Cover Letter
Wang Teng
Date: June 20, 2007
Cover Letter
To Whom It May Concern,
I enrolled the course “Academic Writing” this semester to improve my English writing skills. It is a good course and I have learned a lot. Here are some of my writing works selected from the class.
The reading log is my first reaction to the story “The Grass-Eaters”, in which you can see my interests in the story and why I further discuss it in my essay. The final timed-writing shows my ability to write a passage quickly, though not so perfectly, with a critical time limit. Then it comes with the three essays in which you can trace the stage of my thinking, writing and revising work
Essay 1 is just a trial draft. I did it more like a freewriting, which is an exercise we did in every class for keeping the flow of our ideas moving. I just put my original thoughts into the essay, accumulating the quotes, thesis and ideas, with little consideration of how to keep these things closely related. I even did not finish the ending. Maybe it is not a good essay but it is a good start.
Then we went through the process of “peer review”. My peers—two lovely girls in my class—gave me a lot of encouragement and advice to my draft work. They gave their opinions in a direct way by telling me “this is good and clear” or “associate social background here would be better”. New ideas pumped into my brain when I listened to them.
With the help of that, I wrote essay 2, in which I selected some of the ideas from my peers which I think might be helpful and tried to merge them into my essay. I added more evidence about the tone after I deep explored the story, and I finished the conclusion part of my essay after my contents became clearer.
After I saw the instructor’s comment on my draft 2, in which he listed 19 marks pointing out the unsuitable things in my essay, ranging from the informal type of the date and the tense error, to “too many quotes” and the contents that are not closely related to the thesis, I sent e-mail to him to further discuss the comments I do not understand. And after that, I found most of the marks are helpful to make my essay accurate and formal.
With the precious advice from the instructor, I completed the essay 3, which is the final draft, after adding more details that support the thesis and removing unnecessary quotes and trying hard to think about an attractive title. Then I began the long and hard work of editing, in which I proofread my essay several times, paid great attention to the red and green lines of Microsoft Word, corrected the errors the moment I found them. I tried as far as I could to avoid mistakes in the final draft.
The great difference of the three essays would clearly show a picture of how I gradually got my essay make better sense. Perhaps no matter how hard I tried, the mistakes are unavoidable. However, I’m still trying to–-reaching for a level that seems so far—and it is just in the process of trying to be a good writer that I really improved my writing skills.
I’ve learned a lot from the course and it is a good experience. I have a strict and responsible instructor who is particular about everything I write. I have lovely peers who positively discuss the essay with me without pointing out every grammatical mistake I’ve made. I have learned many new things about formal writing like “thesis”, “paraphrase” and so on. My feeling is: writing can be fun—in the freewriting, in the peer review, in developing your ideas, or even in the seemingly tedious revise work, in the process of getting down your ideas to the paper and finally seeing your writing become better and better.
Thanks for reading my papers.
Sincerely,
Wang Teng
Essay Draft Three
Wang Teng
Date: June 20, 2007
Draft 3
Why a Tears-in-Laughter Tone?
Poor people lead miserable lives. Different people may look at it from different angles. Most would feel sad and frustrated; some, however, may feel quite different, as Ajit Babu, the narrator did in the story “The Grass-Eaters” by Krishnan Varma. In the story, Babu, an average poor Indian tramping with his wife Swapna, did not have a stable place to live, and got nothing to eat but piles of grass. However, he did not seem to be sad but just the other way about, quite optimistic. Krishnan used a very humorous tone to tell the story, which is quite meaningful and needs to be explored more deeply.
Reading this story can make one feel sad and amused at the same time: sad about the poor life Babu led and meanwhile amused by the way the story is told. Overall, my first impression of the story was “Why Babu would be so optimistic when he confronted some many tragedies?” Actually, the tone used in the story should be considered as Krishnan’s aim to express the bittersweet feeling of both the average poor Indians and Krishnan himself.
