After reading Lia Purpura’s “Autopsy Report” alongside of Eula Biss’s “Dust Off,” the role of the visual in these two essays are both striking and haunting.

In “Dust Off” the relationship between words and images are examined in the details the stories of “3 boys from high school who died in the pursuit of pleasure.”(0:00-0:10).  Eula’s video first opens up to a haunting sound and white screen with image of a three empty small toddler swing-sets covered by snow, a parking lot in the middles of a snow blizzard, then to the cold snowy streets, a green-glowing huge empty tree, an empty purple hued skyline across an empty body of water, an airplane soaring across the dawn, a jellyfish moving in a dark abyss of water in slow motion, an empty whale-swinging chair covered by snow, and finally the same three empty small toddler swing-sets covered by snow.

 Throughout the images Eula’s tone is slow and calm, almost distant and sympathetic as she tells the tale of Theo; who dies after suffocating on inhaling propellants(SNOW), Kur; death by speeding/no headlights(Lights in Skyline/airplane souring), and Elijah; death by erotic asphyxia(Jellyfish). Each boy’s story is told by images of a snowstorm, lights across the sky, or jellyfish to tie in a metaphor for their deaths. Even though the images do not correspond directly to the words of the story they do symbolize the meaning of what is happening in each image. The most important one that gets repeated in the introduction and conclusion is the three empty swing sets. This image correlate with the overall theme that these 3 boys have died and lost their childhood. They were once young boys with a future, but now that ends and all we have is an old image of who they once used to be by listening to their actions.
In “Autopsy Report” visual language is being used right from the beginning lines: “I shall begin with the chests of drowned men, bound with ropes…I shall stand beside sharp pelvic bones…I shall touch while no one is looking the perfect cornrows…I shall note the blue earring, a swirled, lapis ball in the old yellowed man’s ear…” (1-2) Lia’s descriptions of these dead men are very strong. She notes the bodies and shows us visually the “sharp pelvic bones…the jacket’s wet collar. Soaked black with blood, his stiffening sleeve. And where bullets passed neatly through…the twenty-year alcoholic” (1-2). The way she shows us this body she puts us at the scene with her, observing her actions from above, naturally and clearly we begin to envision these men. The choice of using the words “I shall” was a smart decision. It not only gives a clear image of what the narrator was experiencing but it also allowed the reader to experience what Lia was as well; “I shall touch, while no one is looking, the perfect cornrows, the jacket’s wet collar. Soaked black with blood, his stiffening sleeve.” (1).

Lia’s writing is both intimate and chilling. She creates intimacy with her honesty as she notes that she once laughed when she first saw the corpses, which is the opposite of what normal people would initially react to a corpse. She also confesses that when no one is looking she “shall touch” the corpses. Through this confession  her narrative becomes more honest and real. She is blunt about her setting and experiences which makes what she has to say all the more powerful.

She uses strong descriptions and poetic sentences like “Did I expect, finally, the solemnity of procession? Death gowned and dancing, seythe raised and cape blowing, leading the others, at dusk, over a mountain. In silhouette. Fully cinematic”(4) to ask herself and her reader how they perceive a body before, during and after an autopsy. Lia’s strong use of poetry throughout her essay helps her cold and withdrawn tone make the story feel calm and intimate. The use of her poetic flow, changes the language of her essay from one examining death to now wondering the ways we perceive our bodies before death.

Lia uses visual language in her detail of all the disgusting and slimy body parts on page 4;”It was calm that came forth while the brain was removed, while the brain, heavy and grey and wet, was fileted with an enormous knife, one hand on top to keep it from jiggling.” This visual is raw and chilling. Lia chose these words carefully to create a image so grotesque, any reader can actually imagine it happening before them. I actually cringed through some of her lines and being able to evoke a physical reaction from a reader just makes her writing amazing.

After reading Freeman’s “On the Form of the Video Essay,”  The way the pieces Grandpa, Mangoes and That Kind of daughter reflect the goals or characteristics of the essay form are that they all happen to be informal, personal and reflective (associative).

In Steven Chen’s Grandpa, Chen uses features and strategies  like painting a person who symbolizes him in the visual in the color blue while the rest of his family is painted in red to visually frame the difference and distance he feels from his Chinese grandparents, since there is a language barrier. Chen’s use of a static-y and blurry image frames his past memories like a tape on VCR, old but still memorable. Looking back at Freeman’s discussion of what a video essay’s form should resemble I can see that Chen plays with associative thoughts, and is able to move the reader deeper into his own mental process of feeling distant from his family throughout his video.

