Module I

The Personal or Familiar Essay

General Objective:
To learn this portion of the third phase of the communication skills program: exposition,
as language and literature; emphasis on the essay.

Specific Objectives:
At the end of this module, the student should be able to:
1. list know the attributes of the personal or familiar essay as a deeply subjective
species of literature, by studying and analyzing seven essays;
2. recognize that the subjective tone of the personal essay may take these general
forms:
a. the lighter essay, which may be humorous, reminiscent, whimsical, or
nostalgic, etc.;
b. the more serious essay, which may be thoughtful, satiric, ironic, or
introspective, etc.;
c. the essay that indulges in a mixture of these different tones or moods.
3. write a short original personal essay applying the attributes learned in this
Module.

Contents:
Lesson 1
A. “Passages” by Domini Torrevillas
B. “The Two Races of Men” by Charles Lamb

Lesson 2
A. “How Natural is Natural” A Selection from “The Filament of Time” by Loren
Eiseley
B. “Chickens and Chalices” by Paul W. Matthews

Textbook:
Tiempo and Tiempo. College Writing and Reading. Manila: Rex Printing
Company.

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English 3A
Module I

In Module I we take up the study of the personal essay, alternatively known as

the familiar essay. For English 3, the personal or familiar essay is one of the four types
of essays we have chosen to include in this course.
These four essay types are among the most prevalent and significant of the
several present categories of the works of essayists. The other three essay types will be
taken up in the three succeeding Modules of this course (English 3, Modules II, III, IV).
Module V will take up two literary prose devices which are very common and basic in
writing essays.
As we will notice in the following two essays, the personal or familiar essay is a
strongly subjective account of the writer’s experience or idea about a certain place or
incident or person. It may also have a speculative or reminiscent tone resulting from the
impact of the experience.
Thus, we may list the following as the characteristics of the familiar or personal
essay:
1. It is informal in tone and approach.
2. It is deeply subjective in tone and approach
a. Being subjective means it could be reminiscent, sad, or happy,
intimate, tongue-in-cheek, playful, nostalgic, whimsical, satiric or ironic,
etc.
b. Being subjective means it could be reacting with concern or anger, or
being merely speculative, or indulging in a mixture of these different
tones or moods mentioned in a and b.
3. Its materials range from the trivial and whimsical to the profoundly
intellectual and deeply committed or involved.

