DUMMY NY/La Ball

236 CHAPTER 12 The Essay Examination

14 Phil was overweight and nervous and worked too hard. If he wasn't at the office, he was worried about it. Phil was a Type A, a heart-attack natural. You could have picked him out in a minute from a lineup.

15 So when he finally worked himself to death, at precisely 3:00 A.M. Sunday morning, no one was really surprised.

16 By 5:00 P.M. the afternoon of the funeral, the company president had begun, discreetly of course, with care and taste, to make inquiries about his replace- ment. One of three men. He asked around: "Who's been working the hardest?"

Discussion Questions

1. Goodman says that Phil was "a perfect Type A" (paragraph 2). After reflecting on her essay, explain the characteristics of this type.

2. Why do you think Goodman doesn't supply Phil's last name or the name of the company he works for?

3. What idea is Goodman trying to present? 4. Unlike the essay by Rubin Erdely, Goodman's uses one longer illustration

rather than several shorter ones. Why? 5. What is the significance of Phil's oldest son going "around the neighborhood

researching his father, asking the neighbors what he was like" (paragraph 9)? Why were they embarrassed?

6. How do you account for Goodman's relatively short paragraphs?

Toward Key Insights

What social values would cause individuals to work themselves to death? In that regard, what is the significance of the company president asking "Who's

been working the hardest?" Are these values basically good, or should we make some changes in our attitudes

toward work and success? If so, what kinds of changes?

Suggestion for Writing

Using one extended example, write an essay that illustrates the lifestyle of a laid-back employee or friend. Your paper need not, of course, feature a death.

CAUSE AND EFFECT immosassam Reading Strategies

1. Identify the main event that is trying to be explained or the event whose effects are being studied.

2. Determine whether the writer is identifying a chain of causes that yield a result or is considering multiple causes for the same event.

3. Be careful. In more sophisticated academic writing, authors often look at several causes that they try to show are not the real explanation. Only after ruling out some key explanations do they offer the explanation that they think is most plausible.

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• 4. It can be helpful to make a diagram showing the connection between the causes and the effects.

Cause and Effect 237

• Reading Critically 1. Evaluate the evidence the writer gives for the relationship between cause and

• effect. How does he or she prove that the causes) have the effect(s) in question? 2. Try to determine if there could be other causes or effects that the writer hasn't

• mentioned.

3. Writers often confuse "correlation" for causation. Just because something •

happens before or around another event doesn't mean that it is the cause of the event. Just because George W Bush was president when the terrorists attacked

• the World Trade Centers does not mean that his presidency was in any way a cause of the attack. Does the writer confuse correlation and causation?

Reading As a Writer •

1. Note how the writer organizes the causes and effects to keep them clear and distinct. 2. Observe what devices the

writer uses to demonstrate the connection between the causes and the effects. • 3. Examine how the writer pulls his or her ideas together in the conclusion.

110 RICHARD TOMKINS

Richard Tomkins is consumer industries editor of the Financial Times, where he has been II a member of the editorial staff since 1983. He is currently based at the company's London

headquarters, where he leads a team of journalists covering the consumer goods sector and 110 writes about consumer trends. Previously, he was the FT 's marketing correspondent and,

from 1993 to 1999, he was a correspondent in the newspaper's New York bureau, where he II) covered the consumer goods sector. Earlier positions in London included writing about the

transport sector and corporate news. Tomkins was born in Walsall, England, in 1952. His 110 formal education ended at the age of seventeen. Before becoming a journalist, he was a casual laborer, a factory worker, a truck driver, a restaurant cashier, a civil servant, and an

10 assistant private secretary to a government minister. He left government service in 1978 to

III hitchhike around the world, and on returning to the U.K. in 1979, joined a local newspa- per as a trainee reporter. He joined the FT as a subeditor four years later. In this selection,

10 Tomkins discusses the time squeeze that many people are experiencing and offers a way to combat the problem. IP i It's barely 6:30 A.M. and already your stress levels are rising. You're late for a 5 breakfast meeting. Your cell-phone is ringing and your pager is beeping. You have 35 messages in your e-mail, 10 calls on your Voicemail and one question on 1110 2 your mind. Why was it never like this for Dick Van Dyke? ID 3 Somehow, life seemed much simpler in the 1960s. In The Dick Van Dyke Show, the classic American sitcom of the era, Rob Petrie's job as a television scriptwriter

• Old rather Time Becomes a Terror

Introduction: paragraphs 1-8; compares the leisurely 1960s (paragraphs 1-5) with the time-stressed present.

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