Eleanor's Polished Essay #17

Eleanor Hilton
English 9
Mr. Salsich
April 28th 2009

Sorrow and Disappointment:
The Comparison of a Poem, a Short Story, and My Life

Before you can appreciate love you need to have experienced sorrow and disappointment. Before you can appreciate kindness you need to have experienced sorrow and disappointment. Before you can appreciate excitement you need to have experienced sorrow and disappointment. (Parallelism) The short story “Winter Dreams”, the poem “Kindness”, and my life have a lot in common and this example is just one of them.

TS. The short story “Winter Dreams” by F. Scott Fitzgerald goes through a lot of emotional ups and downs. SD. At the beginning of the story Dexter, an assiduous but distracted man, quits his job as a caddy. (Appositive, SAT word and Antithesis) CM. “The little girl who had done this was [Judy Jones]” and for the rest of Dexter’s life that would be the way it was. CM. He would give up everything for her- his wealth, his riches, his career, his well known name, everything. (loose) CM. This would go on, for entire summers, until Dexter realized he couldn’t have her. CM. Judy Jones would be the single thing in his life that he didn’t get. SD. He tried taking his mind off her by marrying some-one else, but in the future when they were both old and both married, Dexter found out that the “great beauty” that stole his heart away was now no more than “all right.”. CM. The story ends here, and as sad as it sounds, it’s not. Dexter wouldn’t have been happy with Judy. CM. She jumped from man to man like there was no tomorrow, and the sole reason that Dexter loved Judy was because she was a “glittering thing”, it wasn’t the personality, or anything else. CS. By understanding what was right and what was wrong, Dexter Green was able to fix his life, even though at first sight it looked a lot worse.

TS. Like the short story, the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye also moves up, down, left and right emotionally. SD. It seems, after reading the poem over a few times, that Ms. Nye went to India after a tragedy that happened in her life. CM. “Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things,” she puts this at the beginning at her poem and I find that it has a strong connection to “Winter Dreams”. CM. Dexter had to lose it all before he appreciated the love he had, and Naomi Shihab Nye had to lose something before she appreciated kindness. SD. Also, like “Winter Dreams”, the poem ends on a good note, “[when] kindness […] raises its head”. CM. Kindness after a long journey finally reveals itself to help you finish the last leg of the journey. CS. When you have crossed the finish line “it goes with you everywhere / like a shadow or a friend.”, to keep telling you how far you’ve come and what benevolent and opulent (SAT words) things are to come of the dark pit you called your sorrow.

TS. At the end of eighth grade everything was ready for me to move up to the upper math group. SD. I had planned it out and knew what I would be learning when. CM. I was excited because I thought that in the next year I would be learning math, as fast as I needed to. CM. Unfortunately it was a lot harder than I thought, without a teacher it took a lot longer to learn the certain skills and keep them in my head. SD. I also became stuck with the flow of summer- getting up late, having a swim, doing hardly any work. (Loose) CM. When the test came around I did okay but it didn’t match up to the 85% mark by a few points, my hopes had fallen. CM. I felt like I had lost a great battle, which was silly, and soon enough, like the poem and the short story, I was back on my feet. CS. Sure all the hours, problems, studying and lessons were for nothing, I would be re-learning everything I had done that summer, but it didn’t matter to me, I will get to Algebra 2 next year. (Tetracolon Climax)

Life has disappointments, we all know that. It’s what we choose to say and do after that disappointment is what shapes us for the future.