Lesson 1

A. “Passages” by Domini Torrevillas

Before reading the essay, think of a time when you have to say goodbye to a
place and where you had great times. How did you feel then? Or what did you think
about?
Something in us cries whenever we say goodbye to a place where we had great times.
The first time I felt this kind of sadness was a couple of weeks after graduating from
college, the day before I left for home (from there to eventually find a job, and how did
we put it then? – “to find my place in the sun”). I took a walk around the campus, said
goodbye to the acacia trees whose drifting leaves on windy days moved the romantic in
me to tears; to the green ball fields where my best girlfriend and I had endless
conversations, our hands clasped (there was no talk at that time in that part of the country
of only lesbians doing that sort of thing), rambling about our dreams and loves; to the
cafeteria, to the church buildings, to the fences which were manicured clumps of thick
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 shrubs; to the sea, that afternoon gray and somber, as though lonesome at my leaving,
too. I had practically grown up on that campus, I had a puppy love there, had my great
religious experience (I had wanted to be a Protestant deaconess – thank God I outgrew
that one); had developed friendships there that remain solid to this day.
There have been other tearful departures. I remember my last day in a cozy apartment
on Hinman Avenue in Evanston, III., which I shared for one happy year with three
American graduate students. At that moment of leave-taking, my mind took in a last view
of the small living room with a Picasso repro above a yellow sofa; white lace curtains; a
crackling fireplace, a well-worn record player, a folding dining table where we had
sipped California wine and showed off our beef stroganoffs and adobos.
For many, many times after that, I moved in and out of apartments. One moving out
that was so hard to bear I dared not look back on was when the truck carrying our
belongings rolled out of the iron gate, which took place just a couple of years ago. The
house we left stood on a hill, and from its kitchen window we had the breath-taking sight
of lights strung on Christmas evenings.
It was there where we took our baby from the hospital a week after he was born;
where he learned to smile and say “Mama,” and walk, and notice ahead of the adults in
the house, that the kitchen curtain one day had been newly washed and was starchy crisp
his appreciation so discernible from his pressing of the cloth to his face with a great
smile. There he learned to climb trees, and to read “The Adventures of RinTintin.”
These days, when I chance upon that place (the house has been torn down to give way
to an air mat handling equipment business), I philosophize that my attachment to it had
grown with the coming and growing up of my son.
But there are leave-takings that are far more consequential than leaving a place
because it had grown on us like ivy creeping up a wall. There are the passages in our
lives that cause great upheavals within ourselves – those times when we realize we have
ceased being what we were and have become something else: from innocents to adults
choosing [sic] wrong over evil; from mere clerks to executives; from reporters to editors;
from ordinary citizens to government leaders; from clients to lawyers to Supreme Court
justices; from ruled to rulers whose decisions affect the entire nation.
As one moves from follower to decision-maker, he is expected to be equal to his job;
to be accountable for his actions; to be exempt from the errors and misjudgments of mere
clerks. One’s change in status requires some introspecting: what he does becomes crucial.
That is why a public figure is expected to be beyond suspicion, as Caesar’s wife; to be
upright, to be just and pure.
It must be difficult to be a President or Justice; everyone looks at him with a cold,
merciless eye; at the way his lifestyle and material acquisitions have grown; the way he
carries on his love affairs; the way he covers up for his foibles. As Oriana Fallaci, the
Italian political interviewer wrote: “History will not judge a man by how he tries to undo
his wrongs by kindness and acts of atonement, but by how at the height of power he
proved himself to be corrupt and weak and damned for all time.”
- from Sounds of Silence, Sounds of Fury by Domini Torrevillas.

Read the above essay and answer the following questions:

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1. Name the different places and events that mark the rites of passage mentioned in
this essay.
2. The approach of this essay moves from the purely personal to the point where it
makes a comment or observation that is more profound or serious.
a. Explain this more serious idea with which the essay ends.
b. How does this concluding idea connect with the idea of the rite of passage?
Explain clearly.
3. Apart from the concluding portions of the essay, what adjective best describes its
subjective tone?

