* asterisks are used
to mark essays that are not in the 3rd Edition of the Fifty Great
Essays— the Adventure Journeys were based on the second edition so pages
numbers for the 3rd Edition will also be different.
The Great Essays presented in the text are of many different lengths ranging from as little as a page to the longest, which is about 16 pages. The length of an essay is not a very good indicator of its content, only of the number of words by which the content is conveyed. Some of the essays are dense hard nuts of meaning while others package their meaning discursively in a spread out and rambling way.
Often the best way to explore ideas is to see them in different settings, like gems each set to reflect and refract the light in a different way so that they sparkle with flashes of meaning. Setting them along side one another produces a new experience, an ensemble or coordination of light contrasting and supporting, harmonizing and clashing in such a way as to create new experiences and new insights.
I have arranged such journeys of adventure for you as described below. Each has received a title intended to provoke questions or themes. The essays are then listed in the order I think they ought to be read to go on this journey. There are some hints about what I saw. You may see different things. At the end I provide some focal points on which you might base a short reflection of your own, the general theme of which would be What I discovered on my journey and will vary because each one's journey is based not only on the material they read, but on the journey through life they have already experienced.
To go on one of these journeys of adventure, begin by taking out your reflective journal, a notebook or some paper and prepare to interact actively with the material you are reading. You should try to capture important terms and important ideas, relationships and dynamics that are related by the essay you are reading. Don't read at a hectic pace, but instead consider ideas contemplatively as you read pausing thoughtfully over arresting points. Try to establish a personal relationship with the author, seeing through his or her eyes and imagining that he or she is not only speaking to you directly, but that you have something to learn from them. Ask yourself questions. Why are they saying this? What is important? How does this apply to my life? Do I agree or disagree with what the author is saying? Why? or Why not? Read each of the stepping stone essays in the adventure this way ¾ Write reflections in your journal or notes.
When you have finished. Go back through your notes and try to discover threads of connectedness between the different essays. Do they agree or disagree? Do they speak of the same problems in different ways? Are there thematic threads that you think tie them together? How do these differences impact how you feel about what you have read? How does it apply to you? If you reject ideas in an essay, why is that?
Finally, write a reflection that unites your reflections of the essays with the lived life experience you have undergone and the expectations that you have of the future. The reflection should be at least two double spaced typed pages which you will turn in. You may write more if you feel so inspired. Keep a copy and put it into your reflective journal at the place where you kept your reflections as you read the essays.
100 Learning to Read and Write by Frederick Douglass 5 pages
122 Arriving at Perfection by Benjamin Franklin 4 pages
*394 Writing and Reading by Richard Wright 13 pages
Total: 22 pages
Regardless of your station in life, you find yourself at many disadvantages compared with others and you can do two things. You can be a fatalist and accept your lot as though it is ordained of the gods, or you can commit yourself to personal excellence. It is your decision.
How might the methods employed by Douglass, Franklin and Wright be applied to my own life? What are the things that I would like to overcome? What are the strategies that I might employ? How can others help or hinder me? Can I create allies or can I make my adversaries my unwitting helpers?
2. Compulsions and Passions, Perceptions and
Pathologies, Pitfalls All About Me
*127 In the Kitchen by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 7 pages STYLE
311 Under the
Influence by Scott Russell Sanders 14
pages ALCOHOLISM
160 The Company Man by Ellen Goodman 2 pages MISPLACED PRIORITIES
Total: 23 pages
My life is lived one day
at a time and the time I have, whatever it may be is finite. What I do with my time is not who I am, but
it is determinative of who I may become.
It seems important then to reflect on what will make me who I ought to
be. My life will soon enough be over and
when that time comes, how will I be remembered?
What are the priorities that I have for my life? What weaknesses do I have that sap my strength and make me less than I truly ought to be? Do those around me see me as life-giving or life-sapping? What am I now and what do I want to become?
3. This Place is My Home. I Find Solitude and Peace Here. I Am Always Going Home.
379 Once More to
the
244 Coming Home
Again by Chang-Rae Lee 10 pages
281 The Way to
Rainy Mountain
by N. Scott Momaday 6 pages
Total: 22 pages
Our journey through life
is a progression of phantasms. We are
defined by others and by our decisions and lived experiences. Sometimes it is the memories we cherish that
give us strength and these are a foundation, like a home. They are a place from which we draw
sustenance and that nourish our souls.
They are where we go to remember who we truly are. As the shadows grow long and the sun of our
day approaches the horizon, it is from these places, these vantage points, that
we can look back and see ¾ what?
Where is my true home? Who is there with me? Are there others that remember or is my story mine alone? What restores my soul? What troubles me and can I make a new home if the old one is no more?
4. I Am Not How I Appear. I Am So Much More.
339 Just Walk on
By: Black Men and Public Space Brent
Staples 3 pages
*135 Crimson Tide by Atul Gawande
13 pages
353 Mother Tongue by Amy Tan 6
pages
Total: 22 pages
I go through life as many
people. I am the person others see me
as. I am the person that I would like to
be. I hide from others those things I
believe are unflattering. Inside I have
an image of myself that may or may not be accurate. My friends see a different person than
strangers. I have aspirations and doubts
and fears. Perhaps only God knows me for
who I truly am.
How am I perceived by others? Do I like the person I am, or am I ashamed of
myself? I try to be good and mostly succeed, but I also fail to be who I think
I should be. Why is that? Sometimes my body betrays me and I do things
that I later regret. Can I do something
to control that? Do I judge others based
on superficial things? Why do I do that? What can I do to become more the way I know I
want to be?