Freeman discusses in “On The Form” that a video essay is a mixed blend of poetry, creative non fiction, documentary and art among many other factors. A video essay is “subjective, autobiographical” and is designed “to mess with the audience’s expectations of a nonfiction film”. A video essay should be self questioning and self conscious, which Chen pulls off as he speaks directly to his audience, briefing us about his family history, focusing on his dad’s Chinese parents, the differences between his mom and father’s side and the difficult language barriers he faces as a mixed child. Chen might not questions himself through his video, but he questions if other mixed children in his audience are like him or feel as he does about his culture. Chen is conscious about his heritage and we learn through his past experiences with his family that he wishes he had learned more. But Chen does not argue, or try to persuade and solve his problems. Instead he just states his own point of view of himself and his family. Chen’s video essay introduces us to believe he will discuss his grandfather, but instead uses his grandparents and parents to distinguish the distance he feels living in a mixed family unfamiliar about his own heritage and language.

I like that you chose to start your audio with just your voice instead of using music. It gives the listener a preview of what your are about to describe in your audio; your tone towards New Jersey, your setting and what might happen next. After the guitar/banjo starts playing it  sets up a  theme that there is going to be a southern(ness) background towards your essay. I am already imagining the country side you cannot wait to leave. You descriptions are very detailed 0:36-0:52, 3:20-3:40 I can see already picture the small quiet town, the older white possibly republican hunter families debating politics. I can see the eagerness you feel in getting out of your hometown, packing up for a road trip, exhausted by small minded and “patriotic” townspeople. The recordings you used in 2:00-3:00 and 5:14-5:24 goes in and out nicely but it is a bit too loud at some parts and makes it hard to understand what you said which takes away from your story.

I like the calm soft music you chose. It describes the tone this essay will take;a mundane and ordinary task like cooking a lasagna dish.  The grocery store sounds you  used easily set the setting  for listeners. My favorite part is 3:54-4:23 when you are revealing the finished dish. The music builds up into a grand entrance finally showcasing the main event; your lasagna. It reminds me of every movie’s dramatic entrance. Even though you use a slow calm tone, it is still funny because of the happy upbeat music in the background. And you still managed to keep me on my toes as you describe the melting cheese and burnt bits along the sides of the dish. Who would have thought a essay about making lasagna on a college budget would be so interesting to hear? Great work.

As I listened to Joshua Wheelers, “Ugly Pew” I could not help but doze off. His voice is unlike Vowell’s audio essay. He resembles Lovell’s tone; dull and slow paced. Because of this I did not think he would be able to captivate me further or that I would even bother listening. But as the music follows his speech I found myself listening even more. I would say that Wheeler is effective in making his audience listen closer to his words because of the pauses he takes. Each pause notes either the end of what he means to explain or that he is moving on to the next scene of his story. It pulls the reader in to listen more carefully both figuratively and literally. Due to his soft spoken and calm voice it makes what he has to say sound more intimate as if he were speaking to one person in particular versus a crowd of people listening.

An example Wheeler uses Kern’s strategy of speaking conversationally when he asks his listeners questions like “what age do we lose the ability to see magic in waste” (3:04-3:09) and “at what age does rattling become so terrifying”(7:03-7:05) and even discusses death “No one will believe that sometimes people just get the urge to die” (8:30-8:35). The way Wheeler paces himself though these lines slowly, enunciating his words shows that he is being very careful when choosing his words. With each syllable he is emphasizing his emotions and the importance of behind his words. The topic of suicide is a difficult one. He understands this and accepts his sister’s death but to make sure his audience does too, he goes through it slowly.

Every pause he makes is deliberate. He wants his audience to follow his story. He wants his audience to understand the seriousness(?) behind his story. It is not just about retelling a story it is about the emotional reaction to his sister’s suicide. His mother’s, the townspeople and his own reaction towards acknowledging his sister’s suicide. The pace of Wheeler’s audio essay fits perfectly. If it was faster paced, the tale would just be something we heard once and missed or perhaps forgotten about. But because he takes his time and enunciates every scene, his listeners can pause with him, catch up and re-live his memory. It is easy to overlook details in audio essays and miss the true story but Wheeler’s pace helps develop his story and makes it easier to analyze rather than a speedy upbeat essay.

