NPO #9: Farewell to Manzanar
I may be saying Farewell to Manzanar, but my loyal Ticketholders out there deserve a warm hello, especially those of you in Texas, Louisianna, and Florida, who are still enduring hurricane season. You especially deserve some warmth and goodwill sent your way.
While we're on the subject of tragedy, today's selection is an essay FROM Period 1 (January 14, 1999), the prompt of which asked me to pick a character from the novel, Farewell to Manzanar, and...yes, compare and contrast that person's positive and negative reactions to being a prisoner in the Manzanar internment camp. The score at the top reads "5-/22," which is nonsense now, but given the standardized zero-through-six grading scale at my high school at the time, I think the actual grade is five-minus, which is like a low A- or high B+. And given the words of praise Mr. Wightman wrote on my essay--I can't believe I actually remembered the name of my 9th grade English teacher--I don't think the score is a fraction. What the 22 meant at the time, I don't recall.
Again, be ready for a long post with my current thoughts on the work interjected at various points.
Read the book here or here or listen to it here.
While we're on the subject of tragedy, today's selection is an essay FROM Period 1 (January 14, 1999), the prompt of which asked me to pick a character from the novel, Farewell to Manzanar, and...yes, compare and contrast that person's positive and negative reactions to being a prisoner in the Manzanar internment camp. The score at the top reads "5-/22," which is nonsense now, but given the standardized zero-through-six grading scale at my high school at the time, I think the actual grade is five-minus, which is like a low A- or high B+. And given the words of praise Mr. Wightman wrote on my essay--I can't believe I actually remembered the name of my 9th grade English teacher--I don't think the score is a fraction. What the 22 meant at the time, I don't recall.
Again, be ready for a long post with my current thoughts on the work interjected at various points.
Read the book here or here or listen to it here.
Sean A. Wilkinson
January 14. 1999
#73, Period 1
"Papa Wakatsuki: The Moss-Covered Rock"
It's hard to believe that even though people are using today's technology to talk to each other from opposite sides of the Earth, talking face-to-face is still hard to do. Every day, people deal with stress, family, and personal problems. But the ancient problems of fear and bias still exist today. Many of us deal with these things negatively or violently because we're not sure how to deal with them otherwise. This is the case with Papa Wakatsuki in Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's Farewell to Manzanar. The internment experience after Pearl Harbor brings much stress to all members of the Wakatsuki family. Papa has the least to do and worry about, but he seems to take it the hardest, and deals with it in the best and worst of ways.
Essaymaster's Note: This is another great example of how to write a good introductory paragraph. Reading this eighteen years later, I found myself drawn from one sentence to the next, wanting to know what direction the essay would take. The paragraph flows smoothly and logically from introductory sentence to thesis by way of deeply-ingrained human prejudices and knee-jerk reactions and how they relate to the selected character and the story as a whole.
Novice essayists might have trouble with prompts that are of a binary nature (such as compare and contrast, positive vs. negative, etc.) because formal essays require five paragraphs: Intro, three supporting, and a closing. The trick (quite an obvious one, if you think about it) is that rather than comparing things in one paragraph, contrasting them in the next (or devoting one paragraph to the positive and another to the negative), and having done with it, you base a third paragraph on some kind of middle ground (choosing examples that are both negative and positive, or, as I did in the Underworld essay, having two contrast paragraphs that each highlight one of the subjects you are discussing and using the third to compare the two). Remember, there is always a middle ground; you just have to find it. Back to the essay....
Throughout the story, Papa Wakatsuki deals with all things Manzanar in a variety of negative ways. The night of his arrest, Papa becomes "a man without a country who happens to look just like the enemy" (p.6). Even when he burns his connections to Japan, the truth is still above the surface, and Papa is arrested. When Papa comes back from Fort Lincoln nine months later, he is a nearly beaten man; looking ten years older. He uses the cane as a sort of security blanket, and when the limp goes away, he uses it as "a swagger stick, lashing out at his hallucinations" (p. 34). To hide from the neighbors who call him Inu, Papa isolates himself behind the door, living on booze as an old hermit. Anger and paranoia soon take over, along with his drinking problem. He nearly kills Mama for conspiring against him, and some less significant things that she probably never did. When not used correctly, anything can become a weapon.