Humor can be sensed almost everywhere in the story. When Babu lived in the footpath, he woke up one morning and found the woman beside him was not his wife, but an extremely slim stranger woman whose age could hardly be examined. (56) This humorously shows that the Babu’s were just among the numerous refugees who had no places to live but in the overcrowded footpaths. Then we would be most amused at the scene when his wife and the woman’s husband were so furious that one of them acted like a furious reptile and the other a muscular King Kong. (56)
When they found a wagon to live, they “cheerfully [opened] and shut the doors for a full hour.” (57) It is quite fun to imagine this humorous scene, though it may be a little bit exaggerated. It also directly reveals the happiness of the couple when they found a new place to live. And one would surely laugh at the phrase “no fear of waking up with a complete stranger in your arms” (57) because it just makes us reflect back the previous scene in the overcrowded footpath.
Another kind of humor can be sensed when Swapna said “she (short pause) did (long pause) not want (very long pause) her (at jet speed) baby-to-be-bone-in-a-running-train” (57). Here with the speed and rhythm of the speaker included, Krishnan creates a scene as if we were really listening to Swapna.
Apparently, Babu did not seem to be a bit frustrated when something terrible happened to him. He even gained some sort of happiness from those sufferings that would have driven most of us cry. He seemed to be optimistic most of the time because he regarded his tramping life as “an intensely thrilling experience” (57). But wait, is that what Babu really felt? Were all the average poor Indians so content with their lives?
Maybe it would be better to reflect and explore the subtext of the sentences above again. Describing the stranger as “a bag of bones” (56), Krishnan actually describes clearly the appearance of a woman lived in a footpath—an average poor Indian at that time. Although we may laugh at the couple considering the doors of the wagon as “all the privacy a man and wife could want” (57), a feeling of sympathy will arouse because we all know that the doors are just basic needs for normal people and there is nothing to be that satisfied when we just possess our own doors. And besides the theatrical effect of “at jet speed” (57), it can be noticed that Swapna was rather reluctant and grievous when she claimed she had a new baby and did not like the running train—the terrible tramping life. All of the above directed to the feeling of sadness—just the opposite of what Babu seemed to be.
If we go on to the latter part of the story, a slight change of the tone could be found—the story is still told in a humorous way, but humor is outweighed by a considerable force called sadness. We would see what we want to get out of the title--“Grass is our staple food now” (58). “The Grass-Eaters”—the name that is more like an animal rather than human beings—indicates the lowest living standard of the Babu’s, an archetypical example of the poorest Indians. Other facts about their living standard include: Babu and his wife tried as far as they could to save their no-decent clothes and footwear. (58-59). But what is all this for? Babu and his poor neighbor give the answer: it is just finding a way to “reduce [their] consumption” (58). This confirms that Babu was taking great pains to survive. No one would laugh at this. Instead, most of the readers would cry at his poor life.
That was exactly what was happening to every poor Indians. At the end of the story, a vivid snapshot of what was happening in Indian cities is presented: people “loot nearby shops, break street lamps, take out a procession, hold a protest meeting … and set off crackers.” (58-59)— Overall, it is a social catastrophe. Poor people would definitely do something extreme like this when their basic needs of life are not met. Thus, it can be inferred that Krishnan has the similar feeling as the average poor Indians do. He feels miserable about them and he tells the story to share his observation of the life of the poorest people in his country as well as the terrible social condition at that time.
But at the bottom of Babu’s heart, or to say, of Krishnan’s heart, he did want a change of his life, since he mentioned his son, “is in the Naxalite underground” (58). The Naxalite movement is aimed to liquidate estates and distribute land among the rural poor, but notice the word “underground” in the quotes, it means that the movement was still not in a state that would quickly achieve considerable improvements. Besides this, Babu’s desire to change was not very strong. He was not even prepared to these changes both physically—he was a bare-boned, night-blind man who got only one ear and one leg; and mentally—he just talked his son as someone “to do our funeral rites” (59)
Therefore, it can be concluded that Krishnan uses the humorous tone to describe the excitement when Babu sense some sort of happiness, which actually indicates the opposite of the surface—that Babu was tasting the bitter of his poor life and that he was unable to make changes, for he admitted at last, in a quite sad and serious way:
Our life together has been very eventful. The events, of course, were not always pleasant. But, does it matter? We have survived them. … We live very quietly, content to look at the passing scene: a tram burning, a man stabbing another man, a woman dropping her baby in a garbage bin. (59)
This statement confirms that Babu’s power was too weak to make some changes to. Therefore, all he could do was to lower his living standard to survive, trying to take every spark of excitement of his miserable life as happiness. That is the tragedy of his life—the tragedy of all poor Indians at that time. And that is what Krishnan really feels and wants to express.
