Application assignment due Friday, 6/25/21

Carolina Student

Haven Abedin

English 1301-2003

July 2, 2012

Seeing Beyond the Surface (title fits student’s subject)

"We don't know how they got that way. Just don't make their lives worse by their coming in here," is something I used to say to the people who worked with me, when we would find ourselves frustrated by difficult guests. We didn’t know anything about their backstories or difficulties or why they acted the way they did; our task was to serve them—to be present—while they were in our establishments. I came across many people who could be described as "difficult" during my twenty-plus years of working in restaurants. A number of those years were spent in small North Texas towns, places that sometimes made me think of Maycomb, Alabama, the fictional setting of Harper Lee’s 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. (Notice how smoothly the author transitions from her hook about difficult guests in restaurants to her creative work inspiration, To Kill a Mockingbird.) Lee’s portraits of small-town citizenry invite us to look beyond the obvious. (Thesis statement – The rest of the essay will explain how the novel, especially a specific mean character, requires others to look beyond the obvious, and how the author of this essay tries to live by the value of seeing beyond people’s surface.)

Consider Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, neighbor “two doors to the north” to Scout and Jem, the novel’s child protagonists. Mrs. Dubose is a mean, nasty, racist, cantankerous old hag whose ruthless interrogations and streaming insults inspire fear and anger in the children, so much so that when she ventures to insult their lawyer father for defending a black man, Jem snaps and destroys her camellia bushes with his sister’s baton. When Jem is sent to read to Mrs. Dubose every afternoon as part of his “sentence,” he and Scout are even more distressed by her appearance: grimy, spittle-flecked, with traces of snuff at the corners of her mouth. As time progresses, the children realize that something deeper is behind her “fits,” and they remain present to her despite their revulsion. It is only after her death that the children understand what has been going on with Mrs. Dubose: she was a morphine addict, determined to break her habit in order to die “beholden to nothing and nobody.” She is a portrait of real courage, despite her wretched exterior; her victory over her habit leads Atticus, Jem and Scout’s father, to describe her as “the bravest person [he] ever knew.” (This paragraph discusses specifically how Mrs. Dubose, in spite of her very negative characteristics, is more than her worst qualities. Notice also how the essay’s author explains who characters are, so the essay will make sense to someone who doesn’t know the novel.)

Like Mrs. Dubose, each person we meet in this life has some kind of struggle. That struggle may be hidden or visible; we may want to turn away because of an unpleasant outward appearance, or engage in the “fight or flight” response because of obnoxious, intractable, impossible behavior; but each person deserves the same patience and consideration that we would want for ourselves. It is this consideration for another person and the desire to be present to someone in need that led me to pursue a career in healthcare. Patients are not merely a set of signs and symptoms and a body to be scanned like an object. They are real people with real concerns and fears who may not be at their best when we meet them. They need someone to care about them, as individuals, not just case numbers. (This paragraph elaborates on how this essay’s author wants to see beneath the surface of people – like Atticus can with Mrs. Dubose – and treat them with respect.)

I want to be a calming influence—a presence—while patients seek to find out just what it is that’s wrong; that would be my part in making things right. A scholarship from your organization would assist me in my studies as I prepare to “see through sound” as a sonographer, seeing beyond the surface. (The conclusion provides closure without just restating the thesis statement.)

Work Cited

Lee, Harper. Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird. New York, Lippencott, 1960.