Essay1 Language and choice of wording is always the key to writing an engaging essay. The attitude the writer has determines what the readers think of the story and how they follow along with the theme. In this case “On Going Home” by Joan Didion has a variety of approaches towards her feelings and attitude during the experience of her trip going home after a period of time. This trip is filled with emotion, confusion and excitement as her family sees her one year old daughter for her first birthday. The detailed accounts of situations that Joan notices are what make this essay memorable, such as pointing out her husband’s misunderstandings with her family. Joan’s constant attitude changes and the way detailed acts are described successfully portray the experience in the manner she wants the readers to understand them. Realizing that an issue is there goes towards her favor, most of the time people with problems never submit to acknowledging the issue and always neglect it. In this case Joan understands that she has been living a double life. Although it is never mentioned that she dislikes her current living situation, it can be inferred that she prefers the similarities in living with her family in the environment she was raised. The essay is started off in a comical sense of writing comparing her husband’s traits to her family’s traditions. “My brother does not understand my husbands inability to perceive the advantage in the rather common real-estate transaction known as “sale-leaseback,” and my husband in turn does not understand why so many of the people he hears about in my fathers house have recently been committed to mental hospitals or booked on drunk-driving charges.” (Didion 620) says Joan while comparing and contrasting the differences in traits between her husband and brother while maintaining an uplifted attitude. Emotion comes into play when the author begins comparing herself with herself, and what this means is that her satisfaction with her current life has not been meeting how she really desires to carry out her lifestyle. This can be seen in her language throughout the majority of the story but what precisely pictures her changing emotion is when she states “I had by all objective accounts a “normal” and a “happy” family situation, and yet I was almost thirty years old before I could talk to my family on the telephone without crying after I had hung up.” (620) This shows the reality of how much this is affecting her attitude towards herself, her husband, daughter and even her affection towards her direct family. This then translates into her visitation to a family graveyard in a nearby city and realizes that it has been vandalized since the last time she was there. Later on “Once home I mention the broken monuments in the graveyard. My mother shrugs,” (621) says Joan with despair. What can be taken from this experience and a possible reason she put this into her writing is to portray that what she once found important ...

1. Essay1
Language and choice of wording is always the key to writing an
engaging essay. The attitude the writer has determines what the
readers think of the story and how they follow along with the
theme. In this case “On Going Home” by Joan Didion has a
variety of approaches towards her feelings and attitude during
the experience of her trip going home after a period of time.
This trip is filled with emotion, confusion and excitement as her
family sees her one year old daughter for her first birthday. The
detailed accounts of situations that Joan notices are what make
this essay memorable, such as pointing out her husband’s
misunderstandings with her family. Joan’s constant attitude
changes and the way detailed acts are described successfully
portray the experience in the manner she wants the readers to
understand them.
Realizing that an issue is there goes towards her favor,
most of the time people with problems never submit to
acknowledging the issue and always neglect it. In this case Joan
understands that she has been living a double life. Although it is
never mentioned that she dislikes her current living situation, it
can be inferred that she prefers the similarities in living with
her family in the environment she was raised. The essay is
started off in a comical sense of writing comparing her
husband’s traits to her family’s traditions. “My brother does not
understand my husbands inability to perceive the advantage in
the rather common real-estate transaction known as “sale-
leaseback,” and my husband in turn does not understand why so
many of the people he hears about in my fathers house have
recently been committed to mental hospitals or booked on
drunk-driving charges.” (Didion 620) says Joan while
comparing and contrasting the differences in traits between her
husband and brother while maintaining an uplifted attitude.
Emotion comes into play when the author begins