Throughout the story, we could understand why Krishnan uses a humorous, or better to say, tears-in-laughter tone to tell such a sad story. Although the tone may seemed humorous, still it cannot be considered only as a way to show the optimistic attitude of Babu while he led a dead-end life, but as a way to reflect the bittersweet feeling of the average poor Indians--they had no alternatives for their lives, so they were just content with the fact that they have survived the difficult times.
Work Cited
Varma, Krishnan. “The Grass-Eaters.” 1985. Rpt. in The international story: An Anthology with Guidelines for Reading and Writing about Fiction. Ruth Spack. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994. 56-59.
Essay Draft Two
Wang Teng
Date: 5/22/2007
Draft 2
Title
(Introduction & My reaction) Poor people lead miserable lives. Different people may look at it from different angles. Most would feel sad and frustrated; some, however, may feel quite different, as Ajit Babu, the narrator did in the story “The Grass-Eaters” by Krishnan Varma. In the story, Babu, an average poor Indian tramping with his wife, did not have a stable place to live, and got nothing to eat but piles of grass. However, he did not seem to be sad but just the other way about, quite optimistic. Varma used a very humorous tone to tell the story, which is quite meaningful and needs to be explored more deeply.
The first time I read the story, I felt miserable about the poor life Babu led on one hand, but I was quite amused by the way the story is told. Overall, my first impression of the article was “How come Babu would be so optimistic when he confronted some many tragedies”. And after I reread the story, I thought the tone used in the story should be considered as Varma’s aim to express the bittersweet feeling of both the average poor Indians and Varma himself.
(Explore the story & Tone) Humors can be sensed almost everywhere in the story. When Babu lived in the footpath, he woke up one morning and find that “the woman beside me was not Swapna at all but a bag of bones instead. And about fifty or sixty or seventy years old.” Here, it can be concluded naturally that the woman beside Babu was not his wife but an extremely slim stranger whose age could hardly be examined. “Then came Swapna, fangs bared, claws out…Next came the woman's husband, a hill of a man, whirling a tree over his head, roaring. That was my impression, anyway. I fled.” His wife and the woman’s husband were so furious to see this that one of them acted like a furious reptile and the other a muscular King Kong.
When they found “A whole wagon for ourselves—a place with doors which could be opened and shut—we did nothing but open and shut them for a full hour—all the privacy a man and wife could want—no fear of waking up with a complete stranger in your arms.” It is quite fun to imagine a man and his wife doing nothing but cheerfully open and shut the doors of a wagon for an hour. And “a complete stranger in your arms” just makes us reflect back the previous scene in the overcrowded footpath.
Babu “found it an intensely thrilling experience”, but his wife, Swapna, did not like the wagon. She told Babu “she (short pause) did (long pause) not want (very long pause) her (at jet speed) baby-to-be-bone-in-a-running-train.” Here, Varma used something like “pause” in the brackets and hyphens between some words to reveal the rhythm and speed of her speech, which is often applied in dramas, creating a scene as if we were really listening to Swapna, It is most amusing to see this kind of vivid theatrical effect in this expression.
Apparently, Babu did not seem to be a bit frustrated even when something terrible like “minus one ear” or “lost one leg” happened to him. He even gained some sort of happiness from those sufferings that would have driven most of us cry. He seemed to be optimistic most of the time. But wait, is that what Babu really felt? Were all the average poor Indians so content with their lives?
Maybe it would be better to reflect the sentences above again. When he described the woman he did not know as “a bag of bones”, Varma actually described clearly the appearance of a woman lived in a footpath—an average poor Indian at that time. While we laugh at the couple “did nothing but open and shut the door”, regarded it as “privacy”, and “felt I was God”, a feeling of sympathy will arouse because we all know that the doors are just basic needs for normal people and there is nothing to be that satisfied when we just possess our own doors. And besides the theatrical effect of “at jet speed”, it can be noticed that Swapna was rather reluctant and grievous when she claimed she had a new baby and did not like the running train. All of the above directed to the feeling of sadness—just the opposite of what Babu seemed to be.