B. “The Two Races of Men” by Charles Lamb, pp. 334 ff.

The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two
distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend. To these two original
diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic
tribes, white men, black men, red men. All dwellers upon earth. “Parthian’s, and Medes,
and Elamites,” flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or the other of these primary
distinctions. The infinite superiority of the former, which I choose to designate as the
great race is discernible in their figure, port, and a certain instinctive sovereignty. The
latter are born degraded. “He shall serve his brethren.” There is something in the air of
one of this cast, lean and suspicious; contrasting with the open, trusting, generous manner
of the other.
Observe those who have been the greatest borrowers of all ages – Alcibiades –
Falstaff – Sir Richard Steele – our late incomparable Brinsley – what a family likeness in
all four!
What a careless, even deportment hath your borrower! What rosy gills! What a
beautiful reliance on Providence doth he manifest, - taking no more thought than lilies!
What contempt for money, - accounting it (yours and mine specially) no better than
dross! What a liberal confounding of that pedantic distinction of meum and tuum! or
rather, what a noble simplification of language (beyond Tooke), resolving these supposed
opposites into one clear, intelligible pronoun adjective! –What near approaches doth he
make to the primitive community, - to the extent of one-half of the principle at least! –
He is a true taxer who “calleth all the world up to be taxed;” and the distance is as
vast between him and one of us, as subsisted betwixt the Augustan Majesty and the
poorest obolary Jew that paid a tribute-pittance at Jerusalem! - His exactions, too, have
such a cheerful, voluntary air; so far removed from your sour parochial or state-gatherers,
- and those ink-horn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in their faces! He cometh
to you with a smile, and troubleth you with no receipt; confining himself to no set season.
Every day is his Candleman, or his Feast of Holy Michael. He applieth the lene
tormentum of a pleasant look to your purse, - which to the gentle warmth expands her
silken leaves, as naturally as the cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind
contended! He is the true Propontic which never ebbeth! The sea which taketh
handsomely at each man’s hand. In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honour,
struggles with destiny; he is in the net. Lend therefore cheerfully, O man ordained to
lend – that thou lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the reversion promised.
Combine not preposterously in thine own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives! –
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but, when thou sees the proper authority coming, meet it smilingly, as it were half-way.
Come, a handsome sacrifice! See how light he makes of it! Strain not courtesies with a
noble enemy.
Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my mind by the death of my friend.
Ralph, Bigot Esq., who departed this life on Wednesday evening; dying, as he had live,
without much trouble. He boasted himself a descendant from mighty ancestors of that
name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. In his actions and sentiments he
belied not the stock to which he pretended. Early in life he found himself invested with
ample revenue; which, with that noble disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent
in men of the great race, he took almost immediate measures entirely to dissipate and
bring to nothing; for there is something revolting in the idea of a King holding a private
purse, and the thoughts of Bigot were all regal. Thus furnished, by the very act of
disfurnishment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, more apt (as one sings).
To slacken virtue, and abate her edge.
Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise,
he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enterprise, “borrowing and to
borrow!”
In his perigees, or triumphant progress throughout this island, it has been calculated
that he laid a tithe part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject this estimate as
greatly exaggerated; -- but having the honour of accompanying my friend, divers times,
in his perambulations about this vast city. I own I was greatly; struck at first with the
prodigious number of faces we met who claimed a sort of respectful acquaintance with
us. He was one day so obliging as to explain the phenomenon. It seems these were his
tributaries; feeders of his exchequer; gentlemen, his good friends, (as he was pleased to
express himself), to whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. Their
multitudes did no way disconcert him. He rather took a pride in numbering them; and
with Comus, seemed pleased to be “stocked with so fair a herd.”
With such sources, it was a wonder how he contrived to keep his treasury always
empty. He did it by force of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that “money
kept longer than three days stinks.” So he made use of it while it was fresh. A good part
he drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot), some he gave away, the rest he threw
away, literally tossing and hurling it violently from him – as boys do burrs, or as if it had
been infectious, -- into ponds or ditches, or deep holes, -- inscrutable cavities of the earth,
-- or he would bury it (where he would never seek it again) by a river’s side under some
bank, which (he would facetiously observe) paid no interest – but out away from him it
must go peremptorily, as Hagar’s offspring into the wilderness, while it was sweet. He
never missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his fist. When new supplies
became necessary, the first person that had the felicity to fall with him, friend or stranger
was sure to contribute to the deficiency. For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He
had a cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald forehead, just touched with grey
(cana fides). He anticipated no excuse, and found, none. And waiving it for a while my
theory as to the great race, I would pu it to the most untheorizing reader, who may at
times have disposable coins in his pocket, whether it is not more repugnant to the
kindliness of his nature to refuse such as a one as I am describing, than to say not to a
poor petitionary rogue (you borrower), who, by his mumping visnomy, tells you that he