Essaymaster's Note: Inu is Japanese for both "dog" and "traitor." This paragraph seems less like a traditional, formal essay paragraph than summary to me now. The quotes are well chosen, and the point of the paragraph (Papa's negative reactions and their consequences) is clearly demonstrated, but still, too much summary. I guess I haven't gotten over that particular flaw yet. The last sentence is an upending of a common trope/quote about improvised weaponry that impressed the teacher and I guess made sense to me at the time to use it, but now it seems tacked on, despite its cleverness.
But not all of his coping skills were bad. He dealt with certain situations in positive ways as well. When the FBI takes him in for questioning, Papa "still has his dignity, and won't let the deputies push him out the door. He leads them." (p. 6). Papa turns the tables again at Fort Lincoln by interrupting and questioning his interrogator on personal things and authority. And even later on, when Manzanar becomes more slack on confinement, Papa opens up right along with Manzanar. He goes hiking, does water colors of the mountains, improves Block 28, cares for the orchards, and does miscellaneous work around camp to cope with relocation and pass time more constructively. "Papa's life ends at Manzanar." But there is still a small piece of rock left in all of that moss.
Essaymaster's Note: While better with commentary, this paragraph is still heavy on summary. Again, good use of quotes and logical flow that highlight the positive aspects of Papa's coping strategy. Page number is missing on the last quote as well. Final sentence is a callback to the essays title, emphasizing the rolling stone (the strength and resilience of the person) rather than the moss (hardships).
Positive and negative coping intersect when Papa goes to Lone Pine for a new car (not brand-new, but new to him). Mama says no, but he goes anyway, and comes back with a flat-tired Nash. Papa orders everyone to climb in, and then drives like a maniac, running over trashcans and tumbleweeds. This final defiant outburst is only because he doesn't want to be cramped in the bus like livestock. "He shouted at the waiting internees, 'don't miss your bus!'" (p. 144). "He tooted the horn and yelled out, 'No bus for us! No bus for us!'" (p. 145). Papa Wakatsuki proved that every candle flickers violently before it goes out.
Essaymaster's Note: Notice that I wrote this paragraph somewhat unconventionally, lumping the two quotes together and having the commentary (which still feels like extra concrete details and summarization here) appear before the quotes it is supposed to support. This is okay to do sometimes, as long as the paragraph has logical flow, which this does. Spoiler: my use of the phrase "final defiant outburst" and the last sentence probably led you to this conclusion already, but Papa Wakatsuki dies shortly after the scenes depicted in the quotes. Speaking of flicker, check out this track by the rap group, Atmosphere:
Essaymaster's Note: This is another great example of how to write a good introductory paragraph. Reading this eighteen years later, I found myself drawn from one sentence to the next, wanting to know what direction the essay would take. The paragraph flows smoothly and logically from introductory sentence to thesis by way of deeply-ingrained human prejudices and knee-jerk reactions and how they relate to the selected character and the story as a whole.
Novice essayists might have trouble with prompts that are of a binary nature (such as compare and contrast, positive vs. negative, etc.) because formal essays require five paragraphs: Intro, three supporting, and a closing. The trick (quite an obvious one, if you think about it) is that rather than comparing things in one paragraph, contrasting them in the next (or devoting one paragraph to the positive and another to the negative), and having done with it, you base a third paragraph on some kind of middle ground (choosing examples that are both negative and positive, or, as I did in the Underworld essay, having two contrast paragraphs that each highlight one of the subjects you are discussing and using the third to compare the two). Remember, there is always a middle ground; you just have to find it. Back to the essay....
Throughout the story, Papa Wakatsuki deals with all things Manzanar in a variety of negative ways. The night of his arrest, Papa becomes "a man without a country who happens to look just like the enemy" (p.6). Even when he burns his connections to Japan, the truth is still above the surface, and Papa is arrested. When Papa comes back from Fort Lincoln nine months later, he is a nearly beaten man; looking ten years older. He uses the cane as a sort of security blanket, and when the limp goes away, he uses it as "a swagger stick, lashing out at his hallucinations" (p. 34). To hide from the neighbors who call him Inu, Papa isolates himself behind the door, living on booze as an old hermit. Anger and paranoia soon take over, along with his drinking problem. He nearly kills Mama for conspiring against him, and some less significant things that she probably never did. When not used correctly, anything can become a weapon.
