Hi guysss, I have a SAC on text response on Wednesday and I would really appreciate it if I could receive some feedback for this essay
Sure thing , but DISCLAIMERS: I know nothing about the book so take this feedback with a tablespoonful of salt; and don't take anything here as a personal attack or me thinking that your writing is hopeless. I'm being harsh to give you some ways to improve, given you already have great potential! This Boys Life dispels any lingering nostalgia we might still have for the post-war society of the fifties. DiscussSet during the midst of post-war conservative backlash where restrictive societal norms limited the freedoms of people,
really nice start, flesh it out!Wolff's memoir
This Boy's Life indeed dispels much of the remaining
nostalgia that we still have with regards to that era.
You just repeated exactly what the prompt says, with slightly different words. Don't jump into the prompt straight away and when you do, be a bit more subtle. However, there are also qualities in
This Boy's Life that may instead evoke
nostalgic feelings directed towards the America of the fifties.
such as? Give some idea of where you're heading, be much more specific than this. Nostalgia may be seen in terms of the feelings that we may harbour when reminded of a familiar trend or event.
This is something you'd put in planning, but not in your essay – you're simply describing what nostalgia is, without linking it to the text at all. It kinda feels dumped in randomly. Our loss of
nostalgia is shown through the masculine culture exhibited and the superficial nature of status seeking.
This doesn't show our loss of nostalgia – surely it's what causes this loss of nostalgia. Alternatively, Wolff also demonstrates why we may continue to feel
nostalgic through the unselfish, motherly love demonstrated throughout the memoir.
So I feel this intro needs a bit of work. Firstly, you've used the word 'nostalgia' 5 times – as part of your planning, brainstorm other words/synonyms that you can use, so the reader doesn't get bored and so you show that you understand what it really means. Then, I think your overall three arguments need some work – I really can't help though because I don't know the book at all! 
You also need an overall thesis statement/overall contention – do you agree or disagree with the prompt overall, or think halfway in between? e.g. Ultimately, while Wolff's depiction of the harsh gender roles and superficiality of the 1950s undermines the reader's illusions, he nonetheless demonstrates that unconditional love can thrive in these conditions (randomly invented, IDK the book 
). See this post for help with writing intros maybe? I think a lot of it comes down to your planning, though; you need to question the prompt more and come up with more different ideas. Like, it says 'the lingering nostalgia we might have'; you maybe need to discuss why we even have this nostalgia in the first place, etc.The misogynistic, masculine culture and identity present in
This Boy's Life ultimately dispels any remaining nostalgia they we may feel towards the post-war society of America.
This topic sentence is just '[this specific thing] does what the prompt says'; you need a bit more depth. During Toby's childhood, masculine qualities such as bravado and strength were seen to be virtues and were qualities which young adolescent males aspired to acquire. Instead, qualities that were feminine in nature were perceived to be weaknesses as Toby insults Arthur by calling him "a sissy",
prompting Arthur's "smile [to leave] his face" unnecessary as it actually doesn't add anything to your argument at all, it's just an addition to show that you know quotes. Any time you put in a quote, you've got to analyse it and show something from it, not just randomly stick it in. Toby's lack of innate masculinity is elucidated through his name, as before in Florida, "a girl named Toby had joined my class", causing Toby to feel embarrassed, further fostering a desire to change his name to Jack. Coming from the symbol of masculinity and bravado in Jack London, Toby hoped changing his name to Jack would "charge him with some strength and competence", qualities which he naturally lacked. The men from Wolff's childhood, most notably Roy and Dwight, were both misogynists themselves as they did not trust Rosemary and would abuse her physically and threaten her. Approaching the end of the memoir as Rosemary was continually getting tired of Dwight and attempting to seek a way out of Chinook, "[Dwight] pulled his hunting knife from under the seat and held it to her throat".
This quote could be embedded better and the whole sentence made shorter, because it's just storytelling with no analysis; e.g. As Rosemary attempts to escape both Dwight and Chinook, Dwight threatens her with his 'hunting knife', … analysis stuff. Avoid phrases like 'approaching the end of the memoir' just because they really trap you into storytelling. Thus, the perceived lower status of women and the machismo permeated throughout Toby's childhood all contribute to the elimination of lingering nostalgia that we may have towards post-war America of the fifties.
There's a lot of storytelling in this; it's a bit like a sandwich here, with the bread as the prompt at the start and end (almost exactly the same words) and then in the middle there's lots of story-telling description of ways in which it's misogynistic, but with no real links to the overall IDEAS of the paragraph. You need to be explaining and analysing throughout HOW the portrayal of gender roles in the 50s society is unappealing to the audience, etc. For instance, you just state that masculinity is seen as important and femininity is seen as bad in the 50s. But… you haven't shown that masculinity is bad; to me personally, for instance, I like the idea of males being masculine. So you haven't at all shown how a reader, NOW, will see that as being bad or something they're glad is now over. Make it a rule that for every piece of evidence or description of the plot you give, you MUST analyse how that contributes to your overall argument, how it makes the readers feel, or what values it shows the author has, etc.Whilst the masculine identity of males pervades most of the novel, it is Furthermore, the superficial nature of status seeking
that also dispels the nostalgia we have for the America from Toby's childhood. From Toby's subjective perception of the world, he concluded that "to seek status seemed the most natural thing in the world", leading to Toby's desire to leave the blue collar society of Concrete, and to move to a higher echelon in the form of the prep school, Hill. Vince Packard's book, "The Status Seekers" reaffirms Toby's desire by confirming that "It is really the exclusive prep school that counts...". As an icon of prestige and perfection, a Cape Cod home was regarded as the ideal American home. The description of a Cape Cod home as, "obsessively groomed Cape Cods...Ivy grew on its chimneys...Black, spread-winged eagle above its door" depicts the exterior of a Cape Cod as orderly, familial and cared for with the abundant imagery.
