Lydia's Essay 17

Lydia Schulz
Mr. H. Salsich
9 English
April 26, 2009

Cleaning My Room:

An Essay on Two Poems, a Short Story, and a Word

        1. If I were cleaning my room right now, I would find a wide assortment of objects: journals, boxes of little treasures, hats, even old t-shirts. 2. If you saw all these commodities, you may think it was just a random collection, but the one thing they all have is sentimental value. 3. Some people find sentiment in objects and souvenirs while others find it in a memory, but wherever it may be found, the feelings are strong, powerful. 4. Some, like Emily Dickinson in her poem “I’m Nobody,” do not feel much of this, but others, such as Naomi Shihab Nye in her poem “The Traveling Onion” and Laura in “The Garden Party,” are exceptionally sentimental.
        TS: In “The Traveling Onion” by Naomi Shihab Nye, there is a great amount of underlying sentiment hidden among her words. SD: In the first stanza of the poem, Nye offers a description of the onion. CM: Most people would see it as just an onion with nothing particularly remarkable about it, but she talks about it so lovingly that it makes one wonder. CM: Perhaps something happened to her involving an onion and now whenever she sees one, she feels sentimental toward that memory. SD: Nye goes on to say that “it is right that tears fall for something small and forgotten.” CM: The initial reaction to this statement is the fact that onions make people’s eyes water, but maybe she was going for something more meaningful than this. CM: Perhaps she is saying that an onion deserves for people to feel sentimental toward it. CS: It may be subtle(SAT word), but Ms. Nye seems to be determined to vouch for the onion’s right to be felt for.
        TS: Nye’s poem is very sentimental, but while reading “I’m Nobody” by Emily Dickinson, I didn’t feel this at all. SD: If I were to define “sentimental,” I would say that being sentimental about something means having strong feelings about something that happened in the past. CM: This would usually be used to look back on something with fond memories, not negative thoughts. CM: I would use sentimental to describe someone’s thoughts about something meaningful. SD: For these reasons, I see no sentiment in “I’m Nobody.” CM: The poem is so short, simple, fresh, as if two people are meeting for the first time(asyndeton). CM: There is no baggage to weigh this poem down; it is light and clean with no memories to look back on. CS: Like a new friendship, there is nothing to reflect lovingly upon, only a blank future for them to fill.
        TS: Unlike “I’m Nobody” by Emily Dickinson, the feeling in these passages from “The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield was almost tangible. SD: In the first passage, Laura was trying to show her emotions to Jose, being almost too sentimental for a man she did not know(participle). CM: Of course, as Jose said(appositive), you cannot try to stop the world for every death that occurs, but it seemed that Laura did not know when to let go. CM: She cared a little too much, for eventually, Jose had to tell her that “you [can’t] bring a drunken workman back to life by being sentimental.” SD: The second passage contained a different kind of sentiment: Em, the dead man’s wife, mourning for her lost husband(appositive). CM: Having just lost a spouse, a soul mate, and a best friend,(participle, purposeful repetition) there is no way she wasn’t thinking about him. CM: In her grief, she was looking back on the memories she made with him, being sentimental to his memory. CS: The way Katherine Mansfield writes, it is as if you can feel every twinge of emotion passing through the characters’ minds.
        1. Some days, I find myself sitting on the floor, sifting through boxes, photos and old memories. 2. These are the times when I feel most sentimental. 3. And though I have to look back on the sorrow and adversity(SAT word) along with the happiness, I am glad I can feel these strong emotions that show me that I am alive. 4. Sentiment is a powerful thing; it may not be able to bring a man back to life, but it can come close.