I am I, am I; All of creation shivers With that sweet cry. --Yeats

Points Possible:  ____ Due date:  _____

OPTION 1

Background

Reread pages 105-106 of Rule of the Bone, in which Chappie picks out a tattoo.   Though more or less mainstream these days, body art still seems to make a special impression.   Consumer and fashion decisions, of course, say something about what we value, about how we view ourselves and hope to be viewed by others.  But a tattoo, as a relatively permanent decision, a symbol branded onto one's very body, obviously requires extra care.   And therefore the statement it makes about the bearer's identity is especially emphatic.   As Chappie himself remarks, ". . .a tattoo is like a flag for a single individual" (106).   Notice, for instance, what Chappie's own tattoo reveals about his identity—about his priorities, desires, needs, and most pressing problems—and even about the sources of his identity.  If you were to get a tattoo, what flag, what Symbol For You would you choose, and why?  Or, if you have one already, why did you select the one you did?

Instructions

Pick a real, potential, or imaginary tattoo for yourself.  In a 6-8 page essay, describe and explain your choice in detail, discussing in particular what it reveals about who you are. In other words, use this symbol as a springboard for discussing the following:

• how you see yourself as an individual: personal values; sources of personal values; what makes you distinct; benefits and pitfalls of distinguishing yourself from any group; essential problems; turning points or important choices; view of future.
• how you see yourself as a member of one or many communities: what groups do you most identify with? what are your thoughts about the benefits and pitfalls of group identity?
• the role of education—college, literacy—in your sense of self.  (Note:  if school really has no important part in how you see yourself or what you value, then you should explain in some detail how it is that you are a college student writing this very essay.)
• comparisons of your own choice of tattoo and sense of self with Chappie's.  In other words, where appropriate, use the novel and the character/life/journey of Chappie for meaningful points of comparision. The novel can play a large or small role in your essay, as you see fit. Don't make connections for their own sake—make ones that matter to your essay's central idea and main claims.

Try to draw on the Levison essay, and investigate some sample autobiographical essays and creative nonfiction to help you understand this genre.

Audience and Purpose

Imagine that your essay will appear in a collection of autobiographical essays and creative nonfiction to be read by teachers and college students. Because college students are in a transitional period of their lives, encountering new experiences and people, their own identities tend to be in some flux. They will likely then be interested in your experiences as a student and in your own exploration of personal identity. Your purpose is to 1) explore, describe and analyze your sense of self; 2) to offer some interesting and useful general reflections on the topic of personal identity; and 3) to develop a base of knowledge about your own identity to be used in Unit 3.

Alternately, you might consider writing this as a letter to someone you feel does not understand you or appreciate who you really are.  In this case, you purpose (in addition that what is detailed above) is to persuade your reader to see you as you believe you really are.

Background Questions

We've done a little thinking already this semester about education, some of you have been addressing education questions in University Studies 189, and, of course, you've been a student for nearly your entire life.  For this option, you'll draw on your lifelong expertise to explore your own education and your ideas about learning and literacy in more depth. How would you describe your education up to this point? How would you describe yourself as a student? Who have been important teachers or mentors to you? What have been the most important learning experiences of your life? Have you ever had a Eureka! or Oh Wow! experience such as described by Helen Keller in her famous essay about learning what language is? What is it that makes any experience a REALLY "educational" one? What makes a person "literate"? What are some different types of literacy? What are your views about the purpose of education? What is the best possible learning environment? What kinds of tools allow people to truly learn? What are some basic problems in American schools and possible solutions? How should college be preparing you, right now, for the future?

Instructions

Compare and contrast your own education and your ideas about learning to Chappie's in Rule of the Bone.  Be sure to define your terms, and, especially, to focus on several key points of comparison and contrast in your respective educational experiences, providing plenty of supporting detail throughout.  (You won't be able to talk about EVERYTHING; see me for help with focus, if you need to.) Some possible points of comparison might include:

• important teachers or mentors;
• ways in which you consider yourself literate or types of literacy important to you (e.g., "emotional literacy," "information literacy," "cultural literacy," "visual literacy," "basic literacy," "computer literacy," etc.—some research here would help you);
• your role and identity as a student;
• learning environments;
• key subject matter (what you were learning);
• methods (how you were learning);
• basic tools and materials;
• explicit or implicit goals and philosophy of learning;
• how your education has or has not prepared you for the future.
  

Try to draw on the Levison essay about literacy, and do a little research into the comparison-contrast mode of essay—there are many models available over the Web which can help you.  Your paper would benefit also by research into literacy, which may give you a headstart on the unit which follows this one. Be sure, finally, to formulate some interesting central idea about learning and how your education compares to Chappie's.

Audience and Purpose

As in Option 1, I'd like you to see this as an autobiographical essay for an audience of teachers and fellow college students, and perhaps anyone interested in what learning is all about. Your purpose is to 1) describe and analyze key aspects of your education up to this point in your life; 2) offer some interesting and useful personal reflections on literacy; and 3) form a base of knowledge about your own education and literacy to be used in Unit 3.

OTHER OPTIONS

Rule of the Bone and our class topics up till now present quite a few possibilities for essay assignments having to do with identity and education. With my feedback and approval, you may devise your own paper assignment. (If you have an idea, you should meet with me to discuss it thoroughly.)

Here are some possible broad foci:

• Types of literacy
• High school drop outs
• Alternative education
• At-risk teens
• Marginalized students;

EVALUATION CRITERIA FOR ALL OPTIONS

Autobiographical essays and creative nonfiction tend to have fairly flexible and varied structures; you should study models of these genres to help you organize and shape your essay.  In most cases, you should provide an opening which orients and prepares your reader, a body which develops your topic and thesis in detail, and an ending which provides a feeling of closure and wholeness or amplifies your main idea. Be sure your reader can follow your thinking from paragraph to paragraph with the help of transitions. Be sure as well that your thesis and claims are clear and supported/illustrated with copious SPECIFIC DETAIL and analysis. Sources should be properly credited and documented with MLA-style citations where appropriate, and you should carefully edit and proofread your essay for clarity, concision, and adherence to standard English grammatical conventions.

Scarring, tattooing, circumcizing, exercising, excizing, and remaking parts of the body by surgical means, through processes of stretching, marking, and distorting the lips, teeth, ears, necks, breasts, feet, genitals, acculturate the body and its parts.  The body is adorned with color, mud, feathers, or stones and marked by processes securing, at least ideally, its social integration.  Inscriptions mark the surface of the body, dividing it into zones of intensified or de-intensified sensation, spreading a libidinal concentration unevenly over the writen-and-erotic living surface.
    Ritualistically inscribed scars and incisions become the marks of one's social location and position, creating a (provisional) fixity from the flux of the body's experiential intensities. . .The body becomes a text, a system of signs to be deciphered, read, and read into.  While social law is incarnate, "corporealized," correlatively, bodies are textualized, "read" by others as expressive of a subject's psychic interior.

--Elizabeth Grosz

--Dean Martin

 I yam what I yam 
and that's all that I yam. 
                     
--Popeye 

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