Personal Responses to the Essays - Essay Example

?3 Essays: Personal Responses Essay Encounter” by Carol Shields (Govier 31) “Encounter” is a narrative about what could have been an inconsequential stay of the author Carol Shields in Tokyo, Japan as a delegate to an international conference. It was an attempt by the author to document the trip originally by trying to portray her experience as a boring and ordinary episode in the life of a traveler on an official business assignment. That attempt to depict her Tokyo stay as nothing of consequence was however punctuated by what Shields would call as an “encounter” on her last day in the city. Resigned to label the whole conference as a “lonely punishment,” she proceeds to her one last official dinner function at a famous hotel in Tokyo some fifteen minutes walk away from her lodging place. It was this “walk in the rain” that made up for all the unwritten descriptions she would have of the experience. The walk, it turned out, provided the essence and meaning of her entire stay in Japan – yet ironically, nothing was uttered or said during that brief (she could not even remember how many minutes) togetherness with a stranger under one umbrella, with the raindrops and the sound of their footsteps hitting the pavement providing the only effects in addition to the silence. The author concludes her narrative with a breath under suspension after the stranger disappeared instantly without a word leaving her in a state of “mysterious shock.” Shields is her usual self in finding humanity in every aspect or event or place or circumstance where she ascribes meaning to even the most ordinary thing or activity such as sharing an umbrella with a complete stranger. One cannot resist to admire Shield’s masterful play of words and emotions as she moves from her treatment of ordinary, drab, inconsequential events and transforms them into meaningful “encounters.” I am completely taken by her figures of speech: “…invaded me like a kind of flu… a temporary vacuum that had nothing to do with Japan… hypnotic walking…walking towards the unimaginable.” I photo-played the ordinariness of her stay in Japan based on her description and I could sense her dryness, or maybe the dryness of the event she was describing, and felt her remorse as if I was there. It was as if she took me by the hand when she shifted to a colorful and rich description of that brief “rain walk.” I could even see or feel myself as being the towering stranger holding up the umbrella for a woman, and walking almost gingerly with somebody he does not know from Adam. I could see myself as the stranger quickly disappearing from the woman’s view as soon as we hit the sidewalk of the designated hotel, at the same time experiencing the agony and perplexity of Shields after being left without any word, or cue whatsoever. It was Shields wielding her power and ability to put the reader in a similar state of suspension. Essay 2: “Goodbye Muse, Hello Prada” by Goran Simic (Harsent 84) This essay speaks of the author’s random thoughts and feelings about his work assignment in Canada after he and his family migrated to that country due to the war in Yugoslavia that left deep sad imprints in his mind. The writer talks longingly about how his father would express his dislike for the author’s decision to leave Bosnia and earn a living in Canada using brawn and muscles instead of brain. Simic has already earned a name as a writer in his country before the war broke out, and he muses over the shift in his means of livelihood when he came to Canada. He speaks dispassionately about the kind of work he was doing at Holt Renfrew warehouse, a work that his father was referring to as the work of a slave. In a matter-of-fact writing style, he narrates how he went about his work as the one in-charge of moving the designer clothings, not failing to notice the disparity of the price ranges of such clothes compared to their earnings. Nevertheless, despite the low standard of his job, he would still find time to practice his occupation as a writer - during lunch breaks, after work at 4 pm, even during commuting time which would take three hours. He also would inject some pun or fun on the trivialities of their work and would employ humor with sarcasm on how much each worker would love to quit their work immediately given a fair chance to do it. While Simic writes as if he has accepted his reality at that time, there is a brewing passion in his words and style that would seem to want to lead him to an emancipation, which actually happened by the time he would end his essay with his eventual resignation from his work at the warehouse. As I read through this thought-provoking Goran Simic”s work, I could sense embedded in the writer’s words a raging passion to be free and express himself as a poet. I could sense his urge to get his pen and transfer his thoughts and emotions on paper, something he could not do while moving those boxes of designer clothes at the warehouse. He has learned to identify the odd times that could be available moments for creative literary work: after work, during breaks and even while commuting. I could identify with his use of “quotes” from other people, as in his opening statement that is attributed to his father about his work and providing validation to his own feelings. Or from his friends (“This is the time for who you are.” ”Where is Armani?”). Or from Hilary Weston (“Great! I hope one day you’ll be manager.” “Pity. But good luck.”) The quotes which came in between his narration and description of little incidents relating to his work and his occasional use of figures of speech as in “comparing prices with their weights, or poetry and clothing, or a war that finished like a football game, making reading very interesting and thought-provoking. Essay 3: “My Body Is my Own Business” by Naheed Mustafa (Mustafa) This essay is all about the thoughts running inside the mind of a Canadian-born Muslim woman regarding the use of the traditional hijab scarf. The writer, apparently at 21, harbors unsettled ideas about why that cloth contraption had to be used at all. Having been educated and reared in a Western setting, she has gone through the motions peculiar to a teenage woman trying to lead a mode-oriented life and spending a lot of money trying to be or to look beautiful like Cindy Crawford or any other beauty model for that matter. She talked of having portrayed being an object of passion for the male beholder and now questions the logic of all those things, side by side with the logic of the use of the scarf. The writer questions both practices in relation to the world’s appreciation for beauty. For the Muslim woman, it is strict tradition that her body and her beauty are her own private concern. For the modern woman of the western influence, beauty has to be enhanced and exposed to the passion of the world. It is a conflict in the writer’s mind, as well as her convictions, which she settles by deciding that for a woman to be called beautiful, she does not need to put herself up for display nor be pressured to wear an outer covering to assert that her beauty is her own business. I can understand why these contrasting sentiments about how beauty should be appreciated or beauty being an object of free expression by its owner roam the minds of many intellectual women. The writer can be best understood after one has known that author Naheed Mustafa is a graduate of the University of Toronto with honors in political science and history and is pursuing further studies. She is a grown up intellectual and must have honed her faculties and her facilities long enough to give her the depth of conviction she expresses relative to the hijab use and the seeming commercial exploitation of beauty in the West. I agree that if beauty as well as the body are elements of possession of their owners, they must not be subjected to the control of a religious tradition or belief nor must they be allowed to become objects of manipulation of commerce or business. I can appreciate the position of the writer in asserting her personal right to protect her body the way she feels or thinks she should and not by any outside or external influence, which means that, a woman becomes truly free in her self-expression if she can decide for herself to wear or not to wear the scarf or choose not to be taken by the commerce of beauty. Works Cited: Mustafa, N. My Body Is my Own Business, Toronto Globe and Mail, June 29, 1973. Accessed October 15, 2011: www.jannah.org/sisters/naheed.html Harsent, D. Goodbye Muse, Hello Prada, Toronto Globe and Mail, February 24, 2000, p 84 Govier, K. Encounter by Carol Shields, Without a Guide: Contemporary Women’s Travel Adventures, June 1, 1996, p 31 Read More