Fluent Essays

English 1302: Essay #1 Rethinking Norms The purpose of this essay is to explore how the Orenstein article on raising young men sheds insight into Boyles Greasy Lake. You will embed quotations from both:  T.C. Boyle, Greasy Lake (its in the upload box)  Peggy Orenstein, The Miseducation of the American Boy (its in the upload box)   Examine how one particular incident, one particular character, or one specific relationship between two characters in Greasy Lake proves or disproves what is stated in Orensteins article.  You may assume that the audience of your paper is a group of people familiar with these selections, so don’t summarize the plot. Devote your paper instead to in-depth analysis of the story and the article. The structure of your paper should follow standard, rhetorical formula, with an introduction that includes the clear, specific, debatable thesis of your paper, the body that supports your thesis (and contains embedded quotations from the story for support), and a conclusion that ties together your ideas.  Specific criteria of this paper:  Include a clear, cogent thesis and well-developed body paragraphs that support that thesis Embed quotations from both the story and the article to prove your interpretation of the story and of the historical document valid Type your essay in MLA format with a Works Cited page Paper should be about three pages in length. On your Works Cited page, there must at least two entries: Short story citation Article citation Rubric Gender Norms EssayGender Norms EssayCriteriaRatingsPtsThis criterion is linked to a learning outcomeIntroduction sets up the essay topic, includes a specific and debatable thesis statement, and a compelling conclusion.20 pts This criterion is linked to a learning outcomeEssay examines how the Orenstein article on raising young men sheds insight into Boyles Greasy Lake.25 pts This criterion is linked to a learning outcomeEssay is typed in MLA format, is 3 pages in length, and cited correctly in-text and on the Works Cited page.20 pts This criterion is linked to a learning outcomeEssay is grammatically and mechanically correct, typed in academic voice with no personal pronoun references.25 pts This criterion is linked to a learning outcomeEssay correctly and adequately includes embedded quotations to support observations. Essay includes signal phrases and follows through on quotations.10 pts Total points: 100 Note : Work cited should be in different page and including it should be 3 pages2 “Greasy Lake” by T.C. Boyle Its about a mile down on the dark side of Route 88. - Bruce Springsteen There was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste. We were all dangerous characters then. We wore tom-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine. When we wheeled our parents whining station wagons out into the street we left a patch of rubber half a block long. We drank gin and grape juice, Tango, Thunderbird , and Bali Hai. We were nineteen. We were bad. We read Andre Gide[footnoteRef:1] and struck elaborate poses to show that we didnt give a shit about anything. At night, we went up to Greasy Lake. [1: Andre Gide: French novelist and critic (1859-1961) who was much concerned with unconventional behavior. ] Through the center of town , up the strip, past the housing developments and shopping malls, street lights giving way to the thin streaming illumination of the headlights, trees crowding the asphalt in a black unbroken wall: that was the way out to Greasy Lake. The Indians had called it Wakan, a reference to the clarity of its waters. Now it was fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires. There was a single ravaged island a hundred yards from shore, so stripped of vegetation it looked as if the air force had strafed it. We went up to the lake because everyone went there, because we wanted to snuff the rich scent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars, savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus of frogs and crickets. This was nature. I was there one night, late, in the company of two dangerous characters. Digby wore a gold star in his right ear and allowed his father to pay his tuition at Cornell; Jeff was thinking of quitting school to become a painter/ musician/ head­shop proprietor. They were both expert in the social graces, quick with a sneer, able to manage a Ford with lousy shocks over rutted and gutted blacktop road at eighty-five while rolling a joint as compact as a Tootsie Roll Pop stick. They could lounge against a bank of booming speakers and trade mans with the best of them or roll out across the dance floor as if their joints worked on bearings. They were slick and quick and they wore their mirror shades at breakfast and dinner, in the shower, in closets and caves. In short, they were bad. I drove. Digby pounded the dashboard and shouted along with Toots & the Maytals while Jeff hung his head out the window and streaked the side of my mothers Bel Air with vomit. It was early June, the air soft as a hand on your cheek, the third night of summer vacation. The first two nights wed been out till dawn, looking for sometThe Miseducation of the American Boy Why boys crack up at rape jokes, think having a girlfriend is “gay,” and still can’t cry—and why we need to give them new and better models of masculinity Anthony Blasko Story by  Peggy Orenstein JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020 ISSUE of The Atlantic I knew nothing about Cole before meeting him; he was just a name on a list of boys at a private school outside Boston who had volunteered to talk with me (or perhaps had had their arm twisted a bit by a counselor). The afternoon of our first interview, I was running late. As I rushed down a hallway at the school, I noticed a boy sitting outside the library, waiting—it had to be him. He was staring impassively ahead, both feet planted on the floor, hands resting loosely on his thighs. My first reaction was Oh no. It was totally unfair, a scarlet letter of personal bias. Cole would later describe himself to me as a “typical tall white athlete” guy, and that is exactly what I saw. At 18, he stood more than 6 feet tall, with broad shoulders and short-clipped hair. His neck was so thick that it seemed to merge into his jawline, and he was planning to enter a military academy for college the following fall. His friends were “the jock group,” he’d tell me. “They’re what you’d expect, I guess. Let’s leave it at that.” If I had closed my eyes and described the boy I imagined would never open up to me, it would have been him. But Cole surprised me. He pulled up a picture on his phone of his girlfriend, whom he’d been dating for the past 18 months, describing her proudly as “way smarter than I am,” a feminist, and a bedrock of emotional support. He also confided how he’d worried four years earlier, during his first weeks as a freshman on a scholarship at a new school, that he wouldn’t know how to act with other guys, wouldn’t be able to make friends. “I could talk to girls platonically,” he said. “That was easy. But being around guys was different. I needed to be a ‘bro,’ and I didn’t know how to do that.” Whenever Cole uttered the word bro, he shifted his weight to take up more space, rocking back in his chair, and spoke from low in his throat, like he’d inhaled a lungful of weed. He grinned when I pointed that out. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s part of it: seeming relaxed and never intrusive, yet somehow bringing out that aggression on the sports field. Because a ‘bro’ ”—he rocked back again—“is always, always an athlete.” The definition of masculinity seems to be contracting. When asked what traits society values most in boys, only 2 percent of male survey respondents said honesty and morality. Cole eventually found his people on the crew team, but it wasn’t a smooth fit at first. He recalled an incident two years prior when a senior was bragging in the locker room about how he’d convinced one of Cole’s female classmates—a young sophomore, Cole emphasized—that they were an item, then started hooking up with other girls behind her back. And the guy wasn’t shy about sharing