Taking Wheeler’s audio essay into account, I think I will focus on my pace  a lot more and switch to a calmer tone. I think by doing this, my piece will impact more with listeners. Since I have a tendency to read too quickly, stutter and ramble I think reciting my words slower and enunciating will be more effective in recording my voice. I also need to create a strategy like Wheeler does to evoke more emotion in my essay. I want to emphasize with my readers instead of just spouting out life stories and events.I want something that stays in their minds for a while that can be further analyzed and create an aha moment.

After reading Murdoch and Kern, I can say that David Antin’s essay, “The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto.” reflects Murdoch’s ideals of “good talk”. Antin’s essay achieves this through his structure; it does not include any commas, capitalization or periods. It all seems to flow like words through someone’s head. In reality no one actually pictures capitalizing names or places. We do not form any grammatical changes as we hear words. Antin’s essay resembles words going through his mind as he is preparing to shop for a new mattress like anyone else would.

The way Antin’s writing pushes the envelope further to experiment with the boundaries between spoken and written language is it seems to be obsessed with showing how form and content are interconnected. His essay contains almost no punctuation, besides a few question marks and quotes. The choice he made to do that gives the reader a chance to decide what might it mean. It could be the thoughts of a man shopping for a mattress or perhaps more. His essay almost seems like it is about itself, not just the couple purchasing a mattress.
When you reach the end of the essay and learn that after he and his wife Ellie picked a new mattress and she still suffers from back pain, you can only think that maybe her back pain was not the only reason they went shopping for a mattress or even why this essay was based on the shopping experience. I think Antin wrote his essay on purpose to show future essayists that writing a story does not have to be about a huge event it can be as simple as describing a memory of shopping for a new mattress and we do not have any grammar rules to follow in our essays.
This can be shown in the last paragraph when he quoted Descartes, “if youre lost in the forest and you have no idea which way to go go for it straight ahead because it is not likely to be any worse than anything else” (122) it shouldn’t matter what you are writing about, you should just make sure what you are saying matters to you. Essays do not have “correct” forms or structures. From Antin’s perspective, essays we decide to write should be told as Kern and Murdoch explained; light and personal conversations. An essay should reflect the writer’s personality through a conversation. Do not worry about your topic being boring or too simple, as Antin has guided us through his essay, he has proven that any story will do. With this in mind it is easy to say that Antin’s essay reflects Kern’s lessons of also “writing for the ear”. He does not pay much attention to how interesting or grammatically correct his essay is, but instead prints his words down as a conversation going on with himself internally for the reader to hear and imagine. The way his words are printed help us readers understand him as an individual and what he is doing as a writer. He is guiding future essayists to understand there is more than one way to write a great/good essay.

These pieces reflect the goals or characteristics of the essay form through their descriptive details. The writers allow the reader to step into their world as they explain their setting and meet a new character as they announce their personal beliefs or inner thoughts. What makes their stories essays are the use of the writer’s insights; they each form their own short interesting story and use that as a guide into their own thoughts. Each story follows through as if a stream of consciousness from the writer themselves. In the audio essays, the reader can feel more emotion and emphasis on the topic at hand because it allows us to feel a more “real” human connection, almost as if the person you are hearing is someone in front of you describing their life (like a movie) rather than telling and showing you with words. You feel more inclined to listen and delve into their story.

Tone is an important feature that can be noted more carefully than it would be if it was in writing. If this was a written piece, tone is something the reader would have to assume or find evidence of. But since it is audio, it is very noticeable to guess the writer’s age, their feelings towards an event/topic, and the sound of the writer’s voice gives a more accurate approach to the general topic that will be discussed. What makes the audio essay more distinctive is it actually appears more personal, concrete and universal than an essay would have. With an essay we would have to read it several times to get a gist of who was speaking, what they were saying, why they said it and what makes it so important. And with the audio essay there is no need to over-analyze the piece, it is already said through a voice. I would say since the audio essay offers more direct communication with language, it is easier to determine an essay’s overall idea. But that does not mean a written essay offers less empathy and emphasis. In fact, an written essay offers the possibility of meanings to interpret. A written essay is open for the reader to analyze form and structure, it offers the reader a chance to form opinions and question placements of words such as maybe, I, like, etc. An audio essay is limited to telling instead of showing insights which make their stories a bit too concrete.