5
expects nothing better; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and expectations you
do in reality so much less shock in the refusal.
When I think of this man; his fiery glow of heart; his swell of feeling; how
magnificent, how ideal he was; how great at the midnight hour; and when I compare to
him the companions with whom I have associated since, I grudge the saving of a few idle
ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society of lenders, and little men.
To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron
coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched
upon; I mean your borrowers of books –those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the
symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is Comberbatch, matchless in
his depredations!
That foul gap in the bottom shelf facing you like a great eye-tooth knocked out – (you
are now with me in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader!) – with the huge Switzer-
like tomes on each side (like the Guild hall giants, in their reformed posture, guardian of
nothing) once held the tallest of my folios, Opera Bonaventurae, choice and massy
divinity, to which its two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lesser caliber, --
Belarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but as dwarfs, -- itself an Ascapart! – that
Comberbatch abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which is more easy, I
confess, for me to suffer by than to refute, namely, that “the title to property in a book
(my Bonaventurae, for instance), is in exact ratio to the claimant’s powers of
understanding and appreciating the same.” Should he go on acting upon his theory, which
of our shelves is safe?
The slight vacuum in the left hand case – two shelves from the ceiling – scarcely
distinguishable but by the quick eye of a loser – was whilom the commodious resting-
place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly allege that he knows more about that
treatise than I do, who introduced it to him, and was indeed the first (of the moderns) to
discover its beauties – but so have I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the
presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than himself. – Just below, Dodsley’s
dramas want their fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is! The remainder nine are
as distasteful as Priam’s refuse sons, when the Fates borrowed Hector. Here stood the
Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. – There loitered The Complete Angler; quiet as
in life, by some stream side. – In yonder nook, John Buncle, a widower-volume, with
“eyes-closed,” mourns his ravished mate.
One justice I must do my friend, that if he sometimes, like the sea, sweeps away a
treasure, at another time, sea-like, he throws up as rich an equivalent to match it. I have a
small under-collection of this nature (my friend’s gatherings in his various calls), picked
up, he has forgotten at what odd places, and deposited with as little memory as mine. I
take in these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes of the gate are welcome as the
true Hebrews. There they stand in conjunction; natives, and naturalized. The latter
seemed as little disposed to inquire out their lineage as I am. – I charge no warehouse-
room for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the ungentlemanly trouble of
advertising a sale of them to pay expenses.
To lose a volume of C. carries some sense and meaning in it. You are sure that he will
make one hearty meal on your viands; if he can give no account of the platter after it. But
what moved thee, wayward, spiteful K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in

6
 spite of the tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the Letters of that princely woman,
the thrice noble Margaret Newcatle – knowing at that time, and knowing that I knew also,
thou most assuredly wouldst never turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio: – what but
the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of getting the better of thy friend? –
Then, worst cut of all! To transport it with thee to the Gallican land –
Unworthy land, to harbour such a sweetness, A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts
dwelt, Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts,
– hadst thou not thy play-books and books of jests and fancies, about thee, to keep
merry, even as thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful tales? – Child of
the Green-room, it was unkindly done of thee. Thy wife, too, that part French, better-part
Englishwoman! –that she could fix upon no other treatise to hear away in kindly token of
remembering us, than the words of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook – of which no Frenchman,
or woman of France, Italy, or England, was ever by nature constituted to comprehend a
title! Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude?
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate collection, be shy of knowing it; or
if thy heart overfloweth to lend them, lend thy books; but let it be to such a one as S.T.C.
– he will return (generally anticipating the time appointed) with usury; enriched with
annotations, tripling their value. I have had experienced. Many are these precious MSS,
of his – (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not infrequently, vying with the
originals) – in no very clerkly hand – legible in my Daniel; in old Burton; in Sir Thomas
Browne; and those abstruse cogitations of the Greville, now alas! Wandering in pagan
lands – I counsel thee shut not thy heart, nor thy library, against S.T.C.

Read the essay and answer the following questions:

1. Why are the opening sentences arresting? Define the tone.
2. How does the opening paragraph set this tone? Point out the details that establish
this tone.
3. In the ninth paragraph (beginning with “To one like Elia”) what, actually are the two
differentiated treasures?
4. In the last paragraph, addressed to the reader, several archaisms are used. How do
these archaisms contribute to the tone of this essay?

(By way of information, “S.T.C.” is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a nineteenth century poet
and critic of England.)

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English 3A
Module I
Lesson 2

As already mentioned, the tone of the personal or familiar essay could take a
more serious turn, when its materials deal with topics which are more deeply
intellectual, and which elicit a more cerebral and introspective attitude on the part of the
essayist.

