Topic 4.2: Description of Place
Topic 2: Description of Place
Take a moment to survey where you are at this very moment. Very likely, you are in front of a computer screen in an office, a dorm room, a study room, a living room, or even a kitchen. Each one of these places can come to life in a description if you add sensory detail. If you are in the kitchen, perhaps food wrappers and cold coffee mugs sit around like cadavers as you slave away on an important essay or perform Internet searches. Maybe your computer screen has several open programs, primary ones that keep you focused on the task at hand, but others that seem to whisper, "come, update your status on Facebook" or "download some new music from iTunes."
If you think about it, you are bombarded by sensory details every time you are in a place. If you have spent time around very young children, they investigate their surroundings thoroughly reacting with interesting physical responses (facial movements, pointing fingers) and verbal feedback. Children report freely and unabashedly about their environments; they are not afraid to let you know their attitudes about them. Ah, to be young again!
Your reading of "Hiding in Plain Sight"
Links to an external site.by Heather Rodgers provides a reflection on a particular place: the North American landfill. Rodgers’s piece hands you a full access pass to the sensory experience of being near a landfill. She forces the reader to contemplate the need people generate for these spaces and to acknowledge that a focus on "environmentally responsible" landfill use still ignores a burning question: "What if we didn’t have so much trash to get rid of?"
In this piece, the careful arrangement and use of sensory detail supports the author's attitude toward her subject. Unlike the child in the previous paragraph, the author is in complete control of her report. In this module, you will write a descriptive essay. Whereas the narrative assignment required you to focus on a single, significant event, the descriptive assignment requires that you focus on a single, significant place. The primary focus of the essay should be description; avoid recounting a series of events (as you might when narrating). While your description may include some narrative features, you should make sure that readers feel as though they are "with you," and can respond emotionally to the place you have selected.
Granted, it is more difficult to be descriptive when you are being asked to be descriptive. Some people find a photo album (or its digital equivalent) can be a great source of inspiration. If you are stumped, have a look at some of the photos you have taken of places, and ask yourself what was so important about the place that you took its photo, at that particular spot or time of day.
Once you have the place in mind, pretend you are a video camera, capable of capturing sound and sight imagery. You can record dialogue or things you hear (as in the essay "America’s Pastime"). And you can survey the things that surround the place. As you survey, how do you feel? The feelings can be positive, negative, mixed. Now, turn off the video camera (close your eyes). What do you hear now? Is there a smell to the place? Can you taste the air? Would you want someone to experience this place as you do? Why does this place matter? As you write your description, order the essay in such a way that your reader moves in and out of the space in a manner that is orderly and logical. For example, if you write about your kitchen while it is being renovated, you might begin your essay at one side of the room and make your way to the other side. Or you might start from the floor and work your way toward the ceiling. As McClean says in Writing for Success: "the organization could move from top to bottom, left to right, near to far, warm to cold, frightening to inviting, and so on" (267).
Remember that telling an audience what happens is not your goal. So stay away from recounting plot. Show your reader the subject and your attitudes toward the subject through description.
Assignments
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