“Hey, Nickelback, I know that band. You like them?” I ask, leaning over Chipu’s shoulder to look at the stickers and pictures she has all over the front matter of her binder. “Yeah,” she looks up at me with her big brown eyes and smiles, clearly as relieved as I am to find something in common. It’s my first day tutoring at Webster Middle School. I’m working with Team Prime Time, an organization that provides a place for children to go after school where their parents can pick them up after work…. “Oh that’s cool,” I say, “I listen to Nickelback all the time. What’s your favorite song?” The conversation moves haltingly on from there as we both become more comfortable.
The beginning of this essay is also the beginning of a conversation between the author and a girl whom she is tutoring. In order for the scene to make sense, the author drops out of the anecdote in the second line of the second paragraph to explain that it is her first day tutoring at Webster Middle School and that she is working with Team Prime Time. Having conveyed the necessary information, she jumps back into the conversation about Nickelback. The ability to pull back from a narrative also comes in handy when you want to interject your thoughts and feelings, or if you simply want to broaden your scope to include more general reflections. In Essay 30, the author explains the significance of a figure in a Renoir painting that hangs on her wall and then begins a broader examination of dance, art, and creativity:
The lady in the red hat represents a side of myself not often seen, one that dances in the street without a care in the world… Renoir’s painting constantly reminds me not to completely let go of that spontaneity. Dancing is an act of passion; it is an act of freedom. Sometimes I search for this type of freedom in life, but at times, it can only be found in the subtleties of artwork.
It is logical to jump from an analysis of a Renoir painting to a more general discussion of art, but many students fail to make similar transitions that are just as obvious. One of the surest marks of a well-written essay is a concluding “kicker”—a final sentence that echoes the beginning or provides an unexpected twist. One of our student authors (Essay 7) writes about why AOL Instant Messenger “symbolizes many of my generation’s positive attributes, but also symbolizes many of our negative ones, too.”
After analyzing the issue throughout the essay, he ends with a wink: “I would love to explain in more detail, but I just got IMed.” In response to a question about what she would do if given a year to spend any way she wished, another of our authors (Essay 2) responds that she would read books. Among them was Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which, she writes, she has been “trying to finish for the last three years.” After discussing other books, she concludes the essay with the thought that a year of reading would “not only expand my mind further—I could finally find out what happens to Anna and Count Vronsky!”
Read More : Narrative Essays : Managing the Flow