(Slight change of the tone & Author’s attitude) If we go on to the latter part of the story, we could find a slight change of the tone—still very humorous, while plus some kind of sadness. We would see what we want to get out of the tile--“Grass is our staple food now”. When Babu claimed him and his wife as “The Grass-Eaters”—the name that is more like an animal rather than human beings—we may notice the low living standard of the Babu’s. “I make do with a loin cloth and Swapna with a piece slightly wider to save our few threadbare clothes from further wear and tear.” clearly tells us that the Babu’s did not even have decent things to wear. But what was all this for? Just finding a way to “reduce the consumption” of their life.
That was exactly what was happening to the average poor Indians. At the end of the story, a vivid snapshot of what was happening in Indian cities is shown: people “loot nearby shops, break street lamps, take out a procession, hold a protest meeting … and set off crackers.” —on the whole, a catastrophe. Poor people would just do something extreme when their basic needs of life are not met. None of us would laugh at these scenes.
But at the bottom of Babu’s heart (or to say, Varma’s heart), he did want a change of his life, since he mentioned his son, Prodeep, “is in the Naxalite underground.” The Naxalite movement is aimed to change India’s structure by liquidating estates and distributing land among the rural poor. But the desire to change was not very strong. Besides that the movement is still “underground”, Babu was not powerful both physically—he was a bare-boned, nightblind man who got only one ear and one leg; and mentally—he talked Prodeep just as a son “to do our funeral rites.” His power was too weak to make some changes. Therefore, he could just lower his living standard to survive and tried to grasp some “happiness” in his no happy life. And that is the tragedy of his life. He admitted at last, in a quite serious way:
Our life together has been very eventful. The events, of course, were not always pleasant. But, does it matter? We have survived them. … We live very quietly, content to look at the passing scene: a tram burning, a man stabbing another man, a woman dropping her baby in a garbage bin.
(Conclusion) Throughout the story, we could see how Babu could be so “content” with his poor life. Although the tone of the story may seemed humorous, still it cannot be considered only as a way to show the optimistic attitude of Babu while he led a dead-end life, but as a way to reflect the bittersweet feeling of the average poor Indians--they had no alternatives for their lives, so they were just content with the fact that they have survived the difficult times.
Essay Draft One
Wang Teng
Date: 5/5/2007
Draft 1
Title
(Introduction & My reaction) Poor people lead miserable lives. Different people may look at it from different angles. Most would feel sad and frustrated; some, however, may feel quite different, as Ajit Babu, the narrator did in the story “The Grass-Eaters” by Krishnan Varma. In the story, Babu, an average poor Indian tramping with his wife, did not have a stable place to live, and got nothing to eat but piles of grass. However, he did not seem to be sad but just the other way about, quite optimistic. Varma used a very humorous tone to tell the story, which is quite meaningful and needs to be explored more deeply.
The first time I read the story, I felt miserable about the poor life Babu led on one hand, but I was quite amused by the way the story is told. Overall, my first impression of the article was “How come Babu would be so optimistic when he confronted some many tragedies”. And after I reread the story, I thought the tone used in the story should be considered as Varma’s aim to express the bittersweet feeling of both the average poor Indians and Varma himself.
(Explore the story & Tone) Humors can be sensed almost everywhere in the story. When Babu lived in the footpath, he woke up one morning and find that “the woman beside me was not Swapna at all but a bag of bones instead. And about fifty or sixty or seventy years old.” Here, it can be concluded naturally that the woman beside Babu was not his wife but an extremely slim stranger whose age could hardly be examined. “Then came Swapna, fangs bared, claws out…Next came the woman's husband, a hill of a man, whirling a tree over his head, roaring. That was my impression, anyway. I fled.” His wife and the woman’s husband were so furious to see this that one of them acted like a furious reptile and the other a muscular King Kong.
