Tonight, Academic Approach is thinking of its students, its noble scions, illustrious alum, really, the entire reason why we’re in business.
There’s really no better confirmation of our mission than that moment when an alum writes to us to share one of his or her latest offerings at college, and we can see in that piece the evidence of critical thinking, logical analysis, sophisticated syntax, and perfect usage and mechanics. Well, actually, there is one slightly better confirmation, that is, when the piece also displays real intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm.
Here’s one for you below:
——–
Prompt: Why do so many road narratives begin at a site of loss? What does the writer gain by writing from a space of loss? What is the end-goal of taking loss as a starting point for the road narrative?
Light Up the Darknes
We have all heard George Santayana’s sentiments on history in his commonly quoted phrase, “those who fail to remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” The meaning of this in history is clear: it is necessary to study the mistakes people have made before us so that we know not to make them ourselves. Yet this sentiment is not only a historian’s sentiment. My fifth grade art teacher used to tell us that “it was okay to make a million mistakes, but unacceptable to make the same mistake a million times.” Clearly, this idea of a lapse in memory, losing sight of lessons from our past, is represented throughout our lives. In narrative, loss is just as important. What is narrative, what, in fact, is writing, but to open your reader’s eyes to what you see and what they do not? Loss sparks a piece of writing, sparks a narrative, to illuminate the areas in the reader’s mind where the lights have been dimmed.
Walt Whitman, in his poem, “Song of the Open Road,” illuminates to his readers what they do not notice when traveling through America’s road. Whitman’s intentions in his poem, describing the road as a place where there is “much unseen,” are to open his reader’s mind to the depth of the road, and how the road shows what is lost about American ideals. Whitman discusses the road as a free place for convicts, for blacks, for whites, and for all people. He discusses the dreams that are on the road and how it is open to anyone. His sentiments are enlightening to his readers. Whitman’s words—“you road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here”—entice the reader to realize what they do not see about the road, and the freedom they have forgotten, the sentiment of liberty they have lost, in the road and in America.
In the film I Am Legend, loss plays the role of illuminating the viewers on the idea of resilience. The plot of the movie incorporates much of humanity—for most of the movie all of humanity except for Will Smith—losing all their human traits beyond animal instinct. Yet as much as Smith feels the urge, he does not give in. At one point in the movie he quotes Bob Marley, citing a story when Marley got shot, arrived on stage just two days later, and was quoted saying “the people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off; how can we?” It is through loss that I Am Legend is able to portray this message of resilience; this message of reminding the reader there is always hope.
Loss sparks narratives, sparks writers, and sparks ideas. With loss comes the necessity for problem solving, and with loss comes a darkness that needs to be illuminated. Narratives incorporate loss in order to teach the reader, and to open their ideas to ideas they have yet to think of. In Smith’s character’s words from I Am Legend, “light up the darkness; light up the darkness.”