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Makayla Estep
Weaver
Rhetoric 101
September 9, 2014
Imagine
Literacy is defined by having the ability to communicate and interact with people.
People are not born with this ability therefore, it has to be taught. Over the course of years of
trial and error and certain experiences a persons literary identity is molded into something that is
fully and completely personalized to them. Heres my story.
Through my school years there were many instances that helped me realize what
literacy was and how to apply it to myself. During preschool, when I was three, our class read
Green Eggs and Ham. After the reading, our class was presented with literal green eggs and
ham. Being a three year old this blew my mind. You could actually eat the food and it tasted
good. This exercise opened my eyes to the fact that literacy can become something tangible and
can become truly incredible. Ever since that experience I began to imagine exactly what the
authors described in the book and how it would look off the page and in the real world. It was
like movie, Gifted Hands, where the mother and main character are discussing reading. The son
says that its difficult to read because he finds it boring. The mother then asks the boy what he
sees when she says that there is a little blue mouse. He claims nothing at first but after a church
sermon where the preacher tells a bible story about courage,. tThe boy begins to visualize that he
is in the story and there is a little blue mouse as his sidekick throughout his daydream. Words
brought more meaning to him than what they initially did. After that he became an avid reader
and loved it.
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It was a long time since the impact of literacy hit me again, it wasnt until senior year.
My English teacher, Mrs. Burcham-Hall, had a love for anything pertaining to literature. She
gave me respect for the classic works of literature. The studies that we performed about The
Canterbury Tales and Beowulf inspired me to dive more into classic tales. We had to pick apart
the texts and pay attention the sections that normally readers wouldnt pay attention to. This
taught me that every single sentence, every single word, was crucial to the story. The study that
focused on Shakespeare was entertaining; it was the beginning of a love affair between myself
and plays. The Importance of Being Earnest was the perfect book to get my toes wet in the world
of plays, before diving into Shakespeare. My love for literature grew with each play and story.
Its funny how your parents will tell you things that happened while you were a child
when you get old enough to understand the significance of the story. My mom would tell me
crazy stories all the time, but there was something that she told me that stuck with me. She said
that she would read to me and my brother when we were tiny before we went to bed. Im not
entirely sure of this correlation however; I feel that this had influenced me to pursue the stories
in the book. My grandma used to take my cousins, brother, and me to the local library every
summer since we started school all the way up to middle school. She would take us there to see
special exhibits and shows. One show was where a woman read a book about snakes and then an
actual reptile handler came in with snakes. A book brought out something tangible immediately,
connections were connected and realizations came into play. Another thing that I learned was
that the movies, although they may be a good reference, are nothing like the actual words that an
author has written on a page. Im a purist because of this. In my eyes books will always be better
than the movies. I also possess this insatiable desire to be different from everyone else, to stand
out. No one in my house likes to read, except for my mom, so following her footsteps, I decided
Comment [M1]: Explain more fully why you
enjoyed these classic works. How did she present
the material? How did you get drawn in?
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to be different from most of my family and become a passionate reader. There are shelves and
shelves of books in my room- I have two book shelves that are packed full- and I have read every
one of them thanks to this quality I possess. Many of these books are classics such as The Jungle,
Great Expectations, and The Grimm Brothers Fairytales.
There are many events that change a persons literary identity. Moments in life that
change the way you view reading, writing, communicating and those moments are the most
crucial in life. Those moments where I realized that books can indeed become something great
and creative, gave me my literary identity. Imagination is the key when reading a book or writing
a paper. Engage the audience no matter the subject. Imagination is my literary identity.
Imagination comes through very well in your first body paragraph. I now have a clearer
understanding of the example with the mouse. It starts to slip in the second paragraph, but I think
if you address my marginal comments, you will be able to bring it back in. Im currently a bit
lost in your 3
rd
body paragraph. It does not seem as closely aligned with imagination yet, and Im
not sure how it fits in with the other two examples. Focus the majority of your energy on that
paragraph. You also need a page to reach the minimum 3 page requirement.
Formatted: Superscript