UU-ENG-1005

UNIVERSITY ENGLISH

Student number : R2105D12183296

UU-ENG-1005 University English

Course Assignment 2

Assessment: 100 points, 20% of overall grade

Read the following passage and complete the exercises below.

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“What Your Closet Reveals about You”

by Amy Tan

Preview
Amy Tan is a well-known author who was born in California to Chinese immigrants. Much of

her work focuses on the Chinese immigrant experience, American-Chinese culture, and

mother-daughter relationships. She has written numerous books that include The Joy Luck

Club, The Bonesetter's Daughter, and Saving Fish from Drowning. She has also won an

Emmy for her animated series, Sagwa. This article, in which Tan discusses what clothes

reveal about a person, ( THESIS STATEMENT) first appeared in Harper's Bazaar in 2006.

A few months back I attended a benefit luncheon at the home of a venture capitalist 1

in Silicon Valley whose art collection adorned nearly every vertical surface of her Bauhaus

house. While freshening up, I was amused to see she had artwork even in her bathroom and,

as I then saw, her vault-size closet. I stepped in, ostensibly to examine the painting, and

there I experienced a life-changing revelation.

At first glance the interior of the closet and its cabinetry of bird's-eye maple were merely 2

impressive. An Eames bench sat in the center, where one might sit as if resting among

exhibits at a costume museum. Cashmere sweaters and scarves, arranged by tonality, were

aligned on sliding trays. Segregated sections contained jackets, black-tie gowns, cocktail

party dresses, business suits, and golfing attire-phalanxes of fashion organized by function,

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color, and texture, all of it hanging on the erect shoulders of identical mahogany hangers, a

precision team at the ready for any occasion.

And then there was this: four banks of shelves housing four dozen shoe boxes, which had 3

been wrapped in rough hemp mesh and coated with a thin layer of gouache. Affixed to the

front of each was a small stainless-steel nameplate, on which appeared the names of the

various conceptual artists: Giorgio Armani, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo. In smaller type

were notes with numbers and letters; those, I discerned through similar coding found in other

parts of her closet, referred to the black-tie, cocktail, and business attire that coordinated with

the shoes. This was the temple into which the woman entered to consider the existential

question we all face each day: I am what I wear, I wear what I am. Who am I today?

You don't have to be a psychiatrist to recognize that the matching hangers and labeled 4

shoe boxes were clinical signs of a mental-health disorder. Obsessive-compulsive sprang to

mind. Although she was only in her 30s, I knew she would never marry. This was clearly

someone who was so inflexible she allowed no wrinkles in her life, certainly no man with

uncoded shoe boxes.

As I made this smug assessment, I had a sudden and terrible realization that my own 5

closet had served for others as an amusing window into my psyche. I could picture it: the

overflowing drawers of socks and stockings, long dresses mingling with old blouses and

skirts, winter clothes with summer, many of the outfits dangling by one shoulder off skewed

plastic and wire hangers. My rack of clothes was far from looking like a precision team; it was

the unruly lineup of people waiting to deplane after a red-eye flight. Under the clothes rack

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and pushed against the wall were various bags from my latest round of travels, half packed

with clean and dirty clothes as well as items I had thought were necessities and turned out

not to be. Clearly, anyone would conclude that my life was a mess, that I had no concept of

boundaries and often did not know if I was coming or going. My closet was a repository of

foibles (weakness) and fetishes, an archive of my personality and life history.

It occurred to me that closet analysis should be part of any psychotherapy sessions with a 6

Freudian. The ego: That would be the clothes representing the private side—say, the comfort

clothes a woman wears when she is alone and sick at home with the flu, when she is her

essential miserable self. In my case, that would be the oversize fleecewear and the babydoll

dress I bought a dozen years ago that reminded me of the babydoll dress I wore when I was

fourteen and questioned almost nothing told to me. Among the comfort clothes I wear—and

I know this will sound sick—are the pink pajamas my mother wore the last week of her life.

