Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Classification=Epiphany

My essay "Suitors" is supposed to be a classification essay. It is not as good as Susan Allen Toth's classification essay "Going to the movies", but I do manage to classify my point.
The purpose of using classification in an essay is to organize the material so that it can be easier to analyze and explain. As a writer, you use this categories to usually justify or explain your thesis. These categories are almost like examples/ proof. By the end of your essay in your conclusion paragraph, the writer realizes what he/she was trying to say all along but that is really deeply hidden in the thesis. In other words, the thesis says what you want to say, but it really reveals something else about the reader.
For example in "Going to the movies", Toth classifies the movie dates (types). She has four different cases when she goes to the movies. The first three she goes with different guys, and the last case she goes alone. She uses categories like economics (who pays), transportation, type of movie, body language, chemistry (i.e. touching), snacks, and post-movie experience. Throughout the essay, the reader get the sense of the different type of guys she's goes with and how she feels. In the last paragraph when she talks about going to the movies by herself, we find out what she really wants. While describing the type of movies she likes, which are movies that end happily, she writes "At the end of Daddy Long Legs I wait happily for the scene when Fred Clark, no longer angry, at last pours Thelma a convivial drink. The smile at each other, I smile at them, I feel they are smiling at me. In the movies I go to by myself, the men and women always like each other" (Peterson, Brereton, and Hartman 608). With this last sentence, the reader finds out the purpose of her categories. We figure out what she really wants, and that is nothing to what she is getting. To some extent she likes going to movies by herself, but she also wants the perfect partner to go with her.
In my essay, I really was inspired with what she wrote. I like coming to the conclusion with what you really want all by yourself (having that epiphany feeling). I wrote about some of the different types of suitors I have encountered. I think what I am really trying to get at is describing the perfect man, who I have not encountered.

ViiVi - viivi



Peterson, Linda H., John C. Brereton, and Joan E. Hartman. The Norton Reader. Shorter 10th ed. United States of America: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2000. Print.

"Daddy Long Legs Trailer (1955) 2." www.viivi.net. Web. 9 Nov 2010. .

2 comments:

  1. I totally agree with you about what you have to say about classification essays and the one that Toth wrote as well. After reading her essay, I mimicked her style of writing and left the reader to do the analysis for themselves as she did. Obviously, for us, that's the wrong thing to do lol, so I just recommend that you analyze because it sounds like you probably followed Toth's same format of a classification essay as well. I'm confident that you will and I'm really interested in your essay topic; after reading what your essay will be about, I really want to hear what you have to say and I'm tempted to write about the same thing, but don't worry I'm not going to take your idea.

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