5. Am I Faking? How Do I Deal With My Self-Image?
370 Beauty: When
the Other Dancer Is the Self by Alice
Walker 7 pages
*267 On Being a
Cripple by Nancy Mairs 12 pages
78 Burl's
by Bernard Cooper
3 pages
Total: 22 pages
On the inside I am
different than on the outside. I am not
all right. I am faking it, trying to
make the pain go away and I'm not sure it is working. Perhaps you can see me for who I really am,
but I am afraid.
What disfigures my soul? Am I struggling with something I perceive as a defect? How do I treat others who are disfigured or diseased or different in some compelling way from me? Am I charitable or judgmental? Have I reached out to help someone else in pain whether internal or external? How do I deal with suffering? Do I hide myself or am I visibly authentic? How do I want my world to change?
6. How can I balance the rights of the individual with
the rights of the nation ¾ Who decides? Who
rules?
257 The Morals of
the Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli 8 pages
292 Shooting an
Elephant by George Orwell 7 pages
*204 On Seeing
Total: 25 pages
Are some men made to rule
over other men? Does power convey any
justification? Just because I can do
something, does that mean I have the right to do it? People always seem to be pushing me around
and telling me what to do. Is that
right? Where do the limits lie?
I live in a representative democracy, unlike the majority of the people in the world. Does this fact impact how I see myself in relation to the state? When do others have the right to tell me what to do? Have I ever been resentful in the presence of superior authority or superior power? How do I deal with power when I have power over others? How should someone in power act? How do people I see with power actually act? Justify your position. On what can you base your positions? Is that valid?
7. All Around Me Are Lessons
390 The Death of
the Moth by
*305 The Spider and
the Wasp by Alexander Petrunkevitch 6 pages
94 Living Like Weasels by Annie Dillard 4 pages
188 The Courage of
Turtles by Edward Hoagland 6 pages
301 The Seam of the
Snail by Cynthia Ozick 4 pages
Total: 23 pages
We are not alone. The world is a connected place filled with
creatures great and small and they speak to us. The language they use is their lived lives. We derive the lessons nonetheless, some quite
eloquent and pointed, others more subtle and sustained.
I am not a moth or a weasel or a turtle or a snail and anything but a person yet I see in these creatures little morality plays. What characteristics of animals do I identify with? Is this an effective way to write an essay? To what extent are these really little myths, casting human properties onto the animals? Which of these do you identify with? Which do you find a stretch? If you were to draw a lesson from an animal, what animal would it be and what lesson would you draw?
8. What do I Believe based on Things Likely Not to be
True?
*169 Women's Brains by Stephen Jay Gould
6 pages
367 Aren't I a
Woman? by Sojourner Truth
1 page
335 Declaration of
Sentiments and Resolution by Elizabeth Cady
Stanton 3 pages
386 A Vindication
of the Rights of Women by Mary
Wollstonecraft 2 pages
331 A Woman's
Beauty: Put Down or Power Source by Susan
Sontag 3 pages
65 Femininity by Susan Brownmiller
5 pages
107 About Men
by Gretel Ehrlich
3 pages
Total: 23 pages
I wonder what the truth is
about men and women. Are men really from
Mars and women from Venus? It seems as
if there is a great deal of stereotyping going on, not just historically but
even today when we pretend to be so much more open. You probably can identify some stereotypes yourself.
Beauty is thought today to be something primarily characteristic of women. Strength is something expected of men. Women in the past were imagined to have less capable brains than men which was used to deny them the vote. But don't we still think in stereotypical terms? What ideas do you uncritically accept? Have you ever examined them to see if they are really true? How would you know? Who do you believe? Why?
9. If We Trivialize Important Things We Will Soon
Enough Pay a Price
89 Marrying Absurd by Joan Didion 3 pages
61 Road Warrior by Dave Barry 2
pages
200 Nowhere Man by Pico Iyer 3
pages
196 Salvation by Langston Hughes 2 pages
237 A Bachelor's
Complaint by Charles Lamb 6 pages
Total: 16 pages
I think there are
important things that hold society together.
They are things like trust, marriage, a love of home and hearth and God,
family and friends. Our society seems to
be one where all such values are increasingly trivialized or are under
attack. No doubt some of this can be
explained by the many changes our society has experienced in the century just
past and may continue into the future.
But should we enter upon a brave new world without reflection and
conscious decisions based on prudential and thoughtful caution?
What are the values that I think are important? Why? What values do I think have to be rethought in our modern society? Why? What values have been important in my life? Where do values come from in the first place? Have I experienced a crisis in my own life that changed by ideas about what is true and what is not? What things in my own life have been trivialized that I think ought not to have been?
10. Sometimes It Seems that Satire Is the Way to
Highlight the Truth
177 On the Pleasure
of Hating by William Hazlitt 10 pages
344 A Modest
Proposal by Jonathan Swift 8
pages
Total: 18 pages
Sometimes the outrageous
is the only response one can make to highlight what's wrong with the
world. The reality of man's inhumanity
to man is often enough the theme because we live in such a troubled world of
ugly contrasts, that we become hardened to the contrasts so as to ignore or
pretend we don't see them. Satire can
often shatter our complacency.
What are Hazlitt and Swift reacting to? Are there contradictory things in my world that cry out to me for such a treatment? What are they? Why do I feel that way about them? Perhaps I can write a short satire to highlight something that I find outrageous in our world? How would I approach such a challenge?
37 of 50 essays covered so far. You might want to consider selecting a group
of essays to be a journey of adventure yourself. It doesn't matter if you repeat essays
already used because many have overlapping themes which would work well in a
different setting.