A. “How Natural is ‘Natural’?” by Loren Eiseley

Not long ago I became aware of another world [other than this one that we know],
perhaps equally natural and real, which man is beginning to forget. My thinking began in
New England under a boat dock. The lake I speak of has been pre-empted and civilized
by man. All day long in the vacation season high-speed motorboats, driven with the
reckless abandon common to the young Apollos of our society, speed back and forth,
carrying loads of equally attractive girls. The shores echo to the roar of powerful motors
and the delighted screams of young Americans with uncounted horse power surging
under their hands. In truth, as I sat under the boat dock, I had some desire to swim or to
canoe in the older ways of the great forest which once lay about this region. Either notion
would have been folly. I would have been gaily chopped to ribbons by teen-age
youngsters whose eyes were always immutably fixed on the far horizons of space, or
upon the dials which indicated the speed of their passing. There was another world, I was
to discover, along the lake shallows and under the boat dock, where the motors could not
come.
As I sat there one sunny morning when the water was peculiarly translucent, I saw a
dark shadow moving swiftly over the bottom. It was the first sign of life I had seen in this
lake, whose shores seemed to yield little but washed-in beer cans. By and by the gliding
shadow ceased to scurry from stone to stone over the bottom. Unexpectedly, it headed
almost directly for me. A furry nose with gray whiskers broke the surface. Below the
whiskers green water foliage trailed out in an inverted V as long as his body. A muskrat
still lived in the lake. He was bringing in his breakfast
I sat very still in the strips of sunlight under the pier. To my surprise the muskrat
came almost to my feet with his little breakfast of greens. He was young, and it rapidly
became obvious to me that he was laboring under an illusion of his own, and that he
thought animals and men were still living in the Garden of Eden. He gave me a friendly
glance from time to time as he nibbled his greens. Once, even, he went out into the lake
again and returned to my feet with more greens. He had not, it seemed, heard very much
about men. I shuddered. Only the evening before I had heard a man describe with
triumphant enthusiasm how he had killed a rat in the garden because the creature had
dared to nibble his petunias. He had even showed me the murder weapon, a sharp-edged
brick.
On this pleasant shore a war existed and would go on until nothing remained but man.
Yet this creature with the gray, appealing face wanted very little: a strip of shore to coast
up and down, sunlight and moonlight, some weeds from the deep water. He was an edge-
of-the-world dweller, caught between a vanishing forest and a deep lake pre-empted by
8
 unpredictable machines full of chopping blades. He eyed me nearsightedly, a green leaf
poised in his mouth. Plainly he had come with some poorly instructed memory about the
lion and the lamb.
“You had better run away now”, I said softly, making no movement in the shafts of
light. “You are in the wrong universe and must not make this mistake again. I am really a
very terrible and cunning beast, I can throw stones.” With this I dropped a little pebble at
his feet.
He looked at me half blindly, with eyes much better adjusted to the wavering
shadows of his lake bottom than to sight in the open air. He made almost as if to take the
pebble up in his forepaws. Then a thought seemed to cross his mind – a thought perhaps
telepathically received, as Freud once hinted, in the dark world below and before man, a
whisper of ancient disaster heard in the depths of a burrow. Perhaps after all this was not
Eden. His nose twitched carefully; he edged toward the water.
As he vanished in an oncoming wave, there went with him a natural world, distinct
from the world of girls and motorboats, distinct from the world of the professor holding
to reality by some great snowshoe effort in his study. My muskrat’s shore-line universe
was edged with the dark wall of hills on one side and the waspish drone of motors farther
out, but it was a world of sunlight he had taken down into the water weeds.
-from The Firmament of Time, by Loren Eiseley, Atheneum, New York, pp. 154-157

Study the essay and answer these questions:

1. Why is this essay selected as an example of the personal or familiar essay? Give
several reasons, and if possible, quote from the selection for your illustrations.
2. The first sentence contains the important phrase, “another world”; define this
particular “other world” described in this essay, pointing out the essential qualities
which differentiate it from the everyday world around it.
3. What is the important point which the essayist is bringing out in this selection? In
other words, define the theme.
4. The muskrat and its particular environment serve as a symbol for pointing out the
modern man’s predicament. Explain the symbolism of the muskrat in relation to
modern man and his milieu.
5. In the last sentence of the fourth paragraph, explain the reference of the “lion and
the lamb” and clarify its relevance to the theme of this essay
.
B. “Chickens and Chalices,” a selection taken from a long essay “Family
Planning and Community in the Philippines and Bali,” by Paul W.
Matthews.

