How to Give Orders Like a Man

In my opinion Deborah Tannen outdid herself when she wrote the essay, “How to Give Orders Like a Man.” This particular story brings up a topic that to my understanding is very important. The essay is based upon two forms of speaking to people, the indirect way or the direct way. At the begging we see an executive woman that tells her secretary to run some chores for her in an indirect way, then the story goes on by explaining that the board of trustees tells the executive that she should talk to her secretary in a more direct way, not implying things, but instead barking orders at her. I completely agree with Deborah when she said that men are more direct towards others then woman disregarding backgrounds, customs or ethnics. In my own case I have seen that men do not “sugar coat” things instead they tell you specifically what they want without thinking about the consequences to what is being said.

At first I personally thought that Tannen was heading towards gender issues when she was writing this essay, but as I kept reading on I realized that she was saying that though direct conversation in some cases is bad we need both forms of speaking. For instance, she puts the example of a pilot and a co-pilot on board, and because the co-pilot was not direct, rather he was indirect when speaking to someone with a higher level then him the results were catastrophic because the plane crashed and some people died. In my opinion it is true that elders or someone with more experience then us has earned respect, but that does not mean that we should always talk to them in an indirect way because there are cases when we need to say something to save someone or to stop a terrible event from happening. Also, I do not believe that anyone is higher then I nor anyone else because no one is better then anyone, so in my opinion if someone talks to me directly I will give them the same thing back whether they have more power than me or not.

In my case this topic is quiet controversial because I find myself battling with both forms of communication. I believe just like Tannen that we do need both, indirect and direct communication, because if people would ask for things all the time in an indirect way many would not accomplish the task. People need a little push sometimes to get something done. For example, we cannot expect a boss to be asking us for things in an indirect way all the time because he would just be reminding us about something that we know we have to do but we are too lazy to do it, so for this reason bosses have to talk to some employees in a direct way so that they only have to mention it once and that’s it. To conclude with, I believe that this essay is very interesting for anybody to read whether it be someone with power or a subordinate.

Why Don't We Complain?

The narrative essay written by William F. Buckley Jr, “Why Don’t We Complain?” in my opinion is very realistic to a point. The author begins by setting the reader in a train where it is very hot though the temperature outside is freezing; the author then proceeds to tell us that he notices that everyone else in the train is hot too, but no one has complained. When he finally gets the courage to ask the conductor something he feels as if everyone is looking at him and he does not want to start a commotion. This story can be related to many people with different customs. For instance, in Miami if something is bothering a person the most likely thing that he or she will do is let it be known, whether it be in a sugar coated way or directly. On the contrary, someone with more high class in another part of the world may not complain because they don’t want to be seen as if something is bothering them, they don’t want people to murmur things about them.

The same thing can occur when we are at a restaurant. For example, if you are eating and you’ve asked the waiter for your drink a couple of times and they haven’t brought it the most likely thing to do is to tell the person in a bad way, maybe then they will get what you are asking for. The tricky part to asking someone for something more than once or twice is that the people that surround us at times want to be like the passengers in the train, unheard or unseen, they don’t want to make a spectacle, even when the truth of the matter is that we are in our every right to complain, because if we didn’t our voices wouldn’t be heard.

When the peak of the story arose I began to contemplate on what the author was saying. The truth is that he was stating something that was very true. The author says that because we live in an era where everything gets done for us with a flick of a finger we don’t pay much attention to the things that we are suppose to do, our voices become unheard. Before this age of technology if something was wrong with, for say, the air conditioner we had to do something about it, everyone had to be a little of everything, a plumber an electrician maybe even a mechanic, but because today we have people that specialize in those fields we fall back and we stoop learning, we stop complaining about things. Everyone should let their voices be heard and when something is wrong we should complain because there is going to come a point that we will become unheard of unseen and the things we want will not matter.

The Death of the Moth

The Death of the Moth, in my opinion, is a fine but rare descriptive essay. As I was reading the passage I was contemplating on many of the things the author says. For instance, I have found myself in several occasions pondering on the idea of what life would be like for me if I was not human, if I was an animal or an insect, such as the moth of the story. The idea of imaging oneself being something else rather then what we are is silly.

Like the passage described this moth can be compared to a simple bead of life because it is insignificant, but as the story progresses we realize that though the moth is just a minor insect it too has life, and it wants to live. The moth keeps fluttering from one windowpane to the other because it wants to be free it feels trapped inside, and at the end of the essay we see that it dies because it feels as though it wasted all of its energy and got nowhere. Also, we see that the moth tried to the very last second to stay alive, he struggled to live, but death was stronger then he was.

The Death of the Moth serves as an example to today’s world. It is true that there is a beginning and an ending to life, everyone that lives has to die, but though every human being knows that, they don’t give up in life. As humans we are given the ability to fight for our lives to strive to get what we want, but the clue to that is to never give up, and to always try to the very last moment, to have faith and to believe that we can accomplish anything we desire. As I already stated the moth struggled to live and even when it knew that his time was over it kept fighting for his life, we should do the same.

A Hanging

This narration begins by setting the reader in a jail yard in Burma; the author then describes the cells, and continues by saying that the condemned men pertained to them. Outside of a cell was a Hindu, a man that soldiers were preparing to hang; I was astonished at how the story says that the man acted when the soldiers were handcuffing him, he did not resist, instead he yielded to them. As the story develops we see the insensible feelings of the soldiers towards the poor man that’s going to be hanged; personally I believe that they do it as a routine as something ordinary that has to be done, and the faster they get the job done the better it is.

What I found to be the point of the story, or the peak is that the author notices that the man steps aside as to not step on a puddle, and that’s when he begins to think about the fact that that man was as alive as he was. Truthfully, this narration shows that the human mind can be triggered by anything, and that we can either do something about it or ignore it; in this case the author though feeling bad because he realized that it is an unfair act to cut someone’s like short when its at its tide, he didn't speak up nor do anything, he simply went along with it.

If I was asked to think of a way that this essay influenced me in my life I would say that it shows us something important which is that sometimes though were conscious about things that happen around us we never really show much attention to it, and if we do we don’t take care of it with actions. Also, through the reading I sensed hypocrisy because even though he was aware that it is a cruel act to cut someone’s life short he then proceeded to laugh and make jokes and drink whiskey with the other soldiers as if the event that had just occurred didn’t mean anything to him. The author by not doing anything was just as insensitive as the soldiers that wanted to get the job done quickly so that they could have the rest of the day for themselves.

Borges and I

In my opinion, I found Borges story to be perplexing. When I read it the first time I didn’t grasp the concept that Borges was trying to portray, only after the second time did I notice that Borges was referring to an internal conflict that he finds himself dealing with. Though puzzling, I found the story to be distinctive because the way that Borges conveys his use of words makes it unique from other stories. Also, what makes this story fascinating is that when you think that you finally realize what Borges was trying to express through his reading he closes off the story with a bewildering statement such as, “I do not know which of us has written this page;” phrases like that are found threw the whole story and truthfully they threw me off completely.