expository Essay

Description

Essay one asks you to record, as one creating a catalogue or historical entry would, a singular folk belief related to a community to which you are close. As we shall discuss in class, folk tales and mythic beliefs come from myriad communities and may look vastly different depending on their origin. When people say that when it rains while the sun is out, if you pound a rusty nail into the ground and put your ear to it you can hear the devil beating his wife—THAT is a folk belief. You must choose ONE such folk belief, legend, or story, one that is relatively close to you, your family, your community. A tale to which you have access, and tell us what it is. However, this is not exactly a personal essay. While you are writing about a belief with which you are very familiar, do NOT write a personal essay about your own personal experience. Rather, consider this an exercise in both creating critical distance from your experiences and in writing objectively. There will be NO FIRST-PERSON!

This essay is designed to help keep you from trying to do too much. It is not an argumentative essay—you need not prove anything to us. All you have to do is to demonstrate to us that a specific group of people tell a specific kind of story. Answer the central question: who is this group of people, this culture, and what are the main details of their folk tale? The central criteria for this paper are providing a concrete response to that central question (one thing, remember) and demonstrating that to us with as concrete a detail as you can, in this case that only means description, because outside research is not to be used. Write about something you know very well, but with as much objectivity as you can.