2. comparing herself with herself, and what this means is that her
satisfaction with her current life has not been meeting how she
really desires to carry out her lifestyle. This can be seen in her
language throughout the majority of the story but what precisely
pictures her changing emotion is when she states “I had by all
objective accounts a “normal” and a “happy” family situation,
and yet I was almost thirty years old before I could talk to my
family on the telephone without crying after I had hung up.”
(620) This shows the reality of how much this is affecting her
attitude towards herself, her husband, daughter and even her
affection towards her direct family. This then translates into her
visitation to a family graveyard in a nearby city and realizes
that it has been vandalized since the last time she was there.
Later on “Once home I mention the broken monuments in the
graveyard. My mother shrugs,” (621) says Joan with despair.
What can be taken from this experience and a possible reason
she put this into her writing is to portray that what she once
found important in her life (family) is now crumbling away and
that she (as a mother) is now progressively adapting to
unwanted changes in her life.
Overall Joan’s constant attitude changes and the way
detailed acts are described, successfully portray the experience
in the manner she wants the readers to understand them.
Through her trials and acknowledgements of the issues that are
being suffered, she has dedicated change for the good of her
newly one-year-old daughter. The attitudes towards life have
been tested but through challenge a greater outcome will arise.
Being in the responsible role of a mother pushes her desires
aside for the benefit of the child. At least she can “promise to
tell her a funny story” (613)
Work Cited
Didion, Joan. "On Going Home." Literature for Composition:
Essays, Stories, Poems, and Plays. By Sylvan Barnet, William
Burto, and William E. Cain. Boston: Longman, 2011. 619-21.
Print.

3. Essay2
Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “I Fell in Love, or My Hormones
Awakened” is one of several short stories and poems in Ortiz’s
book “Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto
Rican Childhood”. The story stands alone by itself but it is
better understood in relations to Cofer’s other works. The
thesis can be presented that while there are deep cultural
undertones in this story, in reality, there are more cultural
commonalties than distinctions. As the title suggests, a young
girl thinks she has fallen in love. The boy of her affections,
however, hardly knows she exists. Never-the-less, he does
manage to steal a kiss and add one more notch to his long list of
conquests.
Cofer is Puerto Rican and many of her stories in this book and
others focus on the Puerto Rican experience. In “I Fell in Love,
or My Hormones Awakened” the young girl that is portrayed is
likely Cofer herself. The story is written in first person and
Cofer has acknowledged at several different times that her work
is often a merging of truth and fiction. It is partially
autobiographical but is it also partially a product of her vivid
imagination. In this story she lives in what is described as a
high-rise barrio. Her family’s neighbors are primarily other
Puerto Ricans and Latinos. The neighborhood is in many ways
isolated from the mainstream world yet it is still very much a
part of that world.
The father of the young girl in “I Fell in Love, or My Hormones
Awakened” is certainly a part of the outside world. He, just as
Cofer’s actual father did, serves in the US Navy. The girl, once
proud of her father and his military service, has fallen prey to
her raging hormones in more than one way. She is so focused
on the boy, an Italian boy at that, she neglects her own family.
Indeed, she even shuns them and is embarrassed by them. Her

4. friends too are neglected as the girl focuses all of her energies
into gazing longingly at the boy who barely knows she is there.
The infatuation described in “I Fell in Love, or My Hormones
Awakened” is not a positive thing. Despite her traditional
Puerto Rican upbringing, an upbringing that emphasizes
chastity, self esteem, and devotion to family, the girl is willing
to give up anything just to earn the boy’s attention. She is
rigidified by the fact that the boy is not Puerto Rican and that
he is, in her eyes at least, rich. His father owns and operates
the “English” grocery store in the neighborhood and the family
invests money into the school the neighborhood children
attend. She sees herself as inferior to him.
There are many reasons that the girl should turn away from the
boy but she cannot bring herself to do so. This is true despite
the fact that the boy proves to be not worthy of young love. He
slumps around the neighborhood and school acting as though he
is disinterested in everything around him. At times he is even
belligerent to his teachers and other adults. Still, the girl adores
him. It is only when he takes something from her and then
turns away towards a new conquest that she finally comes to her
senses.
The focus “I Fell in Love, or My Hormones Awakened” has on
Puerto Rican culture actually almost fades in comparison to the
focus it places on young love in. That, quite likely, is Cofer’s
intent. Regardless of culture, human behavior has some basic
commonalities. Young love, or what Cofer more aptly
identifies as raging hormones, can have many deleterious
effects regardless of culture. The girl in the story certainly
suffers from those effects. Unfortunately, so too do her family,
friends, and other acquaintances.