In 81:Guns,

“If you were passing by the house where I grew up during my teenage years, and it happened to be before election day, you wouldn’t have even needed to come inside to see that it was a house divided. You could just look at the Democratic campaign poster in the upstairs window and the Republican one in the downstairs window, and see our home for the civil war battleground it was. I’m not saying who was the Democrat and who was the Republican, my father or I, but I will tell you that I am not the one who plastered the family truck with National Rifle Association stickers, that I have never subscribed to Guns & Ammo, and that hunter’s orange was never my color. About the only thing my father and I agree on is the Constitution, though I’m partial to the First Amendment while he’s always favored the Second.” (4:34-5:19).

Description takes on a major role. As Sarah Vowell describes her environment, the people and the atmosphere around her we can see she is using the irony of a house divided and war to let the reader/audience know her father and her do not agree on things (NRA). Vowell’s use of descriptions allows the reader to feel her emotions and emphasize with her as she discusses events like holding a gun for the first time. She describes the force of the gun being fired pushed her down to the ground, and feelings flowing through the veins in her body;

“But I remember holding the pistol only made me feel small. It was so heavy in my hand. I stretched out my arm and pointed it away and winced. It was a very long time before I had the nerve to pull the trigger, and I was so scared I had to close my eyes. It felt like it just went off by itself, as if I had no say in the matter, as if the gun just had this need. The sound it made was as big as God. It kicked little me back to the ground like a bully, like a foe. It hurt. I don’t know if I dropped it or just handed it back over to my dad, but I do remember that I never wanted to touch another one again.”(6:49-7:27)

Throughout Vowell audio the tone she takes is very controversial and distant. She describes a lot of differences she and her dad have up until the last couple of paragraphs, where after mentioning the plan for her father’s ashes she is soft-spoken, compassionate and respective;

“I’ll do it too. I don’t know about my mom and my sister, but I’ll do it. I’ll have my father’s body burned into ashes. I’ll pack this ash into paper bags. The morbid joker has already made the molds. I’ll go to the mountains with my mother and my sister, bringing the cannon as he asks. I will plunge his remains into the barrel and point it into a hill so he doesn’t take anyone with him. I will light the fuse, but I will not cover my ears, because when I blow what used to be my dad into the earth, I want it to hurt.”(14:40-15:14)

The last lines “Because when I blow what used to be my dad into the earth, I want it to hurt,” informs the reader that Vowell is starting to understand her father and realizes that even though they are so different they are still very much alike.

In Orlean’s excerpt, she uses the “Visible Cow” as a metaphor for thinking about the essay’s form and structure. Applying Orlean’s metaphor, to John McPhee’s “The Search for Marvin Gardens,” the invisible cow can be seen in McPhee’s story by closely examining his narrator and setting. McPhee’s presents us with a story which compares the game Monopoly to the real world, which brings us back to Orlean’s lines “…an essay in which the writer turns something over and over in his or her head, and in examining it finds a bit of truth about human nature and life and the experience of inhabiting this planet”(176). Not only does McPhee take the use the game Monopoly to examine the real world, he also helps the reader make connections to the game as he contrasts the difference between the world in the game and the  present reality of those same places in the world by listing historical facts and background information.

McPhee’s narrator is one that Orlean would applaud at. Orleans mentions that a writer must “be explicit, in the first person, or just implicit, as the person behind behind the words”(176)in order for the readers to be “invited deep inside someone’s mind” (176). Which is exactly what McPhee has accomplished “Go. I roll the dice-a six and a two. Through the air I move my token, the flatiron, to Vermont Avenue, where dog packs range”(9). He has built a narrator who dictates the story in first person, without ever revealing who they are or what they think as a character and thus allowing the reader to delve into someone else’s mind and form their own opinions.