In Ambiona pro-natal views are espoused by Sancho, the local hilot who was a very
firm belief in God and the words of the Bible; these words, or talismans, says Sancho, in
fact have power in their own right. To understand this concept it is important to realize
that in the medical religious context of Ambiona, a word is not a simple unit of language.
It is through words that the divine or supernatural reveal meaning. Lallana (n.d.) suggests
that through a kind of folk etymology the inspiration for this power is the opening line of
the Gospel according to John: “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with

9
 God, and the Word was God.” It was thus that Sancho used a Bible-and-key apparatus in
divination and curing rights. His Bible contained the words of God and hence the power
of God. The binding tape (holding fast an ordinary key inserted into the pages)
represented the Holy Cross and the key itself, Sancho variously explained, was the key to
Heaven or as opening the way to the truth.
According to Sancho most illnesses are caused by spirits of relatives. Although
ancestral spirits are likely to be benevolent and are often asked for assistance, retaliation
by them is possible if an offence is committed against the social or supernatural order.
Some of these offences involve a breach of the moral code, as in the case of descendants
failing to meet their ritual obligations to ancestors; disrespect to elders; physical violence;
and incestuous marriages (cf. Hart, 1979). One way to prevent or end this retaliation is to
admit fault and to offer compensation. “Such an offer acknowledges membership of a
common moral universe and mitigates the fury of the offended” (Pertierra 1988, 132).
Treatment prescribed by Sancho, then, is only effective if it is God’s Will, since
ultimately it is God who adjudicates over and controls the supernatural. In effect Sancho
acts only as a mediator. If the illness is “natural” then generally it will be cured by his
treatment; but if it is not “natural” the illness will return. According to Sancho, a
“natural” illness is one causes by a generally benevolent spirit that has been offended.
Such a spirit caused illness by affecting the pulse, which in turn causes a defect in blood
circulation at certain bodily points, (i.e., causes a certain “roundness” and thus illness).
Sancho’s cure is natural medicine, including the use of herbs ingested or rubbed on the
body, massage, incantations and prayers, to “flatten” the points of blood coagulation and
return circulation to normal; he also prays to placate the spirits.
Thus for Sancho, blood plays a central role in health and illness; it absorbs and
transmits evil and malaise. This particular focus on blood is not unusual, for as Tan
(1987) indicates, concepts of blood and the circulatory system form a core concept in folk
physiology. Because blood is known to be distributed throughout the body, it is perceived
as a carrier of “vitality and will,” and thus blood loss or disruption is correlated with
weakness and death.
Using this system of diagnosis and the treatment Sancho claimed many successes,
such as the following: a baker in the nearby poblacion felt tired and fought with his wife.
Sancho diagnosed “poor blood” (circulation) caused by the evil of a woman who loved
the baker, plus overwork and exhaustion. The cure was simply to take a holiday, have a
massage, and to confront the evil-doer.

Study the essay and answer the following:

1. What is the main idea expressed by the essay?
2. Define the attitude (tone) of the essayist toward the hilot, Sancho.
a. Does the essayist believe in the “medical principles” of Sancho, the hilot?
b. Is the essayist critical or disagreeing?
c. Define precisely what is the essayist’s attitude.
3. This selection is a good example of the personal or familiar essay concerned with a
more practical matter and generating a more straightforward articulation that the
“lighter” essays in Lesson I. Although this selection is an excerpt from a longer
research article why is it classifiable as a personal or familiar essay?
10
English 3A
Module I

ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS IN THE LESSONS

Lesson 1
A. “Passages” by Domini Torrevillas
1. Departures from places and incidents
a. Leaving the college campus after graduation.
b. Leaving the apartment in Evanston, Illinois after finishing graduate work.
c. Moving away from the house on a hill where the personas son spent his early childhood.
2. The more serious and profound observation of this essay
a. The essay ends with the observation that, as a person matures and takes on higher
positions, he is expected to live up to the new status, morally, with more capability and
reliability, with more accountability for his actions, choosing the good over the evil.
b. This concluding idea infers that as we leave “passages” behind and take on new
positions and responsibilities we should change for the better and not choose wrong
decisions or make wrong moves, especially when our actions would affect the condition
of others, and even of a whole nation. In other words, leaving “passages” behind should
mean making a change for a responsible, moral, and dependable selfhood.
3. The adjective that best describes the tone of this essay (apart from the concluding portion is
nostalgic (or reminiscent would also fit).