When they found “A whole wagon for ourselves—a place with doors which could be opened and shut—we did nothing but open and shut them for a full hour—all the privacy a man and wife could want—no fear of waking up with a complete stranger in your arms.” It is quite fun to imagine a man and his wife doing nothing but cheerfully open and shut the doors of a wagon for an hour. And “a complete stranger in your arms” just makes us reflect back the previous scene in the overcrowded footpath.
Babu “found it an intensely thrilling experience”, but his wife, Swapna, did not like the wagon. She told Babu “she (short pause) did (long pause) not want (very long pause) her (at jet speed) baby-to-be-bone-in-a-running-train.” Here, Varma used something like “pause” in the brackets and hyphens between some words to reveal the rhythm and speed of her speaking, which is often applied in dramas. It is most amusing to see this kind of vivid theatrical effect in this expression.
Apparently, Babu did not seem to be a bit frustrated even when something terrible like “minus one ear” or “lost one leg” happened to him. He even gained some sort of happiness from those sufferings that would have driven most of us cry. He seemed to be optimistic most of the time. But wait, is that what Babu really felt? Were all the average poor Indians so content with their lives?
Maybe it would be better to reflect the sentences above again. When describing the woman he did not know as “a bag of bones”, Varma actually describe clearly the appearance of a woman lived in a footpath—an average poor Indian at that time. While we laugh at the couple “did nothing but open and shut the door”, regarded it as “privacy”, and “felt I was God”, a feeling of sympathy will be aroused because we all know that the doors are just basic needs for normal people there is nothing to be that satisfied when we just possess our own doors. And besides the theatrical “at jet speed”, it can be noticed that Swapna was rather reluctant and grievous when she claimed she had a new baby and did not like the running train. All of the above directed to the feeling of sadness—just the opposite of what Babu seemed to be.
(Slight change of the tone & Author’s attitude) If we go on to the latter part of the story, we could find a slight change of the tone—still very humorous, while plus some kind of sadness.
(Conclusion)
Final-timed Writing
06300180101
Wang Teng
June 21, 2007
Timed Writing Three
Directions: If you were to create a filmed advertisement (a "trailer"
for a movie based on The Grass-Eaters, which scene would you select? Why? Discuss ways in which you might film the scene. (100%)
I would like to choose the wagon in the story as the scene in the trailer. The reason is: 1) It just caters for the theatrical effect in a film. The scene mainly includes: A disposed wagon, a couple strangely opening and shutting the door, their sleeping in it and waking up find that it was moving. Those are just among the popular elements of the Hollywood eyeball-catching stuff. Therefore, it would surely be very attractive and make a strong impression on the audience. 2) It best summarizes the main content of the story: the moving wagon represents a kind of “thrilling experience”, which fits for what Babu behaved on the surface. However, it is sad to see two slim persons have no stable place to live and indecently try to find a wagon to live, which exactly reveals the terrible tramping life of the couple—as a reflection of the life of the poorest Indians. And that is what the story and the film are supposed to express.
If I were the director, I would film the scene in this way: First, a disposed wagon will be seen from the distance. Then the camera lens moves closer, and the audience would see the main character, Babu and Swapna, with a feature to show their appearance. Then the couple theatrically opens and shuts the door and sleep in the wagon. Then comes with what Swapna said that she did not want her baby born in a moving train. During the each “pause” in the sentence, the audience would see the moving wagon. After that, it is the lens of the couple waking up and finding that they were at a whole new place. At the end, I would like to make the camera lens moves farther with a picture of the couple eating grass by turns of the pictures of the terrible condition of India at that time as something to reveal the name and the main idea of the film.
Reading Log
I very much like the story. It’s a sad story, indeed, but it is stated in a quite humorous tone, and I like the humorous tone. Ajit Babu lived a miserable life, but there is nowhere apparent in story where I can see he is sad and frustrated (he seemed even a bit cheerful when he found a new place to live), which I think, shows his confidence to live on, and meanwhile makes me feel more miserable for him. I think it is a kind of “tears in laughter” style.
The story reminds me of some poor people in our country. Most of them are farmers in rural areas, who are also very poor as the Indians in the story, leading bitter lives. We should no way forget them, although some (but few) of us live in cities and get abundant things to live a more decent life.