UNIT TWO: Personal Narrative

67. Personal Narrative:

UNIT TWO: NARRATION Direct Teach with guided practice on exercises and quizzes(80% or better) 9-17;

60 (Punctuating Dialogue)

The Short Prose Reader Assignments: Chapter 4: Narration. Read (139-143) and Langston Hughes "Salvation" (152-158) and George Orwell "A Hanging" (167-180).

Short Papers: Character Sketch with dialogue

Personal Narrative with dialogue (some college application essay

prompts)

Rubric: 1-17 (+1 for transitionals #11, varied sentence structure, active voice )

Quiz: 9-17, 60 (dialogue); Glossary

Definition: A personal narrative is a first person account of one significant moment in one’s life. It will develop the setting, characters, dialogue, action, climax, and resolution associated with the moment. All personal narratives build to the climax-a point of irrevocable consequences-and end with an implicit or explicit resolution that establishes the significance of this climactic moment.

Week Two: (Phil) Direct Teach with guided practice on exercises and quizzes(80% or better) 9-17;

60 (Punctuating Dialogue)

The Short Prose Reader Assignments: Chapter 4: Narration pp. 139-143; “Salvation” 152-158; “A Hanging” 167-180

Short Papers: Character Sketch with dialogue

Personal Narrative with dialogue (some college application essay

prompts)

Rubric: 1-17 (+1 for transitionals #11, varied sentence structure, active voice )

Quiz: 9-17, 60 (dialogue) Glossary

PROMPT 1: Write a first person account of a significant memory / event / experience which explores the influence of this moment upon your knowledge. Explore the self-knowledge, revelations, and challenges presented by this moment of conflict.

-Limit you focus to one specific moment

- Develop the narrative by focusing on narrative structure, conflict, controlling purpose, and showing the reader the setting, action, and dialogue.

Remember to establish the four elements of narrative: setting, exposition, climax, and resolution.

PROMPT #2: Common Application Essay: Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

-Limit you focus to one specific moment

- Develop the narrative by focusing on narrative structure, conflict, controlling purpose, and showing the reader the setting, action, and dialogue.

Remember to establish the four elements of narrative: setting, exposition, climax, and resolution.

PROMPT #3: Common Application Essay: The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?

-Limit you focus to one specific moment

- Develop the narrative by focusing on narrative structure, conflict, controlling purpose, and showing the reader the setting, action, and dialogue.

Remember to establish the four elements of narrative: setting, exposition, climax, and resolution.

PROMPT #4 Common Application Essay: Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?

-Limit you focus to one specific moment

- Develop the narrative by focusing on narrative structure, conflict, controlling purpose, and showing the reader the setting, action, and dialogue.

Remember to establish the four elements of narrative: setting, exposition, climax, and resolution.

PROMPT #5 Common Application Essay: Describe a moment in which you solved a problem. It can be an intellectual challenge, a research query, an ethical dilemma-anything that is of personal importance, no matter the scale. Explain its significance to you and what steps you took to identify a solution.

-Limit you focus to one specific moment

- Develop the narrative by focusing on narrative structure, conflict, controlling purpose, and showing the reader the setting, action, and dialogue.

Remember to establish the four elements of narrative: setting, exposition, climax, and resolution.

PROMPT #6 Common Application Essay:Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

-Limit you focus to one specific moment

- Develop the narrative by focusing on narrative structure, conflict, controlling purpose, and showing the reader the setting, action, and dialogue.

Remember to establish the four elements of narrative: setting, exposition, climax, and resolution.

Sample Personal Narrative 1:

Cooper Dart

The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? (650 Words)

I was raised by wolves in a mountaintop home. I awoke to the gentle sway of lodgepole pines against a sky painted purple by the unseen sun. Night turned to day and back to night. With ears buffeted by distant howls and the Music of the Spheres, I dozed off into a fearless dark. Life was simple and unfettered, happy and deliberate.

I grew up surrounded by maps of the six mountain ranges around my house. When free from my rigorous elementary school course load, I'd grab one and gently unfold it on my warping hardwood floor. I circled and noted the mountains and lakes that called me. Until I could convince my parents to take me out to the latest sticky-noted trailhead, I lived vicariously through the trail lines. I would always look down on them from above and pretend I was flying with outstretched wings over the landscape. The mountains jumped at my eyes and the valleys sank through the floor. The crinkling paper was the rain, or the wind.

Sleeping, I would dream of freedom. I'd dream of the spider web of roads cascading out and out from my house on the maps. They led up and down and away. O, the places I'd go! All I needed was a car and I'd be atop the highest peak before I could imagine.

The birthday came, and along with it my grandparents’ old, maroon Jeep Grand Cherokee. With its maiden voyage, I struck out toward sunlit granite faces…

And got stuck.

Not in mud or snow, but in road. The horizon remained jagged while my tires stayed glued to the asphalt and yellow lines. I took turn after turn but the wilderness never grew closer. My childhood visions seemed to fade as I, like many do, fell prey to the standard. Eventually the headlights pointed toward home. I never reached the horizon.

My front door gave way. I kicked off my heavy hiking shoes and, grumbling a response to a “how was it?” from my mom, walked up to my stack of maps. Somehow I found the resolve to lift one of the betrayers down from the shelf. As the topographic Sawtooth Range unfolded, my problem seemed almost mockingly obvious. The conventions of the car had cemented me to the road, to the lines on a map. What matters—the mountains, the trees, the valleys and rocks and foxes—are not on the lines or in the car. They’re found in the blank spaces.

