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Our Time Essay

Decent Essays

Alex Leen
9/5/12
English 110, 11:00
Final Draft of paper 1 In the essay “Our Time” by John Edgar Wideman he often takes a break from the narrative to address that he has many problems as a writer. He does this to try to consciously address these problems and hopefully solve these problems. He believes that if these problems are not rectified he would destroy any chance he has at telling a truthful account of his brother’s story. To rectify these problems he employs a variety of unique techniques in his writing. Looking at these techniques it is not always 100% clear how these are fixing his problems. It is also evident that the way he is writing may be going against a lot of things we were taught in school about our writing. The …show more content…

The first of the three is Garth’s death. When Garth died he lost his best friend, one of the few people that he truly loved. After Garth died Robby got big into drugs, I think its cause he was depressed after the loss and wanted to forget. It was a major turning point in Robby’s life and in my opinion the most important of the three events that could have started the story. The second one is his own birth. People may wonder why this wouldn’t be the logical starting point seeing as how it’s his birth and makes sense chronologically. The reason this can be seen as starting point of his troubles isn’t because he was born so it could happen as you’d probably think. It’s because for as long as he could remember his birthday was overshadowed. It was right after Christmas so it always felt a little insignificant compared to the biggest holiday of the year. There were also the unfortunate events of death that seemed to follow his birthday around like a cloud. All of his Grandparents died near his birthday and that has to take a toll on you. To have your birthday associated with the deaths of loved ones must be extremely hard. The third and final possible starting point is his childhood home in Shadyside. Nothing particularly traumatizing happened in this passage but it’s still important none the less. In this he talks about how he grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood. He was around white people all the time and felt that they had it easier than him. Also

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