Reader Into Their Emotions Of Past Experience example essay topic

Personal essays are writings that are an intimate experience between the writer and the reader. The experiences shared are of many different emotions, happiness, pain, reflection, misspent time, or any other number of ideas. The reader is brought into the writer's feelings. Two writers who are adept at bringing the reader into their emotions of past experience are Alice Walker and N. Scott Momaday.

Both writers use the power of past experience to build emotions felt in the readers today. Walker is reflective of how she felt growing up after a tragic accident that took the sight of one of her eyes. Momaday is reflective of the past of his ancestors and how their traditional lives were stripped away by others. Both writers write of a tragedy of losing some part of their identity by the actions of another person. In Momaday's essay The Way to Rainy Mountain, the reflection of a grandmother's experience as a Kiowa Indian when the U.S. Calvary took over her people's land.

The U.S. Calvary was not seen as a positive influence. Those Indians who did not fight, but surrendered were not treated so compassionately. They were imprisoned and as Momaday states, "My grandmother was spared the humiliation of those high gray walls by eight or ten years, but she must have known from birth the affliction of defeat... ".

This is a very sad statement, one without hope. Walker is like Momaday's grandmother in that a tragic incident in which she loses the sight of an eye, fills her with a shame much like that of the Indians when Walker writes, "For six years I do not stare at anyone, because I do not raise my head". At this early point in both essays the reader is made to feel sad and wonder how these events could happen in the way that they do. Ideas of explanations that help people to deal with something that they do not understand are an age old practice. The Devil's Tower in Momaday's essay is one example of such practice.

There is a hill in seemingly a flat area. This hill stands out and the Indians developed a myth to explain the hill and the disappearance of some children. The stars that form the constellations are the sisters that disappeared, "From that moment, and so long at the legend lives, the Kiowas have kinsmen in the night sky". Walker does not have the disappearance of some people to explain, but she does try to come to terms with the disappearance of her sight in one eye. It is the lie that her brother tells about how the injury occurred that bothers her most.

She feels abandoned by the truth. Walker writes, "If I do not say this is what happened, I know that my brothers will find ways to make me wish I had". The pain of the loss of the children to the Kiowas is explained by seeking comfort within the night sky, the pain of the loss of sight is expressed by Walker in the lie of her brothers. The memory of experience is powerful.

For Momaday the experience is his time at his grandmother's house. It is very pleasant to him. He reflects when he writes, "Once there was a lot of sound in my grandmother's house, a lot of coming and going, feasting and talking". The reader is left with the impression that these are happy times for Momaday, a pleasant memory he can visit at any time.

Walker contrasts Momaday's memories by displaying memories that are painful to reflect upon. She is displaced from her home where she was comfortable. "All I know is that my mother might die, my father is not so jolly, my brothers still have their guns, and I am the one sent away from home". Walker does not look at going to her grandparent's house as a totally positive experience like Momaday writes about going to his grandmother's house. The end result of the essays is similar.

Sometimes it seems that we have a long journey in life before we feel that our experience has been positive in how we live. Momaday comes to peaceful terms with his reflections when he writes, "Looking back one, I saw the mountain and came away". His grandmother is buried where the Kiowa had sacred ground, back to her beginnings, back to his. Momaday feels pride and love. Walker's young daughter is what brings her back to her beginnings, restores her pride, by telling Walker that she had a world in her eye. After considering the child's observations, Walker sees life in a new way.

"The other dancer has obviously come through all right, as I have done. She is beautiful, whole and free. And she is also me". A connection with emotion is made, a destination is reached.

Both writers are in a positive aspect of reflection, one that takes us back to the beginning, the happiness of just being alive..