The Norton Reader: “Falling Down is Part of Growing Up,” Henry Petrosky,

Question

The Norton Reader: “Falling Down is Part of Growing Up,” Henry Petrosky, pp. 83; Respond to question #1;

The Norton Reader: “On Going Home,” Joan Didion, pp 1-3; Respond to question #1

Sample paper

Response to questions

Question 1

The Norton Reader: “Falling Down is Part of Growing Up,” Henry Petrosky, pp. 83; Respond to question #1;

In his article Falling down Is Part of Growing Up, Henry Petrosky is convinced that we are all engineers right from birth. I am fully convinced by his essay that human body and mind functions like an engineer. According to the author, all infants are born in a world of risks and trust which is similar to a life of an engineer who has to take the risk to build his structures or rather invent new things, but h has to trust his work for him to succeed. Soon after birth, the human body learns how to function as a lever, beams, columns and structures like bridges as the child try to walk or sit upright (Peterson & Brereton, 2008. Each time human fails; he learned through mistake and created something new with precision to ensure that it works. When the bridges and structures of the human body fail, he always reconstructs them just like what an engineer would do.

Question 2

The Norton Reader: “On Going Home,” Joan Didion, pp 1-3; Respond to question #1

Joan Didion in her essay On Going Home, he clearly expresses her fears of facing the past especially family life. According to the author every evening her husband’s calls her not only to inform her of his day but rather to what she has been doing all day long which suggests that she should find something to do rather than just lives in remote areas in Los Angeles. Moreover, when she visits her great aunts, they confuse herd for her cousin or one of their daughters that died at a young age (Peterson & Brereton, 2008). This is a clear indication that the author is afraid to embrace her past and make the future better.  She is always afraid of visiting her relatives as they always confuse her with a dead person.

References

Peterson, L. H., & Brereton, J. C. (2008). The Norton reader: An anthology of nonfiction. New York: W.W. Norton.

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