Revision Assignment - Closers

Princesleah Aguilera WRIT 3330 19 March 2018 Dr. Amy Clements Revision Assignment #3 – Closers Summary of Chapter Trimble’s “Closers,” chapter from Writing with Style begins with the metaphor of a student writing a conclusion to a capital-punishment and an internal mental fight between what the student thinks and what their conscience and common sense believe.

Trimble explains and emphasizes the importance of writing the conclusion/closer with the common thought that a writer holds on to when debating on whether or not they should write a conclusion is the fact that the reader will mostly remember the ending the most out of the entire reading.

He continues to explain the writer’s usual thoughts when they’re writing their conclusions. They tend to freeze and think of the redundancy they’re imposing on the readers. As writers, we need to think of a way to keep the reader hooked until the very end, without making them feel uneducated. Trimble likes to think of this closer as half-summary, half-conclusion.

The most important section to me was where Trimble lists the three imperatives which are, “(1) focus on your main point (which may be your final point); (2) gratify us with at least one last new twist or phrase to make your point memorable; and (3) end with emotional impact” (45). These imperatives help writers form a guideline to get the closing statement they want without screwing over the readers.

He ends the section with an example of a student’s closing statements and how they managed to follow the advice of these writers and make it more of a possibility to engage the readers in a positive way.

Paragraph: The paragraph I chose to edit and highlight for my closer’s piece was a concluding paragraph I wrote for my Intro to English Literature course last year. I always had issues with writing the beginning and the end of a paper although I had just defended my stance accurately throughout it. This conclusion was no different, needing more of the “half-summary” section, but still teaching a valuable lesson to the readers. Although the audience was my professor who had probably read the book a million times, I still wanted it to be universal for students who had only read it once because it was an assignment. Because this was an opinion-based paper, I was able to put more of my emotion into the paper, but now feel that it could have been better without it.

To conclude, I have very strong feelings about both these men and how poorly they treat their wives and the institution of marriage. However, I think that these men portrayed a very common stereotype of what men were like during the Victorian era. They felt as though they were the sun and the wives were merely a human on earth. They didn’t respect anything, but their selfish and egotistical desires. I think that I do portray this well with the examples that I used within both of the poems. The vocabulary from Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and the rhetorical absence and silence of Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” give sufficient evidence to a very one-sided partnership and absent respect to their marriage. This is also a very one-sided opinion because we don’t have the chance to hear from the women and their perspectives, or even what they’re doing while the men are too busy being men. Or how I would rather finish this paper… IN CONCLUSION, ULYSSES AND THE DUKE ARE BOTH MAJOR FUCK BOYS WHO DON’T DESERVE THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE OR THE ETERNAL LOVE OF ONE WOMAN (let alone any woman). You obviously don’t have to grade that last sentence, I understand if I get points taken off, but this is truly how I feel. Thank you.

Revision To conclude, I believe these men portrayed a very common “man” stereotype during the Victorian era. They felt as though they were the sun and their wives were merely orbiting them and I believe I portray this well with the examples in both the poems. The vocabulary from Browning’s “My Last Duchess” and the rhetorical absence and silence of Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” give sufficient evidence to a one-sided partnership and absent respect of marriage. This is also a one-sided opinion because we don’t have the chance to hear from the women and their perspectives, or even what they’re doing while the men are too busy being men. Ulysses and The Duke are both ungrateful men who wouldn’t stand a chance in present day romance, however be given the benefit of the doubt because they didn’t know any better at the time and “boys will be boys.”