Again, your descriptions and quotes are a bit long – could be made much shorter and more concise, so you'd have room to analyse. However, the people inside the house "looked very glum", juxtaposing the seemingly perfect exterior of the house with its occupants and accentuating the superficiality of a Cape Cod home.
GOOD STUFF! Here you're actually analysing what it's portraying! Keep it up! The ostensible nature of both status seeking and the identity of a Cape Cod home act as a facade to the insecurities beneath the surface, ridding us of the nostalgia we may feel towards the seemingly genuine America of the fifties.
Yet
it is not all the events in the memoir
that discourage feelings of nostalgia,
scrap the first half of this sentence except the linking word 'yet' as the prevalent and unselfish nature of motherly love promotes nostalgia being felt towards post-war America. From the outset, Rosemary's unconditional love towards Toby as a mother is crystallised through her actions as she never questions Toby's actions and blindly believes in him
break the sentence in two here, it's too long and run-on even though at times her kindness may be taken advantage of by Toby's manipulative ploys, such as when during Rosemary's brief moment of sadness, he "saw that the time was right to make a play for souvenirs". Albeit a mistake looking back in hindsight, Rosemary's unwavering trust in Toby is a product of the unselfish and unconditional love she has for Toby. Even as the Vice-Principal confronts Rosemary with concrete evidence isolating Toby as the culprit, she continued to confidently stand her ground by claiming "[Toby] doesn't lie to me." Such love displayed by Rosemary was difficult to find back in post-war America, almost just as difficult as it is today. When referring to Rosemary's acceptance of Toby's decisions, Mrs Howard praises Rosemary by calling her "generous" along with a wishful response in "I hope I'll be as generous when the time comes",
this whole paragraph so far just describes and story-tells what Rosemary did, no links to discussion of nostalgia or the time period, or even any analysis really implying that Rosemary's unconditional love is rare, even in the America of the past. As a result, the rare, unconditional motherly love of Rosemary's character makes it possible for us to generate nostalgic feelings that we may have for the America of the fifties.
You just contradicted this the sentence before, by saying that this motherly love was rare even for that time period. You've just spent a paragraph discussing one aspect of one character, that isn't even linked to the time period particularly; remember, the whole point of the essay is about how we feel about that ERA. To argue this, you'd need to prove by drawing more widely on other characters/themes in the book, that motherly love was characteristic of this era, not just one person. This is probably your weakest paragraph, as it doesn't really address the prompt and mainly just describes events/one character.In essence, it is evident through
This Boy's Life that any lingering nostalgia we hold towards the post-war torn America may be dispelled as a result of the conservative society's tough expectations on women and the glorification of masculinity. However, it also elucidates why we may continue to feel nostalgic as readers are invited to feel the warmth of an unconditional love a mother feels for their child.
Sounds like a nice ending, but unfortunately misses something big in the prompt: that the nostalgia is for that ERA, not just one characteristic that one character had.
OK, good effort, you have great vocab in there and some good ideas.
Try writing a couple of essays without worrying about vocab - try to make everything as plain and clear as possible, and try reading the essays out loud. This way, you force yourself to have clear ideas and know exactly where you're heading, as I often found myself using fancy sentence structure/vocab to hide the fact that I didn't have a clue what I was talking about. You need to focus a bit more on your ideas and arguments overall - spend more time brainstorming and questioning the prompt, and clearly mapping out where your paragraphs are going. How about you try writing an essay entirely in dot-points without worrying about complete sentences, so you can clearly focus on flow and ideas?
Now obviously in your SAC you'll want good vocab and sentence structure, (and especially more VARIATION in what you're saying, much less repetition of key words or sentences), but this is just for practise.
Your BP structure seems to be:
TS: a fairly specific example of how the prompt is true/not true
E: examples from the text (lots, but without much analysis or linking to how it supports the prompt)
L: repeat of TS.
This means that by the time you've got to the conclusion, you've said almost exactly the same thing 8 times (once in intro, twice in each BP, once in conclusion). Try drawing something a bit more insightful and different out of each paragraph. And I can't emphasise enough that just relying on the TS and last sentence to address the prompt isn't enough. Your WHOLE essay needs to be showing your point, all your evidence needs to be directly leading to it!
Also, with this prompt you'd need to know more about the history of the time period; you draw exclusively from individual events from the book, without seeming to know so much about the struggles, strengths, or values of that time period. You also need to look at the author's views and values: keep forcing yourself to put in the author's name, make it a tiny bit more language-analysis-y. With this essay, what was the AUTHOR trying to show about the era, and how did they do it? What values did that era hold that the author hates and is trying to show up as ridiculous? etc. One more: literary techniques. Can you come up with ways the author tries to characterise the 50s a certain way through using maybe the structure e.g. flashbacks, or dialogue, or repetition, or imagery? Always try to put that in!
Ask me if you've got any questions
As always, I intended to give brief feedback but ending up tearing your essay apart...
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