Our Selves Summative Assessment [hook] All people feel shame in their lives. [relevance to real life, maybe a personal anecdote]. Shame is defined as humiliation caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour. Shame researcher Brené Brown in a Ted Talk defined guilt as “I’m sorry for this mistake” whereas shame is “I am a mistake.” She also stated that vulnerability is not weakness, but it is shame that teaches creativity, emotional risk, courage, and innovation. People of different races and genders experience shame for not satisfying society’s standards of perfection, and the resulting stress can lead people to hate themselves and hide their flaws but in reality making mistakes is human. Brown concludes that shame is an epidemic
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In “On the Rainy River” the tone is confessional in the beginning. O’Brien says that the story is something he has never fully told to anyone before because he still feels ashamed of his indecision on the Minnesota-Canadian border. In “Mirrorings” Grealy writes with a resentful tone about when her teenage self “decided to become a ‘deep’” person” and “developed a form of defensive egomania” (Grealy 3). She put quotes around “deep” to show that her older self does not believe the same pretentious thoughts she had years ago. Grealy is ashamed about the arrogance she had toward people who were more superficial than she was. In “Beauty” the section about Walker going to the desert has an appreciative tone. She stores beautiful images in her memory so that if she went blind in both eyes, at least she had seen the world. The desert is something she really wanted to see so she is grateful to have seen it, the sky, the clouds, the sun, trees, and more. In her poem, she wrote that nature was beautiful because it was unblemished whereas she was not beautiful because her blemished eye. At that point in her life, Walker felt shame about her imperfect eye. A tone of somberness permeates “Letter to My Son” as Coates explains the reality that he and other black people face versus the dream that white people live. Coates explains his world of violence without sugarcoating it. To his son and the audience, he says that although one might be innocent, the world will not see them as such. Danger is an everyday part of their lives, and it’s better to be safe rather than dead, but Coates is aware that he cannot protect his son at all times. Confessional, resentful, appreciative, and somber tones show different perspectives of the authors’
In “On the Rainy River” the tone is confessional in the beginning. O’Brien says that the story is something he has never fully told to anyone before because he still feels ashamed of his indecision on the Minnesota-Canadian border. In “Mirrorings” Grealy writes with a resentful tone about when her teenage self “decided to become a ‘deep’” person” and “developed a form of defensive egomania” (Grealy 3). She put quotes around “deep” to show that her older self does not believe the same pretentious thoughts she had years ago. Grealy is ashamed about the arrogance she had toward people who were more superficial than she was. In “Beauty” the section about Walker going to the desert has an appreciative tone. She stores beautiful images in her memory so that if she went blind in both eyes, at least she had seen the world. The desert is something she really wanted to see so she is grateful to have seen it, the sky, the clouds, the sun, trees, and more. In her poem, she wrote that nature was beautiful because it was unblemished whereas she was not beautiful because her blemished eye. At that point in her life, Walker felt shame about her imperfect eye. A tone of somberness permeates “Letter to My Son” as Coates explains the reality that he and other black people face versus the dream that white people live. Coates explains his world of violence without sugarcoating it. To his son and the audience, he says that although one might be innocent, the world will not see them as such. Danger is an everyday part of their lives, and it’s better to be safe rather than dead, but Coates is aware that he cannot protect his son at all times. Confessional, resentful, appreciative, and somber tones show different perspectives of the authors’