Essaymaster's Note: Inu is Japanese for both "dog" and "traitor." This paragraph seems less like a traditional, formal essay paragraph than summary to me now. The quotes are well chosen, and the point of the paragraph (Papa's negative reactions and their consequences) is clearly demonstrated, but still, too much summary. I guess I haven't gotten over that particular flaw yet. The last sentence is an upending of a common trope/quote about improvised weaponry that impressed the teacher and I guess made sense to me at the time to use it, but now it seems tacked on, despite its cleverness.
But not all of his coping skills were bad. He dealt with certain situations in positive ways as well. When the FBI takes him in for questioning, Papa "still has his dignity, and won't let the deputies push him out the door. He leads them." (p. 6). Papa turns the tables again at Fort Lincoln by interrupting and questioning his interrogator on personal things and authority. And even later on, when Manzanar becomes more slack on confinement, Papa opens up right along with Manzanar. He goes hiking, does water colors of the mountains, improves Block 28, cares for the orchards, and does miscellaneous work around camp to cope with relocation and pass time more constructively. "Papa's life ends at Manzanar." But there is still a small piece of rock left in all of that moss.
Essaymaster's Note: While better with commentary, this paragraph is still heavy on summary. Again, good use of quotes and logical flow that highlight the positive aspects of Papa's coping strategy. Page number is missing on the last quote as well. Final sentence is a callback to the essays title, emphasizing the rolling stone (the strength and resilience of the person) rather than the moss (hardships).
Positive and negative coping intersect when Papa goes to Lone Pine for a new car (not brand-new, but new to him). Mama says no, but he goes anyway, and comes back with a flat-tired Nash. Papa orders everyone to climb in, and then drives like a maniac, running over trashcans and tumbleweeds. This final defiant outburst is only because he doesn't want to be cramped in the bus like livestock. "He shouted at the waiting internees, 'don't miss your bus!'" (p. 144). "He tooted the horn and yelled out, 'No bus for us! No bus for us!'" (p. 145). Papa Wakatsuki proved that every candle flickers violently before it goes out.
Essaymaster's Note: Notice that I wrote this paragraph somewhat unconventionally, lumping the two quotes together and having the commentary (which still feels like extra concrete details and summarization here) appear before the quotes it is supposed to support. This is okay to do sometimes, as long as the paragraph has logical flow, which this does. Spoiler: my use of the phrase "final defiant outburst" and the last sentence probably led you to this conclusion already, but Papa Wakatsuki dies shortly after the scenes depicted in the quotes. Speaking of flicker, check out this track by the rap group, Atmosphere:
Back to the essay.
The universal saying for Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's Farewell to Manzanar seems to be "good servants can also be bad masters." Papa's anger, defiance, and "boozing" served him well at times. But after extensive use, they took him over, and he became so violent that only a punch in the nose could stop him from something he'd regret later on.
Essaymaster's Note: An extremely brief paragraph. I'm not sure where the quote was from, but it is a common idiom that fits well with the rest of the essay, referring to the fact that too much anger, defiance, and alcohol (the "servants") can gather more moss than the average stone can handle and be enough to make any candle flare up before snuffing it out, in effect becoming weapons that turn against their master when used incorrectly. The essay as a whole might seem aimless if you haven't read the book, but that's just another illustration of how important it is to know your audience before you begin writing.
Were you part of my intended audience? Did you enjoy the book? Let me know in the comments, and remember to like, share, and subscribe with the buttons on your screen and click ads between posts to get me some ad revenue.
After going through my past work, I've decided to just make them New Piece Offerings in chronological order from this point on, regardless of how relevant or good they are. A second New Piece Offering about Manzanar is on the way tomorrow night, followed by a Ticketverse Throwback about another man without a country. Stay tuned, and
Essaymaster,
out.
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