Essay Instructions: (I took this from the sylabus) Turn-Ins: Literary Review. Also, complete the following tasks:
1. Each student will read and analyze the student essay found on pages 114-115, Ideas and Details text written by Miguel Martinez.
2. Also read the writer, peer editor, and teacher comments found on page 115.
Turn-Ins: Each student will conduct a Literary Review,(see page 226, Ideas & Detailstextbook), on the Miguel Martinez essay. This assignment is to be written as an essay. Please identify this file as: Your Last Name Literary Review.doc.
Here is the student essay that the professor wants us to review. I typed it from the book as it appears.
Bastard.
Miguel Martinez
I have always been awed by the strange bonds fathers and sons are supposed to have with their sons. Literature, television, and film have shown these relationships to be complex and intense. Even my friends in school would relate massive power struggles. The part about love they left out but I knew it was there.
I grew up believing my father to be dead, At least that?s what my mother told me when I asked her. I know the only reason I did ask was I just entered kindergarten and my classmates were always talking about this strange being, a sort of God called Daddy. Contrary to popular belief, those of us having only one parent do feel that anything is missing. At least I didn?t until I found out I was an oddity. There is no biological instinct inside of us saying that there should be someone else. There was just me and my mother. Period.
Off I went to school. My mother was involved with other men, and we lived with two of them, they were never ?dad?, just ?Uncle?. These relationships didn?t work out, and when I was six my mother gave up on men entirely. We moved to the east side of the city, and she started working. For the next ten years, my mother and I didn?t see much of each other. She was a waitress, keeping odd hours, and I was in school or playing. She did make a big point of eating together, even if it was in the greasy spoons she worked in.
When she was able to spend more time with me, I was sixteen, and pretty set in my ways. I suppose I should have let her have it her way, bit the arrogance of youth took hold again. I left. I didn?t have anywhere to go, I just wanted to travel. I spent the next 8 months traveling the country. I did return eventually, only to find my mother filled with a sense of failure. It hurts knowing I had caused someone such hard feelings. She begged me to enter the Navy, and while I wasn?t a big fan of the military, I went.
The night before I was to leave for boot camp, my mother sat me down and asked if I ever wondered who my father was. I told her quit honestly, that I didn?t, that she had said he was dead. Well, she gave me his name and said he was living in South Carolina. She told me he didn?t care about me, as he had always known who I was, but never made any attempt to contact me.
The news didn?t faze me. Friends will ask if I have any urge to find him. I get satisfaction from their expressions when I tell them I have his address and phone number. But just as they can?t understand my apathy toward him, I can?t understand their reliance on fathers.
Thank you
V/r
Vinny Balestrieri