Tristan's Essay!

Tristan Yerkes

Mr. Salsich

English 02

13 May, 2009

The Middle Way:

An Essay Discussing Possession

If you hold a peach too firmly, it will be smashed; this is an idea represented by a passage by Rainer Maria Rilke, a garden stone, and my personal beliefs. Detachment can not only save the possessor, but it can also strengthen the possession.

The second passage by Mr. Rilke shows how one must embody the concept of detachment. Rilke shows how we must always let go of, or be able to let go of our worldly possessions. When Rilke says, “We do not acquire wealth by letting something remain [...] in our hands” he means that everything means much more when we let go of it. Mr. Rilke displays this concept of parting with what we own as a sort of way for us to experience the things we let go without letting them take us over. Rilke also shows how our infatuation with possessions can be our downfall. Being human, we all have trouble letting go of our paraphernalia can be very hard, but Rilke says that if we do, we will live our life to the fullest. When Rilke says, “Our hands ought not to be a coffin for us but a bed” he is suggesting that our hands, symbolism for our possession, should not cling, and be our death or coffin, but feel things, and be a bed. Rilke's thoughts really show that we own our possessions, but our possessions can own us.

A garden stone and this Rilke passage both relate, being about letting things go. The garden stone must let beautiful things pass by it, and not hold onto anything, just as the Rilke passage says. Every day, people and animals step on the stone, acknowledge it, use it, impart some of themselves upon it, and then leave it. The stone is “letting everything pass through [its] grasp” so that it may have “carefree ownership” of the beautiful things in life. If a garden stone cannot be easily stepped onto and off of, it does not do its job, and is replaced. Rilke says that “Once out of our hands, however, things ought to move forward, now sturdy and strong” it's the garden stone's job to make sure the things that step onto it make it on, and if it doesn't, this becomes its failure, its downfall, its “coffin”. The garden stone must hold its role, let things pass by, enhance them, and do its job flawlessly or else suffer repercussions. The Rilke passage is suggesting that we must all lay like the garden stone, and serve as a helper to others, bringing them into our grasp, and letting them pass through, stronger.

Rilke's passage says that garden stone must make things stronger, and my belief is that this holds true for people as well. Many people in our world hold personal possessions, comfort, and gain close to themselves, people should not fritter away their comforts all to themselves. In the Rilke passage, Rilke says, “We do not acquire wealth by letting something remain and wilt in our hands” this shows that we should not hold on to things for too long. If people hold on to things long enough, they start to ruin those things. If people learn to let things go, they can, in a way, own the things. When we hold things too closely, we aren't able to see them from far away, and cease to recognize their beauty. By not owning these things, we own them. My beliefs are quite similar if not the same to Rilke's, we agree about ownership, we agree about greed, and we agree about possession.

The many faces of greed all come down to the one fact: whether you're crushing a peach, or not letting things walk over you, holding onto possessions is not the right way. This does not mean that people should all go out and give away all of their money, this simply suggests that nowadays the human race as a whole tends to hold material goods too closely. We should all find a middle way in life.

KEY:

Fast Words

Participial Phrase (opener)

Participial Phrase (closer)

Tetracolon Climax

Antithesis

Chiasmus

Tricolon

Parallelism

Loose Sentence

In my writing, I am working on fixing my careless errors, and managing my time.

I think for this essay, I did very well with the special tools, and I think that I especially utilized all forms of parallelism.

I think I could have worked on my transitions, and my introductory paragraph. Oh, and one thing I worked out was finding out what the self-assessment was finally.

I would give myself an A, and I think this was my best essay all year