Critical Analysis Of Only Daughter And Once More To The Lake

Luc Brubaker
Professor Kozak
English 110
Reading Journal 5
2 October 2012
Reading Journal 5, Prompt 1

Between Cisneros’s “Only Daughter” and White’s “Once more to the Lake,” the audience gets two tastes of starting and ending lines, both taking the essay to the same place. Ultimately, both beginnings prepare the reader for their flash back story and end with a specific moment during the story that will always stick with them. Although their format was similar and their beginning and ending strategies were alike, they both told two different stories where I found Cisernos’s essay coming off as stronger. Right from the beginning of Cisneros’s essay, she reflects back to a time when she was just starting off as a writer. Just from the first sentence, the audience gets a sense that during the time when she was first starting off, this was a moment that greatly impacted the rest of her career, or in this case her life. She touches on how she was the only daughter out of 7 siblings, so it’s clear that she will expand on life as the only girl. By stating that she was the only girl out of her siblings, it helps her achieve her ultimate purpose of the importance of her dad taking interest in her writing and profession. As for her closing lines, she ends with the exact moment that she felt like she finally made her dad proud. The ending sentence was a perfect closure because the whole essay talks about how her dad never took interest in her career and how he just wanted her to get married, so when he says “Where can we get more copies of this for the relatives(Cisneros 4),”it finally shows his satisfaction with her career. Between the beginning lines and the closing lines, Cisneros did a great drop drawing the reader in and then exiting with her main point. White’s beginning was very similar to that of Cisneros’s, in that she also started by reflecting back to the origin of the specific event. The beginning of White’s essay did a great job of setting the rest of the essay up because it is so clear what the story is going to be about and where exactly the essay was heading. Just from the sentence, “We returned summer after summer - always on August 1 for one month(White 431),” the audience knows that there is a specific reason for this and that White will explain the defining moment. As for the concluding sentences and just like Cisneros’s essay, White ends at a specific moment in her story that she will always remember and a key memory with the story. Ending with the specific memory leaves the audience with that being their last memory and leaves the audience with the same emotions the writer was left with. From both the beginning and ending sentences, White does a great job with getting her purpose across to the audience. Between the two essays, Cisneros’s definitely gets the point across better because I feel that the beginning and the ending were a lot stronger. Cisneros did a great job with drawing the audience in by the sympathy she causes them to feel. When it came to the conclusion, Cisneros nailed the exact purpose of the whole essay in one sentence which was a lot easier for the audience to follow. I just felt myself connecting more with Cisneros more than White because Cisneros’s essay grabbed more of my attention from the beginning. Although both essays were written very well and they both had strong beginnings and endings, Cisneros’s opening and closing lines were more effective.

Bibliography:

White, E. B.. Essays of E.B. White. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Print.

Cisneros, Sandra. The Norton Mix. New York: W.W Norton & Company, 2012. Print.