a few things:
Since I will not be able to return your graded out of class essay #2 until Monday, December 1, I do not want you to be concerned about having enough time to revise, if you wish.
I noted earlier in the semester that all revisions must be submitted no later than the last class meeting, which is Wednesday, December 10th.
However! Because of the changed circumstances, I will allow revisions to be submitted no later than the last day of finals week, Friday, Dec. 19th.
Revisions can be submitted to my dept. mailbox in Calaveras 105. If you do place a revision in my mailbox, you must also email me and let me know it is there. I will return the email to let you know that I have received it.
Remember, all students have the option of revising out of class essay 2.
Only students who submitted a rough draft for out of class essay 1 can revise essay 1.
ALSO,
below you will find a sample student response to out of class essay 3. I want you to consider it a fairly strong essay. It earned a high "B". At times, the essay spends too much time summarizing, but overall, the focus and organization and supportive evidence is good.
I will posting at least one more example this week.
Walter
White and Heisenberg
“The
concept here being just as your left hand and your right hand are mirror images
of one another, identical and yet opposite,” starts Walter White's lecture on
chirality, “but although they may look the same, they don't always behave the
same.” Throughout the first season
of Breaking Bad, viewers watch the life of Walter White unfold after he
is diagnosed with terminal and inoperable cancer. Walter, who initially appears to be a typical mild mannered
family man and high school chemistry teacher, domineered by his controlling
wife and emasculated by his macho brother-in-law, has a deeply buried side of
himself, a side that viewers come to know as Heisenberg. With these two personalities, we learn
the tragic irony of his lecture on chirality; two men identical in appearance,
but opposite in behavior. Walter
White is submissive, compassionate, and inadequate; Heisenberg is dominant and
clinical.
From
the first scenes of Walter with his family, viewers see Walter being
submissive. He is handed a plate
of breakfast with eggs and bacon in the shape of a five and a zero, for his 50th
birthday. Walter's son, Walt Jr.,
complains that it is not bacon, to which Walter replies, “We're watching our
cholesterol, apparently,” along with the look that he does not like it either,
but is eating it because his wife, Skyler, told him to. Later that day, Walter is at his second
job, as a cashier at a car wash.
His boss, to Walter's dismay, consistently tells him to leave the cash
register and wipe down the cars.
While on his knees, cleaning the wheels of a car, one of Walter's
students looks at him and laughs, taking a photo of Walter with his cellphone. Although humiliated, Walter does not stand
up for himself to either his boss, for making him do work outside his normal
job, or to the student, who is constantly disrespecting him. This humiliation is carried home with
him to his surprise birthday party, where his wife nags him for being
late. That night, for his
birthday, Skyler gives Walter a hand job, barely paying attention, while using
the other hand to work on her laptop.
Throughout that day, Walter puts up with being humiliated, ignored, and scolded
without once doing anything about it.
Even
though most of the people around him do not fully respect him, Walter still
manages to do his best to be a caring and compassionate person. This side of him is perfectly
illustrated by his interactions with Krazy-8. Even though Krazy-8 tried to kill Walter, and is currently
Walt’s prisoner, Walter still brings him food and tries to make his
imprisonment more comfortable by giving him beer and toilet paper. Walter's compassion also comes in the
form of him receiving treatment for his cancer. Originally, Walter was going to cook meth to secure his
family's financial future, but because his family really wants him to go for
treatment, he gives in. This
treatment causes him to be constantly sick and exhausted, but he still does it
because his family wants it.
Walter
White is a genius in the field of chemistry, but very inadequate when it comes
to everything else. While good
with chemistry, Walter is a very bad chemistry teacher; he fails to get the
attention or respect of his students.
While he does care about his students, when he is shown in his classroom,
there is absolutely no one listening to what he is actually saying. This lack of success carries over to
his attempts at cooking meth; while the chemistry portion of the business is
perfect, everything else falls apart.
First, Walter and Jesse try to sell their product to Krazy-8, but Emilio
ends up recognizing Walter from the drug bust; this causes the drug deal to
implode, the aftermath of which is Walter attempting suicide, the RV stuck in a
ditch with two bodies inside, and a brush fire. Next, they try to sell the meth to Tuco, a crazy meth
distributor, but Jesse ends up being robbed and beaten. Their later attempts to kill Tuco
almost result in both Tuco killing them and Hank arresting them. Every time Walt and Jesse take a step
forward, their mistakes set them two steps back.
Heisenberg
is not a new personality of Walter's.
In a flashback, we see the Heisenberg personality talking with Gretchen
about the composition of the human body; we see Heisenberg leaning over
Gretchen, strongly asserting that his way is right. Heisenberg's strongest trait is this dominant presence, most
noticeably around Jesse. This
dominance is first seen when Heisenberg blackmails Jesse into partnering up,
threatening him with jail time unless he helps him sell meth. Once they made their first batch of
meth, Walt and Jesse try to sell it to Krazy-8, and when that situation
implodes, Walter barters his recipe for his life. While in the RV showing them the recipe, Heisenberg is
actually making poison gas, which results in the death of Emilio, and the
incapacitation of Krazy-8. While Walter seems unaffected with being invisible,
Heisenberg risks his life to make sure that they succeed. That same night, after all the mayhem
that the day brought, Heisenberg does not settle for the half-effort handjob,
but instead initiates aggressive sex with Skyler, causing her to ask, “Walt, is
that you?”
The
pinnacle of Heisenberg's dominance comes after Jesse is beaten. Heisenberg calmly walks into Tuco's
office with what appears to be a bag of meth, introducing himself as
Heisenberg; he demands that Tuco give him the money that Tuco promised Jesse
before beating and robbing him.
When Tuco is about to do the same to Heisenberg, he calmly picks up a
rock of the meth, and explains that it is not actually meth. He throws the rock into the ground
causing a massive explosion; he then takes the entire bag and threatens to do
the same. Heisenberg submits and
pays him.
Heisenberg
is not a violent person; he neither enjoys violence or uses it as a first
resort like Tuco. Heisenberg is
clinical, in that he treats situations objectively and emotionally
detached. When dealing
with Krazy-8, he rationalizes letting him go up until he realizes that Krazy-8
has a shard of a broken plate, and is planning on killing him. Heisenberg only resorts to killing
Krazy-8 after learning that Krazy-8 is planning to kill him once freed. When disposing of Emilio and Krazy-8,
he nonchalantly tells Jesse to buy plastic bins for the acid. Heisenberg didn't reassure him about
dissolving human bodies, but gave him simple direct instructions.
These
two personalities are most often at odds with each other; while Walter is
content with being humiliated; Heisenberg, on the other hand, will attack a
display case saying, “Fuck you and your eyebrows, wipe down this,” while
grabbing his genitals. But there
are times when they both work for a common goal. The first time we see this is when jocks are tormenting Walt
Jr. about his disability; viewers see both Walter's fatherly care in defending
his son, and Heisenberg's dominance in assaulting and taunting the jock until
they backed down. A similar event
happens after Jesse is beaten by Tuco, while Walter feels sad and guilty for
sending him to Tuco and wants to fix his mistake, Heisenberg walks into Tuco's
office and ensures that neither himself or Jesse will be harmed in the future.
How
does a man deal with the fate of death? That is what Breaking Bad
attempts to show. In Walter
White's case, he lives. He spends
the little time he has free to be both of himself: the man who will do and put
up with anything for his family, and the man who demands respect and receives
it. Both men make Walter White
whole and compelling because both by themselves would be just another one
dimensional character, but together they showcase a man's struggle with himself
and the world around him.
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