Now, much to my parents’ chagrin, my bedroom is strewn with papers and books and pens. It has transformed into a haven of blank space learning. Before, I saw my novels and textbooks as nothing more than a map of trails laid over a blank landscape: line after line directing me toward obscurity. Those lines don’t mean nearly as much as the spaces between them, which I’ve slowly begun to fill in myself. The writing’s world meets mine. They clash and correlate and the relation between the two finds itself crudely jotted in a margin or space. Meaning and understanding are the pauses between words or the rests in music. They are annotations in my beat up paperback copy of Walden planted in an essay arguing for dam removal. They are a compounding realization built upon an underpinning of deeper exploration.

Local lore has it that around 95 percent of Yellowstone National Park visitors use five percent of the park. I now like to see myself as one of the five percent who take the extra step into the unknown, unmarked, and ignored. Today’s adventures take me far from the cloth seats of my Jeep, and my academic studies take me far from my high school curriculum. The goal is now, after finishing a book or a mountain climb, being able to look back and whisper into the wind, “I discovered the whole thing.”

Sample Personal Narrative 2:

PROMPT #6 Common Application Essay: Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

The Mail

The mail rested on the counter. It didn’t shout commands, respect attention or give warnings; it just simple was there. The post-office smell drifted into my nostrils as I rolled the rubber band off of the bundle. The gentle creases from the constant fold quickly ceased, while bills and letters drifted out from behind the magazine covers. I sorted it into piles according to the addressed person. Hidden behind the slick surface of a magazine cover letter slipped out. I sat there staring dumbfounded at the addressed person’s name. The letter was a day late. It didn’t reach the addressed person in time.

We all knew the inevitable was coming. We all saw the days of life slipping away from behind my great-grandmother’s eyes. Cancer had taken over her frail body and the ninety-one years pulsed hard through her blood. I thought I was prepared. We all thought we were prepared. The last few days were like a hurricane. The swirling of life passed by too quickly, too many problems were left unsolved at the end of the day, and in the end it was strangely calm. You can prepare as much as possible for a hurricane, but to nature it doesn’t matter.

The letter struck me as odd. The four-line address said so much in so few words. The letter couldn’t possibly know that it wouldn’t reach the hands of its intended receiver or that it was too late. It was just a letter. It didn’t care that my world had just been turned upside down and shaken; it had one purpose-to get to the addressed person, that is all it needed to do. The mail doesn’t care; it doesn’t feel the emptiness of losing a loved one.

We attempted to give my great-grandmother the best last month of her life. She was comfortable, taken care of, and able to let herself go. The first week we were blessed with my great-grandmother’s presence; it was a week I will never forget. At ninety-one years of age she had lived through tremendous trauma and turmoil. Yet although she had seen too many wars and the world change so vastly around her, her previous worries never seemed to show. At sixteen years of age I live in a sheltered community, have gone to a private school my entire life and have lived knowing where my next meal is coming from. I hadn’t seen death on a personal level, and my biggest worries seem petty.

As I glanced down at the writing on the envelope again, I thought of the person whose intentions were pure. They had wanted to be with my great-grandmother in her final moments of life, yet they couldn’t because of the mail. How could it possibly not reach her on time? Didn’t it know that she was gone? I wanted everything to go away, the letter, the mail, and the emptiness. The past four weeks had changed my life, but to the world, they were just the beginning of October. The one death that I had just experienced was just one death to the world. It was a statistic.

As the hurricane rolled in, the fits to fight death came. It happened so quickly. There was so little time. The last week, as my great-grandmother's life quickly faded, the eye of the hurricane had moved over us. The coma had passed over her lifeless body. Her agitation was almost gone and it all seemed calm. Looking ahead there is always the other side of the hurricane. We knew it was coming.

I moved the letter to the side. What do you do with a letter to the deceased? I left it there on the counter.

As prepared as you can be for the hurricane, it always knocks you down harder than you expect it to. My mother’s face was a blow. As she stood there she looked so strong. She had just lost a huge part of herself. My hands felt awkward as I fumbled with the cold metal of the door handle. I opened it but could barely bring myself to push. Some hidden strength inside of me pushed it open. I lowered my foot. It touched the same ground that my great-grandmother had passed away on. My other foot obediently followed. My body did the rest. I was guided over to my mom and was embraced. The hard wind hit me. My mother was so strong and I couldn’t face the pain. Her words echoed inside of my mind, "It was time for her to go." It was easier to face the truth embraced by my mother. The storm had passed over and everything became calm.

Upon returning to the counter I was ashamed of myself and then saw the letter. It was just a letter. The thin folded paper inside held so much power. The mail will always come. It doesn’t understand death, birth, or any emotion. Life will always come and go.

-Commentary: This narrative evokes the sensory experience of opening and sorting the mail and the rising action of pondering what to do with the letter and how to feel about the death of the great grandmother very well. The mother is developed as a strong character in the face of loss, and the climactic embrace between mother and daughter and the implicit resolution that one must say and show love everyday to those whom you deeply love is powerfully felt. The climactic embrace between mother and daughter shows the narrator expressing her love without overtly calling attention to it.