Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [66]
The idea of revolt, outright rebellion, is present but subdued in the essay. The tom-tom is a “revolt against weariness” and also an instrument for expressing “joy and laughter.” The tom-tom also suggests a link with a past African and probably Native American culture—communicating by drum and music and dance. White culture in the essay stands for a joyless world of “work work work.” This is something I would like to think about more, as the essay seems to link the loss of soul with the middle and upper classes, both black and white.
And so the essay seeks to claim another space among those he calls “the low down folks, the so-called common element.” Of these he says “… they do not particularly care whether they are like white folks or anybody else. Their joy runs, bang! into ecstasy. Their religion soars to a shout. Work maybe a little today, rest a little tomorrow. Play awhile. Sing awhile. O, let’s dance!” In these lines Hughes the poet clearly appears. Does he say then that the Negro artist needs to draw from those of his own people who are the most removed from middle class American life? If I had more time, I would start thinking here about Hughes’s use of the words “race” and “racial”….
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Try This 4.1: Do a Passage-based Focused Freewrite
Select a passage from any of the material you are reading and copy it at the top of the page. Remember to choose the passage in response to the question, “What is the single sentence that I think it is most important for us to discuss and why?” Then do a twenty-minute focused freewrite, applying the steps offered above. Discover what you think by seeing what you say.
It is often productive to take the focused freewrite and type it, revising and further freewriting until you have filled the inevitable gaps in your thinking that the time limit has created. (One colleague of ours has students revise and expand in a different font, so both can see how the thinking is evolving.) Eventually, you can build up, through a process of accretion, the thinking for an entire paper in this way.
An especially useful way of making pbff (as we shorthand it) productive academically is to freewrite for fifteen minutes every day on a different passage as you move through a book. If, for example, you are discussing a book over four class periods, prepare for each class by giving 15 minutes to a passage before you attend. You will not only discover things to say; you will begin to write your way to an essay.
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2. UNCOVERING ASSUMPTIONS
WHAT IS AN ASSUMPTION?
An assumption is an underlying belief from which other statements spring.
Virtually all statements have underlying assumptions—especially claims.
Assumptions are usually unstated, which is why they need to be uncovered.
We generally reason forward to implications (what follows from X), but we reason backward to assumptions (what has led to X), which are a particular kind of implicit meaning.
The ability to uncover assumptions is a powerful analytical procedure to learn. It gives you insight into the root, the basic givens that a piece of writing has assumed are true. When you locate assumptions in a text, you understand the text better—where it’s coming from, what else it believes that is more fundamental than what it is overtly declaring.
You also find things to write about. When analyzing the work of others, you are likely to discover related ideas or positions, and sometimes these are positions of which the writer is not aware. The same goes for developing and revising your own work. When you work back to your own premises from some statement you