing the essay. However, I think he could have done a better job of explaining the effect of beauty on others, because he really only described the effect of Newman's beauty on others. It may have been completely intentional for Boyers to keep the focus on Newman, but I would have liked the essay better if he had tied in some other examples.

Charles Hamilton Newman (1938-2006)

from his wikipedia page

Francine Prose: Other Women

When Francine Prose was twenty-five years old, she was unhappily married and living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Because of her problems with her marriage, she decided to join a feminist group to help her see the value in being a woman. Unfortunately, Prose's husband ended up sleeping with every single woman in the group, or that's how she likes to tell the story forty years later in Granta magazine. In reality he was only with two of the women in the group, but Prose uses exaggeration as a rhetorical device to achieve her purpose. That purpose is to inform women of all ages that they are equal to men and also that feminist groups do not always work in the way they are supposed to. The use of exaggeration works because she does tell the truth later and explains that the exaggeration is a way of expressing how "betrayed [she] felt by [her] husband and feminist sisters" (Brooks and Atwan 241). The women were supposed to support each other in the group, but instead Prose felt betrayal. Because this was exaggerated, it made me realize that the group really did not fulfill its purpose. Prose also talks about the subject of the war of men against women.  Her strategy in accomplishing this purpose is the use of repetition. Towards the end of the essay, she asks herself six questions starting with the words "do I think" and answering all of them with "yes". One of the questions was "do I think women are as smart and capable as men?" (Brooks and Atwan 242). With the use of repetition, it drills the message into the readers head, and it also shows that Prose is very passionate about her purpose. It is because of this passion that I believe Prose accomplished her purpose.

 
Feminism
from asap-asia.org
 

Works Cited

Brooks, David, and Robert Atwan, eds. The Best American Essays 2012. Boston: 
       Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.

Ken Murray: How Doctors Die

Ken Murray quit being a doctor ten years before he wrote the essay "How Doctors Die" for the Zocalo Public Square. Although the essay is titled "How Doctors Die", it is more about how the average patient is overtreated. If someone is terminally ill, they do anything they can to try to find a cure, even if the doctor knows the procedure is useless. However, according to Murray, doctors will never overtreat themselves. Murray wrote this essay to convince terminally ill people and families of terminally ill people to die how doctors die: surrounded by family. The main strategy that he uses to persuade is the use of examples. He uses the example if his mentor Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist that died of pancreatic cancer. As soon as Charlie got the diagnosis, he stayed at home to be with his family and ended up dying several months later. Charlie died a happy man, but Murray would not have accomplished his purpose unless he included a story with an unpleasant death. That was the purpose of including the story about one of his former patients. She was the attorney of a famous political family that had severe diabetes and poor circulation throughout her body. After Murray refused to do a surgery on her, she went to another hospital that would perform the surgery. Unfortunately the surgical wounds did not heal and she ended up dying. This is the example that made me agree with Murray. If that woman had only stayed with the doctor that knew her better, she may still be alive, or at least have been alive for a little longer. People should not try so hard to seek out a cure, especially terminally ill people. I believe that Murray accomplished his purpose because he knows that modern medicine has its limits. He made me think that when given the choice, its better to have a life of quality, not quantity.

Overtreatment

 www.cchsr.iph.cam.ac.uk/519

Dudley Clendinen: The Good Short Life

Dudley Clendinen was a sixty-six year old recovering alcoholic and reporter when he wrote the essay "The Good Short Life" in the New York Times Sunday Review. The essay was about how Clendinen planned on committing suicide in the near future. Although suicide is awful, I'm surprised that I actually found myself agreeing with his decision. Clendinen was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) and did not want to become a burden to his family because the disease has no cure. The purpose of Clendinen writing this essay was for adults to talk about death more openly and to explain to loved ones and fans of his why he wanted to kill himself. He explains his purpose by putting his situation into terms that most people can relate to. Clendinen said that the cost of keeping him alive is too much if he is just going to die anyways. He also stated that if he were to be kept alive by a machine, he'd be "maintained by feeding and waste tubes" which would leave him with zero quality of life (Brooks and Atwan 64). Other people can sympathize with him because most people want to die happy and leave their families with enough money to take care of themselves. The strategy of putting his situation into common terms makes me think that he did accomplish his purpose. I believe that he accomplished his purpose of trying to get adults to talk about death more by talking about death himself. According to the New York Times he said that "we act as if facing death weren’t one of life’s greatest, most absorbing thrills and challenges...believe me it is" (McFadden). Unfortunately, Clendinen died at the age of sixty-seven last year due to his disease. His daughter, Whitney, said it was not done by his own hand (McFadden).

Dudley Clendinen at age 66

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Works Cited

Brooks, David, and Robert Atwan, eds. The Best American Essays 2012. Boston: 
       Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.

McFadden, Robert D. "Dudley Clendinen, Reporter and Editor, Dies at 67." The New 
       York Times. The New York Times Company, 31 May 2012. Web. 13 Aug. 2013.

Lauren Slater: Killing My Body to Save My Mind

Lauren Slater, in her twenties, was an active young girl with the perfect body. By the looks of her, the average person would think she was perfect, but the average person would not know what was going on inside her mind. Slater struggled with depression and no drugs seemed to work until she tried Zyprexa. This drug cured her mind, but it also caused her to become extremely overweight and prediabetic. Slater is now in her forties, five feet tall, and one hundred and eighty pounds. I believe Slater wrote this essay to inform middle-aged men and women that living until you are ninety and having the perfect body is not worth it unless you are happy. Although Slater's body is having a "breakdown", as she describes it, her mind is not emotionally breaking down. She helps support her purpose by explaining to people that having a perfect mind or a perfect body is a choice. There are people that sued Eli Lilly, the maker of Zyprexa, for causing excessive weight gain. However Slater stated that she will not sue Lilly for "making a drug that saved [her] life" even though it is "leaching it away" (Brooks and Atwan 259). She knows what she is doing to herself and she explains that she is fully accepting of it. I think that Slater accomplished her purpose of writing the essay because of her acceptance. She stated that she made her choice and she is no longer depressed. Also, I think she realizes that not everyone is strong enough to make the choice she made, but she doesn't regret her choice either. I personally do not agree with her choice. I do not suffer from depression, but I would definitely stop taking the pill if my cholesterol rose as high as hers and I became prediabetic. However, her purpose was more informative than persuasive. Not everyone will destroy their bodies to become happy, but now her audience knows another way for happiness to be possible.

Thin to Thick

from picstopin.com

Works Cited

Brooks, David, and Robert Atwan, eds. The Best American Essays 2012. Boston: 
       Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Print.