Select 1-2 paragraphs of the novella or short story to focus on in your essay. Examine
this paragraph closely and note all the formal elements you see at work. Just as we did for the
close reading homework, look up words, particularly the figurative language. Brainstorm larger
observations about the paragraph. Is there anything you find confusing about the passage? Any
tensions that you see at work? Once youve worked through your initial observations and
comments, build an argument that connects the form and narrative. For instance, you might
explore how the language & form create paradoxes or tensions in the text. Or you might think
about how this passage prompts you to rethink the story as a whole. Whatever argument you
develop, make sure (a) it can be debated, (b) you support it with textual evidence, not just by
summarizing the story, and (c) the reading would stand up if we considered other passages or the
larger text.
“Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang excerpt
Part of me wanted to stop this, to protect childrens ability to see the beginning of their lives filtered through gauze, to keep those origin stories from being replaced by cold, desaturated video. But maybe they will feel just as warmly about their lossless digital memories as I do about my imperfect, organic memories.
People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we ve lived; theyre the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments. Which is why, even when we’ve experienced the same events as other individuals, we never constructed identical narratives: the criteria used for selecting moments were different for each of us, and a reflection of our personalities. Each of us noticed the details that caught our attention and remembered what was important to us, and the narratives we built shaped our personalities in turn.
But, I wondered, if everyone remembered everything, would our differences get shaved away? What would happen to our sense of self? It seemed to me that a perfect memory’ couldnt be a narrative any more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film”
