Ms. Ebert
Example Essay 1
September 29 2014
Are you a jock or a puke?
In 1975, Robert Lipsyte wrote “Jock Culture” which was in “The Sportsmaster.” It didn’t appear in “The Nation” until 2011. Analysis will examine the credibility of the examples used by the author to stage his claims.
Robert is a sportswriter and a broadcast journalist who is also known for his young adult novels. He was born in 1938 in the Bronx. Throughout his childhood, he would’ve described himself as a “puke.” He was bullied and felt like an outcast. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in English from Columbia University at only 19 years of age. He also received his Master’s degree in journalism. When Lipsyte was a reporter and writer for The New York Times, he published more than 500 columns, & is the author to nearly 30 books. He became a sports commentator for National Public Radio, an on-air essayist for CBS and NBC, and was even the host of a public television show, The Eleventh Hour, which he won an Emmy for. To this day, Robert continues to write both nonfiction and fiction work. Basically, Robert is targeting everyone, both jocks and pukes. Judging by his descriptions of jocks, he assumes none would end up reading this article anyway, so is main focus is “puke.”
Jock Culture glorifies the young, the strong and the beautiful, and Lipsyte gets the tragic implications. Although in his article, he describes himself as a puke, it seems as if he would fit better under the jock section. Given the competitive journalism, he probably owes his success as a sports writer in some measure to his own socialization in Jock Culture or whether his socialization into success in those savage precincts renders him now more sympathetic than he would otherwise be to Jock Culture.
He goes on to talk about that there are more than just these 2 categories of people or you can fall under both categories. Boys are taught to be tough, stoical, and aggressive, to play hurt, to hit hard,