B. “The Two Races of Men” by Charles Lamb

1. The opening sentences are arresting because they present humorous and satirical
categorizing of the human race, a categorizing that is very obviously untrue, and which is
meant to sound deliberately ridiculous in order to emphasize the point of the essay and
initiate its light-hearted tone. The satirical categories: the men who borrow, and the men who
lend.
2. The details that establish the light-hearted but ironic tone.
a. In mock-seriousness he even quotes from the Bible identifying the usual classifications
of races, judging them as “impertinent classifications”: “Parthians, and Medes, and
Elamites.”
b. He asserts the infinite superiority of the race of people belonging to the “borrowers,”
calling these borrowers “the great race.”
c. He asserts that the men who lend are born degraded. He brands the lenders as
suspicious, contrasting them with the borrowers who have an open and trusting and
generous manner.
3. These are the treasures implied: books and money.
4. The archaisms used in the last paragraph produce a tongue-in-cheek solemnity and
earnestness as he encourages the readers to lend their important books, but to be sure to
lend them to people like S.T.C. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge), who will return the books with
annotations and comments on the pages, notes which will “triple their value.”

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Lesson 2
A. Selection taken from “How Natural is ‘Natural’?” by Loren Eiseley
1. This essay’s material is of the more serious type. It tells of some very thoughtful reactions of
the essayist on this topic: mankind’s effort to direct its life toward being truly human in a
world that is ordered in the natural way that the modern world is forgetting.
It is a personal essay because it is deeply subjective in its approach. These are examples of
subjectivity, among others:
a. Intimate tone: “In truth as I sat there under the boat dock, I had some desire to swim or
to canoe in the older ways…”
b. Whimsical: “There was another world, I was to discover, along the lake shallows… As I
sat there one sunny morning when the water was peculiarly translucent, I saw a dark
shadow moving swiftly over the bottom.”
c. Whimsical: “[the muskrat] was young, and it rapidly became obvious to me that he was
laboring under an illusion of his own, and he thought animals and men were still living in
the Garden of Eden.”
d. Speculative: “On this pleasant shore a war existed and would go on until nothing
remained but man. Yet this creature [the muskrat] with the gray, appealing face wanted
very little: a strip of shore to coast up and down, sunlight and moonlight, some weeds
from the deep water.”
e. Playful: “’You had better run away now,’ I said softly, making no movement in the shaft
of light. ‘You are in the wrong universe and must not make this mistake again. I am really
a very terrible and cunning beast. I can throw stones.’ With this I dropped a little pebble
at his feet.”
2. This “other world’ is the more natural world of creation, the world of lake water and weeds
and the muskrat; a thoughtful, quiet, trustful world, where the animal still trusted man. In
contrast is the modern world represented by noisy motorboats full of noisy young people
who could be thoughtless and uncaring; the essayist was afraid to venture into the water to
swim or to canoe for fear of being run over and “gaily chopped to ribbons by teen-age
youngsters…”
3. As already mentioned in the beginning of the answer to no. 1, the essayist is commenting on
the deterioration of a quieter, kinder, more introspective way of life that is in closer affinity
with nature, a way of life that is being forgotten by the modern industrialized world.
4. The muskrat symbolizes the modern man who is still close to nature and is not really a part
of the “hurly-burly” of modern living. This more “natural” man is not very attuned to (or aware
of) the hazards of the modern world.

B. “Chickens and Chalices”

1. The essay reports on certain indigenous practices in treating ailments in the outlying barrio
of Ambiona. He takes the example of Sancho, the local hilot, and Sancho’s beliefs in the
supernatural as the bases for his diagnoses.
2. a. The essayist does not believe in Sancho’s “diagnoses” and “practices” and “cures.”
b. However, the essayist does not ridicule or condemn the hilot and his ways. The essayist
shows careful observation and interest.
3. It is classifiable as a personal or familiar essay because it reports on a personal experience
and observation that shows that the writer had got into intimate contact with his material.
Although the observations are impartial, the essay generates the writer’s subjective
approach to the hilot’s practices – that is, the reader gets a sense of both Sancho and the
writer as people – circulating and observing among the barrio people.

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