ENGLISH 1102 –WRITING
DIRECTIONS FOR THE WRITING pt1 : Type your essay using MLA
Format (Times New Roman font, 12 pt. font, and double-spaced document).
Indicate which topic you are responding to.
Your essay will be evaluated on the following criteria: 1) Thesis, 2)
Development, 3) Organization, 4) Grammar/Punctuation, and 5) Use of the
article (incorporating information from the article into your essay) to the
extent that it is relevant.
Only paper dictionaries can be used (no electronic devices). Proofread
your essay carefully before uploading in the drop box provided. Write a 5-6 paragraph essay on one of the following topics. Indicate
by number which topic you are responding to. 3. Among Phil’s family, which three people do you especially
sympathize with? Explain. Of the three, who is the most sympathetic
of all? Explain your reasons why with references to the article and
with your own experiences.
He worked himself to death, finally and precisely, at
3:00A.M. Sunday morning. (para. 1)
The obituary didn’t say that, of course. It said that he died of a
coronary thrombosis–! I think that was it—but everyone among his
friends and acquaintances knew it instantly. He was a perfect Type
A, workaholic, a classic, they said to each other and shook their
heads—and thought for five or ten minutes about the way they lived.
(para. 2)
This man who worked himself to death finally and precisely at 3:00
A.M. Sunday morning—on his day off–was fifty-one years old and a
vice president. He was, however, one of six vice-presidents, and one
of three who might conceivably—if the president died or retired
soon enough–have moved to the top spot. Phil knew that. (para. 3)
He worked six days a week, five of them until eight or nine at night,
during a time when his own company had begun the four-day week
for everyone but the executives. He worked like the Important
People. He had no outside “extracurricular interests,” unless, of
course, you think about a monthly golf game that way. To Phil, it
was work. He always ate egg salad sandwiches at his desk. He was,
of course, overweight, by 20 or25 pounds. He thought it was okay,
though, because he didn’t smoke. (para. 4)
On Saturdays, Phil wore a sports-jacket to the office instead of a
suit because it was the weekend. He had a lot of people working for
him, maybe sixty, and most of them liked him most of the time.
Three of them will be seriously considered for his job. The obituary
didn’t mention that. (para. 5)
But it did list his “survivors” quite accurately. He is survived by his
wife, Helen, forty-eight years old, a good woman of no particular
marketable skills, who worked in an office before marrying and
mothering. She had, according to her daughter, given up trying to
compete with his work years ago, when the children were small. A
company friend said, “I know how much you will miss him.” And she
answered, “I already have.” (para. 6)
“Missing him all these years,” she must have given up part of
herself which had cared too much for the man. She would be “well
taken care of.” (para. 7)
His “dearly beloved” eldest of the “dearly beloved” children is a
hard-working executive in a manufacturing firm down South. In the
day and a half before the funeral, he went around the neighborhood
researching his father, asking the neighbors what he was like. They
were embarrassed. His second child is a girl, who is twenty-four and
newly married. She lives near her mother and they are close, but
whenever she was alone with her father, in a car driving
somewhere, they had nothing to say to each other. (para. 8)
The youngest is twenty, a boy, a high-school graduate who has
spent the last couple of years, like a lot of his friends, doing enough
odd jobs to stay in grass and food. He was the one who tried to
grab at his father, and “tried to mean’ enough to him to keep the
man at home. He was his father’s favorite. (para. 9)
Over the last two years, Phil stayed up nights worrying about the
boy. The boy once said, “My father and I only board here.” (para.
10)
At the funeral, the sixty-year-old company president told the forty-
eight-year-old widow that the fifty-one-year-old deceased had
meant much to the company and would be missed and would be
hard to replace. The widow didn’t look him in the eye. She was afraid
he would read her bitterness and, after all, she would need him to
straighten out the finances—the stock options and all that. (para.
11)
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, heart-attack
natural. You could have picked him out in a minute from a line up.
(para. 12)
So, when he finally worked himself to death, at precisely 3:00 A.M.
Sunday morning, no one was really surprised. 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 replacement. One of three men. He asked around: “Who’s been
working the hardest?” (para. 13)
DIRECTIONS FOR THE READING pt 2: Type your answers in a Word
Document and upload in the drop box provided. Type your essay using MLA
Format (Times New Roman font, 12 pt. font, double-spaced document, and
1” margins). Number your answer to each question.
Carefully read the article before answering the questions. Each question asks
you to explain your understanding of the meaning of one part of the article.
Answer each question in your own words, paraphrasing some of the author’s
ideas. Be careful not to merely copy down verbatim the part of the article
referred to in the question. Your main task is to demonstrate your
understanding of the answers to the questions. To do so, you should quote
words, phrases, or short sentences from the article and, when relevant,
make connections between its different parts. It’s important that you clearly
show your answers are based on what is stated or implied by the text. In the
best answers, the student will clearly explain his/her answer and
demonstrate how he/she came to that understanding. It will be necessary
to write several sentences in explanation. (Reading Exam questions are listed 1-5 below. Please answer each
question in its own paragraph, and please number each answer.)
1. This article refers to the deceased man’s “obituary.” Specifically, it refers
to two common types of information listed in an obituary. What are these
two types of information the article refers to? Discuss how the author
adapts/changes each type of obituary information for his/her own purposes.
2. Phil’s “dearly beloved” and his company are clearly at odds. Contrast
Phil’s attitude toward his family with his attitude toward his company.
3. Is Phil’s dedication to the company justified by the quality of that
institution? What are two characteristics of the company that are obviously
important to the author? Show how the author brings out those
characteristics in the article.
4. The definition of irony is “the use of words to express something different
from and even opposite to the literal meaning.” Find and explain two examples
of the use of irony in the article. Explain what the literal meaning is and how
the meaning the author wants to express is different. What is the effect of this
irony?
5. As Phil makes choices about how to live his life, what is his motivation and
how does it relate to the position the author takes toward Phil’s death?