In that vein, there are also the wool Bavarian slipper socks that were a Christmas present

from a friend who died too young, the nightgown I wore the night after my father died, and

the six sweaters my mother knitted the following year and gave me when I gladly escaped

her clutches and started college a year early. Those were the sweaters I never wore again

until my thirties, when I found them stuffed in a cardboard box of old clothes.

As for the superego, those are the clean clothes a person wears in public as an 7

adaptation to a social setting, situation, or purpose—the fashions that make a woman look

sexy to a suitor, younger at a reunion, or sensibly boring to a future mother-in-law. They are

the suits that have already proven their worth during successful interviews and speeches,

the clingy top that led to a pleasantly consummated dalliance, the pants that fit after six

months of exercise. Often those outfits are advanced front and center. But they are always

subject to demotion; once they fail at their intended purpose, they're shoved to the back,

along with impulse items never worn, whose price tags had once made them irresistible and

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now remind us how little we value our intelligence. To throw them away only magnifies the

stupidity. At the farthest reaches of the closet—the corners of the topmost shelves, squeezed

behind uncoded shoe boxes, crammed at the back of drawers, or hidden under a pile of flip-

flops and unused running shoes—resides the id. This is the underwear you will have on when

you wake up in the ambulance, the permanently stained clothing, and other ghastly things

you would disclose only under hypnosis.

I tried to rationalize the untidy personality within my closet as complex and not twisted like 8

the wire hangers I got for free from the dry cleaner's.

If my personality lies in my closet, I further justified, then it is disorganized because I find it 9

impossible to live an orderly life when it is chaos and confusion that serve me best as a writer.

Messiness is the impetus, the disarray is the wellspring, even the shameful parts—especially

those. I dredge them up and salvage them over and over again. I cannot discard clothes if

they were gifts, no matter how hideous. To do so would make me feel ungrateful for

friendship. The clutter within a closet is fond memories, hard-learned mistakes, comfort for

future cold nights. That was my excuse, anyway. Until recently.

Today, if you were to open my closet door, you would see blouses hung in one section, 10

jackets in another. Long skirts are partitioned from long dresses. One shelf is labeled “long-

sleeved tops,” another “short-sleeved tops,” and a third “no sleeves.” The shoes are in shoe

caddies or on wire racks, and they are separated by season and function. The drawers

contain socks and underwear, even the old ones, folded as nicely as those in fine lingerie

stores. The nightgowns are placed in two drawers according to fabric weight.

How did I come to see the light? It was really quite simple and unexpected. My old 11

housekeeper retired and recommended a new one, a woman with common sense and a way

to apply it to the interior life of other people. When I returned from one of my travels, I saw

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that my closet had been transformed. When she presented me with the receipts for storage

containers and other equipment, I was amazed to see how little matching hangers cost. For

so little money, a girl can have a precision team at her beck and call.

Through such objective orderliness, I saw some of my foibles exposed: six skirts that 12

were almost identical in fabric, color, and length. Why do I buy the same thing over and over

again? What ingrained insecurity or needless pattern does that signify? I began to pare down

and wound up with a dozen bagfuls—the useless jean jackets of my youth, the meaningless

impulse buys, the excess of unused baseball caps and T-shirts emblazoned with the names

of bookstores, book festivals, writers' conferences, annual events, cities visited, and tour

attractions toured. My housekeeper gladly took those clothes, and for this, I too was grateful.

In reducing the chaos, I found what I had misplaced and buried. Among them were my 13

mother's wedding jacket, a favorite blouse that I wrongfully assumed a girl at a party had

stolen, the velveteen vest that was the first expensive present my then boyfriend and now

husband gave me more than thirty years ago. And that, I realized, is also the kind of discovery

I make when writing stories. In wading through the mess, I gradually put aside what is no

longer meaningful, what is overused, what is overly sentimental. And what is left is the

essentials: both a sense of who I am and memories of what helped me become that way.

