"The Spinners," Michael Datcher
A lack of familial commitment in urban ghettoes seems to be the central theme of this essay, an epidemic begun in childhood and propogated in a vicious cycle of distrust and an inability to take responsibility. Datcher talks about the lack of fathers and how he and the boys who were his neighbors showed off in front of the neighborhood men, delighting in their attention but still unable to trust them, unable to get attached to them because, as Datcher says, "their personal lives screamed, "I'm lost toooooo." The way the essay simply ends, not trailing off but cutting off abruptly, is just one of the devices the author uses to illustrate his point.
"Winter," Larry Woiwode
This essay was a bit longer than some others that I have read, and in a dramatically different style. Woiwode tells the story of being snowed in at a North Dakota farmstead, with many digressions into such subjects as his son, the history of his farmstead, and the specifics of the furnace he installs. The point Woiwode comes to at the end of his essay, though, is an unexpected one about death and wanting to be remembered "by a row of words... or maybe not." The end of the essay resolves the conflict--the author will not freeze to death, he repairs his furnace--but the important questions has already been asked, if not answered. How does one accept death, if at all?
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