Eleanor's Polished Essay #16

Eleanor Hilton
English 9
Mr. Salsich
April 20th 2009

A Balancing Act:
A Comparison between a Short Story and Two Poems on Sentimentalism

Our lives can be difficult to balance from time to time. Sometimes our thoughts are in the extreme, and other times there is so little to think about that it appears as if we don’t care. However, we need to find a balance between these two. There are two poems and a short story that I feel relate to this in the terms of being sentimental; “I’m Nobody”, “The Traveling Onion”, and “The Garden Party”.

TS: In the short story “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield, the main character, Laura, is overly sentimental about a man, dirty from working in the mines and living a lower-class life, who has died. (participle) SD: She even goes to the point where she wants the party planned by her family to be cancelled. CM: “And just think of what the band would sound like to [that family]” she says. CM: It is good that Laura feels sorry for the family that has to endure a death; that is natural for a human. CM: However, “You [can’t] bring a drunken workman back by being sentimental.”. SD: Unfortunately Laura frets about the situation through her whole party, and only understands the lesson near the end of the story when she visits the home of the deceased man. CM: “It was simply marvelous” she states and I knew after reading that one line that the story was complete. CS: I know that Laura was just trying to be prudent (SAT), but she ended up pushing herself to the extreme.

TS: Another poem, “I’m Nobody” by Emily Dickinson, I feel, comes to quite a different conclusion. SD: It appears as if she doesn’t mind being “Nobody”, it appears as if the poem has nothing to do with being sentimental at all. CM: However I find the truth to be that she’s writing this poem to persuade herself of something. CM: To persuade herself that she doesn’t want or need to be “somebody”. CM: “How public like a frog” she, worried and confused, tells herself. (appositive) SD: At her home in London while writing, she probably saw thousands of nobles, dignified and pretentious (SAT) “somebody’s”, traveling along in their carriages wanting nothing to do with peasants. (appositive and parralellism) CM: This poem is a example of going down into the lower extreme of not caring at all, even going to the point to try to persuade herself not to even want to be important, or noticed, or cared for. CS: You need to care and feel; you can’t lock it up forever.

TS: Another poem “The Traveling Onion”, by Naomi Shihab Nye, moves to neither extreme, but finds itself at the middle. SD: In the first stanza she sums up the onion she is chopping for her stew. CM: She peels of the “crackly paper” and slices it down the middle “A history revealed”. CM: In the second stanza she writes how as important onion is it is never commented on, never thought of; but it’s the single part of the meal that pulls everything together. SD: Even though she discusses the onion through the entire poem, it never feels as if she is being overly sentimental about it. CM: She is just writing about one small vegetable making a big difference despite the fact it is not once mentioned. CM: Subtlely giving the meaning, this is one of the best ways to write poems. (participle) CS: It’s not too deep but you find yourself thinking about the words for a long time after.

Not every poem can be balanced in terms of being sentimental. And as long as there is something else the writing is balanced about everything works. With “The Garden Party” it could be friendship, with “I’m Nobody” it could be a silence, and I’m sure that “The Traveling Onion” has a quality that is not so balanced.