In Praise Of Margins By Ian Frazier

The wilderness can be used to measure against the man made world, a “scientific yardstick.” Throughout the entire piece he is arguing that the importance is not what we can actually see or touch, but what we think of and

The epigraph in this chapter was a passage from Henry David Thoreau 's “Life in the Woods”. In the excerpt, it explains how phenomenal nature is and how majority of people never take advantage of exploring it and discovering new things. Instead, they continue to live life the way its most accepted in society, “All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality... The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening”. McCandless meets Ronald

The casual tone allows him to engage with his readers more effectively, for it feels as if it is a normal day-to-day conversation with the author. This can also relate to the intended target audience. Sherman is attempting to share his experience with school-age children as well as adults who may read his passage. This fact is evident in the way that he simplifies his sentences and yet uses mature enough language and grammar so that his passage can resonate with anyone who can read, young or old. For the kids, he attempts to inspire them by recounting how not being afraid to speak up in class and be the intelligent one among his classmates benefitted him in the long run – he pursued his love of writing, and achieved his goal of being an author. His message to children is that you can do anything, no matter what odds or challenges are stacked against you. For the adults, his message is that nurturing young children and encouraging them to read, write, and learn will produce a well-rounded individual later on, and that everyone is unique and has potential regardless of origin or

In the boiling pot of America most people have been asked “what are you?” when referring to one’s race or nationality. In the short story “Borders” by Thomas King he explores one of the many difficulties of living in a world that was stripped from his race. In a country that is as diverse as North America, culture and self-identity are hard to maintain. King’s short story “Borders” deals with a conflict that I have come to know well of. The mother in “Borders” is just in preserving her race and the background of her people. The mother manages to maintain her identity that many people lose from environmental pressure.

James Baldwin was an African American author who grew up in Harlem. In his “Talk to Teachers”, he discusses how society connects to education. He shows that society shapes a child’s education by conditioning and telling them how to view their place in life. According to Baldwin, society shows that there are unfair rules and regulations in a country that is supposed to believe and practice freedom. When the child grows up, they will realize that they do not have equal opportunities as other children and will then question their own identities. To fix these contradictions, Baldwin believes education should “create the ability to look at the world for himself.” He also believed that a child should “examine everything in order to achieve change and a sense of their own identity.”

Is every interaction involving pleasure, creation, observation or any other form of existence between two people or groups not of the same exact categories, spaces and backgrounds a form of simple exploitation? By a certain definition of getting pleasure from another, this may be the case. However, this is also an uninteresting approach to take and does not allow for appreciation of the insight, brilliance, creativity or individuality of those who create and, particularly in this case, comprise the creation itself.

Present-day American society is fast-paced and constantly moving forward. With so many things to do in such little time, busyness and stress seem to take over our lives. In “The ‘Busy Trap,’” Tim Kreider’s position as to why the audience should strive to avoid busyness is very well thought out, however, some of the points in the essay have faulty reasoning.

Firstly, Ian Frazier begins his short story with telling the tale of his youth, namely his experiences with his young friends, who would go into the woods for no particular reason, other than to have fun. This was such a common occurrence, in fact, that it had become known as going "out into the woods"(para. 1). When I was a primary school student, five of my best friends and I came to a small garden after school every day. We had played balls, been free to talk, ran or lied on the grass. We were back home only someone’s parents came to catch us. We have spent four years like this, day after day, year after year. So I could say I totally understood what Frazier’s feeling was when he was in “the

In the essay “In Praise of Margins” Ian Fraizer upholds the importance of margins as “a higher sort of unpurpose” (Fraizer 45) defined by his time in “the woods” (44). Fraizer and his friends spent most of their time in their margins also known as stomping ice in “the woods”. Fraizer says that marginal place and activities are “the most important kind” (46) because they are “where you can try out odd ideas”. Margins could be visiting a park, a friend’s house, a dance studio or even a football field, also doing things such as swinging on a tire, reading, watching movies, dancing or playing a sport. He argues that margins- whether places or activities- are valuable because they allow a person to be themselves, have fun and use their

In “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff, the author speaks about how schools should use students’ interests to develop their rhetorical and analytical skills. He spends a majority of his essay on telling his own experience of being sport loving and relating it to his anti-intellectual youth. He explains that through his love for sports, he developed rhetoric and began to analyze like an intellectual. Once he finishes his own story, he calls the schools to action advising them to not only allow students to use their interest as writing topics, but instead to teach the students on how to implement those compelling interests and present them in a scholarly way. In perspective, Graff’s argument becomes weak with his poor use of ethos, which he tries to build with his own anecdote but, through the same means he is able to build his pathos and in the last few paragraphs, with his use of logic he prevents his argument from becoming dismissible.

Places have the ability to trigger memories from one’s childhood and experiences. In the excerpt, “In Praise of Margins,” by Ian Frazier, the author argues that marginal places and activities are necessary for our lives because they grant us the opportunity to use our imaginations to have fun without fearing judgment from others. According to Fraizer, these places lack a purpose and don’t need to have an economic value nor need to be productive to be considered valuable. Marginal places are simply a place for you and/or your friends to reminisce all of your memories and reflect back on who you were and how you’ve become who you are now. These marginals are considered to be any place or activity that serve an unintentional purpose. Typically, they originate from childhood adventures such as running around the woods, providing an unintended consequence of a sense of exploration. Through my personal experiences, all of our marginal places and activities change as we age throughout our lives due to societal expectations, but they remain significant because they inspire creativity and allow us to be ourselves.

A new level of expectations and accomplishments came about Junior when he moved to Reardan. He finally had somewhere to have a fresh start where people didn’t know what he was capable of, nor did anyone have a presumption set for Junior. With this new chapter in his life and new beginnings Junior had become someone he never had a chance to be at the Reservation. Junior was smart, intellectual, confident, observant and had a completely different mentality. Thanks to some very important people at Reardan like Gordy and Junior’s basketball coach, they were able to mentor and drive Junior to be the person he was ultimately trying to become. Gordy was an intelligent young man in Junior 's life who was able to connect books to some life morals. Because of Gordy, Junior finally made his own realization that “if every moment of a book should be taken seriously, then every moment of life should be taken seriously as well” (95). At this moment in the book, Junior started to realize there was meaning to his life; why not enjoy it doing the things you love and are passionate about. One passion in

Throughout the world of suburbia, there seems to be a persistence of communities who attempt to create a perfect, enclosed world for the whole of the community to live in. By providing for everything that the inhabitants would ever want, suburbia is able to close itself off from those around it that it deems unworthy of belonging. While this exclusivity helps to foster the sense of community, it can also bring with it isolation from the outside, and also from within, and have disastrous results. Throughout the semester, there have been a number of works that have dealt the issue of isolation, but the greatest representation of a work whose physical qualities in its representation of suburbia help to

Like most Americans, I expect to find in every city, every town, even in every village in the country, an outdoor recreation area or what is usually called a park; and I am seldom disappointed. No matter how new and unfinished a town may be, or however old and poor, I know that it will contain, wedged in among the crowded blocks of buildings, a rectangular space with grass and trees and meandering paths and perhaps a bandstand or a flagpole.

Even as a young boy, Stephen experienced rejection and isolation at school. On the playground Stephen "felt his body [too] small and weak amid the [other] players" (Joyce 8). His