Spencer Cooke

Dr. Tara Hembrough

ENG 4303

December 6, 2017

Reflective Essay

Margaret Atwood, in her short essay, Why Do You Write? (1991), argues that our

writing is connected with our experience with literature: As a craft its acquired through the

apprentice system, but you choose your own teachers (872). I agree with her assessment.

Essentially, our writing, in both style and substance, is formed as a result of our own created

writing community - which includes both our academic peers and our adopted mentors. In this

way, we each create a community of authors, however dissimilar, and connect them as a result of

our own experiences The works of Stephen King and John Grisham fundamentally influence

my own writing as do the works of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. As part of the

college experience, we seem to extend this community to include select professors and peers,

who we consciously accept as influential.

One of the most important ways that literature influences my writing is the development

of characters. During this semester, I rediscovered a character that once that I once considered

influential to my writing: Bartleby - Melvilles curious scrivener, from his short story Bartleby

the Scrivener (1853). Melvilles Bartleby is constructed as an enigma, causing a kind of literary

dissonance that is never truly resolved. This lack of resolution leads the reader to further engage

the text, as it is necessary to attribute meaning to the character himself. I have attempted to

mimic this creation of literary dissonance within my own writings. Specifically, there is a

moment in Bloodlust, the second story for this semester, in which my main characters meet a
mysterious truck driver that provides them with a ride out of town. The driver clearly

understands something about their situation, but, whatever it is, he refrains from saying it. Like

Bartleby, hed prefer not to (Melville 517). My goal, in creating this peripheral character, is to

leave a lasting, but minimal, dissonance within the mind of the reader, providing for lasting

engagement and wonder surrounding the character. Notably different is the way that Bartleby

vocalizes his passive resistance and the way that the truck driver passively resists explanation,

the latter of which would only be realized, externally, by the audience.

Ernest Hemingways Hills Like White Elephants also contributed to my understanding

of character development and dialogue creation. However, this is more attributable to the lesson

that Hemingway offers within the text, than to Hemingways dialogical choices within the short

story. That is, by creating ineffective dialogue between his main characters, Hemingway creates

a kind of literary dissonance that shows the relational incompatibility of his characters.

However, Hemingways dissonance serves to create a barrier between his characters and his

audience. While this choice is clearly an assessment of discourse, by Hemingway, it also serves

to show how clear, directed dialogue better connects characters and heightens the compatibility

of characters within the text. While reevaluating my stories for the semester I attempted to edit

instances of dialogue that would come across as incomplete or ineffective, and this choice can

directly be attributed to my familiarity with Hemingways text.

Possibly equally important to the development of writing is realtime feedback from living

members of our writing community. For the most part, peers and colleagues make up this section

of our community and directly influence individual aspects of our writing by addressing them

directly. The clearest manifestation of this connection is in the process of peer review. However,

it is important to note, that, like the aforementioned influence of various texts to our writing, we
consciously choose how much weight we give to input from our colleagues and instructors in

this setting. Essentially, we are much more likely to be influenced by our peers if we enjoy

reading their various works.

 Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. Why Do You Write? The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, edited by

Richard Bausch and R. V. Cassill, 8th ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2015, p. 872.

Hemingway, Ernest. Hills Like White Elephants The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, edited

by Richard Bausch and R.V. Cassill, 8th ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2015, pp. 349-

353.

Melville, Herman. Bartleby, the Scrivener The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, edited by

Richard Bausch and R.V. Cassill, 8th ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2015, pp. 511-537.