McPhee’s form and structure throughout his context allow him to explore two different worlds at once. One where the narrator is sitting down and playing a board game of Monopoly and the other where he is able to become a part of the game walking down boulevards and avenues of the properties; “I turn on Pennsylvania, and start back towards the sea.The windows of the Hotel Astoria, on Pennsylvania near Baltic, are boarded up…”(15). His structure allows him to contrast the past and present time of these properties and give a social critique of both its people and places.This act might constrain him to become a visitor describing the scenery since he does not form any direct opinions. Compared to the other essays we have read so far McPhee’s text outlines perfectly to what our Textual Essay Rough Draft is supposed to resemble. It gives an objective like the game of monopoly and compares it  the world we live in along with a personal account of someone playing the game while imagining themselves figuratively in it, and ends with a abstract meaning about the search for a better society.

After reading Sara Levine’s “The Self on the Shelf” and Leslie Jamison’s “The Empathy Exams” it can be agreed that when you encounter an essay, ideally, “[y]ou leave the essay feeling as if you have met somebody” ( Levine 159). Like Jamison’s Empathy Essay teaches us you need more than just a pair of eye to examine and understand another individual’s pain. You need to be able to feel and think as they do, you have to be willing to put yourself in their shoes in order to understand what emotions they are going through. In Jamison’s “The Empathy Exams,” I have met a female Ob-Gyn who plays sick in order to train medical students to become great emphatic doctors. She, herself has survived an abortion and heart surgery. Through her story we learn that Jamison is not only critiquing and examining her medical students but is also placing herself on the exam table; both her medical and intellectual wounds are open to our critique as well. Throughout her essay, Jamison attempts to elicit different venues of emotion from her readers as we explore the pain of other characters like Stephanie Phillips, an STD Grandma, Blackout Buddy, Pregnant Lila, Leslie Jamison herself and her brother’s Bell Palsy. Jamison’s honesty and openess is what allows her to be open to critique and thus evoking empathy towards her situation.

Some of the lines I believe allow her personality to communicate through her writing is “I thought of the little fetus…honestly wondered – if I felt attached to it yet. I wasn’t sure”(11), ” I felt guilt that I didn’t feel more about the abortion; I felt pissed off at Dave for being elsewhere” (11), ” I needed his empathy…to help me discover which emotions were actually there.” (13), “to feel the mechanics of her method so palpable between us: engage the patient, record the details, repeat. I hated seeing the puppet strings; they felt unseemly – and without kindness in her voice, the mechanics meant nothing…it’s invasive but not intimate”(23) and lastly “When bad things happened to other people, I imagined them happening to me. I didn’t know if this was empathy or theft” (25).

These lines reflect a personal account of Jamison’s struggles. They are intimate moments where we can relate to other’s pains. Everyone in life has many moments where they interpret someone else’s pain, they absorb emotions and sufferings of others in order to better understand the meaning. As readers and writers we are taught to put our selves on a shelf, to reexamine ourselves in another light and leave learning something new. Our words leaves an impression of ourselves as writers for others to criticize and judge however they please whether we mean to or not. Like Levine stated, “it is style that allows the essayists to make a self…[an] essayist writes his private voice for the public”.  The way we make an impression as a writer is through our words.

In “The Art of the Essayist,” A. C. Benson paints a kind of portrait of the essayist as an “interpreter of life, a critic of life” (43), with special predilections for and orientations toward lived experience and human relations. With Benson’s ideas about the essayist in mind, a passage from Annie Dillard’s “Total Eclipse” that stands out as particularly evocative begins “At once the yellow light made the sky blue again; the black lid dissolved and vanished. The real world began there. I remember now: we all hurried away.” I chose this passage because it emphasizes the moment the eclipse ended and reality was restored. Dillard begins as someone who rushed towards nature, expecting to witness an eclipse, with her husband. But as the eclipse begins, she becomes amazed at the new world she saw. She realizes that beyond their ordinary lives, lies another world. The experience proved that she was unobservant of nature and human life around her. Dillard mobilizes the essayist’s “art” as a spectator of life when she is viewing the world around her change underneath the moonlight. The colors of silver and black around the world opens her eye to something she would have never noticed before. Dillard use of her own experience during the eclipse helps connect the readers to an attraction of nature. By observing a new world, Dillard teaches her readers to interpret life, analyse life and recreate it to reflect themselves in their writing. Something I will take away from Dillard’s way of seeing the world as I develop opening for my own essay is writing my essay does not have to be a long technical or ethical speech instead it should reflect senses of human life. My essay should be something which can provide solutions to problems readers deal with daily and their relationships with others.