5. Essay3
Steven Doloff’s "The Opposite Sex" was first published in the
January 13, 1983 edition of the Washington Post. Doloff
presented an intriguing assignment to his students. He wanted
them to imagine themselves in the shoes of the opposite sex.
Doloff wanted the students to focus on what might happen to
them in a one day period of they were a male verses a female or
vice versa. The students were asked to record their perceptions
of that imaginary experience in an essay. The results were
interesting to say the least. They were also exactly what would
have been expected by anyone cognizant of the stereotypical
views of gender and inherent inequalities between the sexes that
still drive our world.
One of the first obvious reflections that indeed our views of
gender are very much stereotyped is that females more so than
males were more eager to complete the essay. Males, in
contrast put it off as long as they could. Could it be that males
recognized that they inherently hold a superior societal position
when compared to females? Could it be that not only did males
want to imagine themselves being anything “less” than they
already were but they also didn’t want to subject themselves to
the possibility of being considered effeminate or possibly even
homosexual as a result of an essay? Dollof’s article really
didn’t explore these possibilities but there was obviously some
factor(s) at play that made females more eager than males to
temporarily switch gender roles at least in their imaginations!
As might be expected, when males did resign themselves to
participating in Dollof’s experiment, they often wrote of women
in a domestic role cooking and cleaning their homes and
otherwise caring for their families. Dinner, after all, had to be
on the table when the man of the household walked through the
door every evening! Alternatively, male essay writers
sometimes presented their day in the life of a single woman, a

6. woman’s whose primary focus in life was getting someone to
take her out and wine and dine her! The male expectation of
being rewarded for being a ready escort even occasionally
slipped through the essays! Males (presenting themselves as
females) wrote about slamming the door in their escort’s face at
the end of every evening’s excursion. In other words, these
males viewed females as being out to get something free and
males as being willing to provide the “something” as long as
they were rewarded in the end!
Females, of course, harbored their own stereotypical images of
what it was to be a male verses a female in our world. Females
typically viewed the male life as more exciting and free
wheeling. Instead of presenting themselves as males laboring
away to bring a paycheck home to their families, females wrote
of their male personas as engaging in exciting sports activities,
having no curfews and always being on the prowl for a female
to entertain themselves with. The underlying goal in this form
of entertainment was sexual in most instances. Indeed, some
females even wrote of their imaginary exploits as men who
completed one sexual liaison after another.
There were, in all, many interesting correlations that emerged
with Dollof’s essay assignment. First, males wrote more
reluctantly and only produced essays when they were nearing
the due date. Females, in contrast, began their essays early and
even wrote more than did their male counterparts. Female
students writing these essays also seemed to be inherently more
aware that the world was driven by stereotypes and
inequalities. They even made direct observations about the
male gender having "physical and social privileges" that the
female gender simply does not have (Dollof 437).
What became clear in Dollof’s experiment was that even today
we are bound by certain stereotypes regarding gender roles.
Dollof concluded that we are "burdened with sexist stereotypes

7. and sexist self-images" (438). Indeed, it is these stereotypes
that form our ideas of who we are in regard to the rest of the
world. While many are eager to expose them, not so many are
willing to take the steps needed to eradicate them! In one
respect it might be argued that gender stereotypes are precisely
what form gender gender roles. They reflect society’s
expectation of what males should act like as opposed to what
females should act like.
In the past society’s imposition of gender roles was sometimes
one enforced with physical and economic strength. While
women are still physically different than men and have certain
physical limitations, in other words women aren’t likely to
successfully slug it out to effect change, women have made
many inroads towards the eventual accomplishment of societal
equality. Yes, there are still economic factors that sometimes
keep women subdued but there too women are making progress.
A very important result of Dollof’s experiment was that women
and men alike were always eager to return to their own
respective genders once the experiment was over. That fact
alone attests to the fact that, despite the lingering problems that
must be overcome to effect true equality, women still want to be
women.