(Langan, 2014)

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References

Langan, J. (2014). College Writing Skills with Readings. Retrieved from

http://create.mheducation.com/createonline/index.html#preview

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Questions:

1. In the passage there are some words that are highlighted. Try to make sense of

their general meaning and provide a brief explanation for each one. Don’t use

the dictionary for this exercise. 10 points

A.VENTURE = A COMPETITION ESPECIALLY WHICH IS RELATED TO BUSINESS OR

ART

B.VAULT-SIZE= SOMETHING WHICH HAS A SIZE WHICH REACHED THE ROOF IN THIS

SENTENCE IT MEANS THE CLOSET WAS REACHING OR NEARLY TO REACH THE ROOF

C. OSTENSIBLY = MEANS FACED IT MEANS IN THIS SENTENCE I STEPPED FROM OF

THE CLOSET TO EXAMINE

D. TONALITY= ARRANGED PERFECTLY IN SEQUENCE

E. SEGREGATED= ACCORDING TO THE SENTENCE AND WHEN WE DEEPLY THE WORD

SECTIONS CONTAINED DIFFERENT ITEMS THE WORD SEGREGATED MEANS SEPARTED

OR DIVIDED

F. ATTIRE PHALANXES= THIS WORD MEANS WELL ARRANGED CLOTHES ACCORDING

TO THE SENTENCE

G. ERRECT= MEANS STRAIGHT

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H. HEMP= ACCORDING TO THE SENTENCE IT IS KIND OF FIBRE

I. GOUACHE= WELL ARANGED PAINTINGS

J. SPRANG= MOVE SOMETHING FORM SOME PLACE TO ANOTHER PLACE

K. SMUG= FEELING PRIDE

L. SKEWED=something which making movement

M. REPOSITORY= STORE PLACE OF SOMETHING

N. FOIBLES= WEAKNESS

O. FETISHES= FORM OF SEXUAL ATTRACTION

P. DALLIANCE= SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP

Q. DEMOTION= REDUCTION IN RANK OR STATUS

R. IMPETUS= KIND OF ENERGY WHICH CAUSES MOVEMENT

S. DREDGE= CLEARING SOMETHING OR REMOVED UNWANTED ITEMS FROM PLACE

T. CADDIES= SMALL STORAGE CONTAINER WITH DIVISIONS

U.BECK= A STREAM

V. EMBLAZONED= DESIGNED

W. WADING= WALK WITH EFFORT THROUGH SOMETHING

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2. Which of the following titles best describe the passage? Explain why. 5 points

 By looking at your own closet, you can learn a lot about yourself. This is the correct

one although, the author visited another closet first but she took back her memory

to what she can learn from her own closet.

 By visiting other people’s closets, you can learn a lot about those people.

 When a person decides to organize a closet, it is important to hire a professional to

help.

 Although it seems like organizing a closet would be expensive, it really can be done

inexpensively.

3. Please provide a brief summary of paragraph 6 approximately 80-100 words.

30 points

In paragraph 6 the author describing to us how analysing the closet of someone can

represent the life of that person and the condition which he or she is going through.

Especially when the person is in miserable condition, the author is mentioned some

of the clothes that she was being using in her hard days, as well as what she wears

when she is alone and sick in flu in her home. The author suggesting that closet

analyses is very important for the psychotherapy sessions.

4. Underline the topic sentence of each paragraph. 5 points

Underlined in green

5. Underline the thesis statement of the passage. 10 points

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Underlined in violet

6. What is the theoretical framework/general gist of the passage? Please provide

a short description approximately 150 words. 40 points

*This passage is talking about what the closet can reveal about the life
and the condition that the owner going through, furthermore, the closet
can reveal the private life of the person, looking into your own closet or
someone else’s closet can teach you a lot about yourself and the life of
that other person. The author suggested within her article that it is very
important for the psychotherapy classes should have closet analysis
sessions. The author specified some of the clothes that she wore during
her hard times like wearing fleece wear during flu and alone at home.
The author also demonstrates that clean and neat clothes during the
speeches and the interviews can help the person to be successful in
addition to that the author describes a neat and tidy closet for
successful and happy life while untidy and messing closet means
messing life. Lastly, the person is for what uses as clothes, your clothes
can make you sharp or vice versa.

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Total Grade: /100

Good Luck!

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