According to the conventions of personal essays mentioned by Ballenger in “The Curious Writer” (94), most features of the form are applied to both essays “I’m a Believer” by Charlotte Hogg and “The Joy of Mud” by Catherine Black.
First, you can obviously notice that both essays are written in the first person by using a subjective “I” from the beginning to explain what they thought, experienced and how they felt as the basic form of personal essays. They both wrote their experiences and how those affected and meant to them.
Both essays are composed by developing stories which happened to the authors. Hogg mentioned her enthusiasm about Davy John by telling a story of how she was getting more infatuated with him and how she was trying to know more about him. Same as in the Black’s essay, she told a narrative by beginning with a Wednesday morning in the summer with beautiful nature she experienced in Hawaii. Both Hogg and Black’s stories are based on their memory and observation. Hogg started the story from her age of six until now, and Black described the details of the world she saw in her homeland.
Also, both subjects of the essay are commonplace. You might make some connections between your own experiences and the stories which Hogg and Black wrote in the essays. The narratives are not dramatic but they might happen to our everyday life as mentioned by Ballenger in “The Curious Writer” (94).
In addition, there have no clear thesis statements but a lot of implicit and literary expressions in both Hogg and Black’s essays. For example, Hogg wrote “I am unable to move. I can’t stand behind Davy Jones and slop mashed potatoes onto my plate while he pours gravy over his just ahead of me” (B8) to express her extreme excitation of being so close to Davy Jones. Also, in Black’ essay, she showed the details about what she saw in Hawaii, “The sun drips through an immense mango tree, pooling light through the smoke and creating bands of bright blue that twist like serpents into the sky” (B12).
As Ballenger demonstrated in “The Curious Writer” (94), the thesis can be implicit, and it frequently emerge late, rather than at the beginning of the essay, you might not be able to recognize the main ideas which Hogg and Black are trying to mention until you read the last parts of the essays. Hogg mentioned that she did a lot of research as much as she could about Davy and she thought she knows about him better than anyone else. But at the end of the essay, it said “As I watch him write “David” not “Davy”, I accept, finally, that this person I know so well I don’t really know at all, and I, the daydream believer, am just a fan” (B10). She finally found herself even not knowing the correct name of David John. Also in the Black’s essay, after a long time she stayed away from her homeland and traveled back and forth between the Islands and West Coast, she finally found herself belong to her home country Hawaii where she is not familiar with.
When writing personal essays, it is absorbing to make your thought and emotion not clear, and use the literary expression in order to create environment which readers can imagine the situation by their own just as the same way Hogg and did for their essays. They use a lot of details and expressions to imply their feelings and thoughts. That is why some people prefer to read books rather than watch movies of the same stories. Readers can create their own world and have their own explanations through reading the unclear expressions used by the writers. Although sometimes I was a little confused by the vague expressions Hogg and Black used, I think both of them are successful personal essays. I can feel how deep the emotions are and how significant experiences they have through reading the essays.
Hogg and Black’s essays are developed as the features of the first person, commonplace, narrative, implicit thesis which Ballenger demonstrated in “The Curious Writer”(94). In my upcoming writing assignment, I might compose my essay based on these conventions but put more variety of expressions instead of describe my idea and emotion directly.
Works Cited
Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Writer. Second. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006.
Black, Catherine. “The Joy of Mud.” Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Writer: B11-B15
Hogg, Charlotte. “I’m a Believer.” Clackmas Literary Review 4.1 (Spring 2000): 83-89 Ballanger, Bruce.
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