essay
Objective: In a well-organized, thesis-driven essay of 3-4 pages, you will be reading two short stories and comparing and contrasting the relationship that each narrator has with their significant other. You only have to compare two relationships–meaning that you do not have to compare all of the relationships.
Each relationship has a varying degree of severity as far as issues are concerned. For example, The relationship in Aurora suffers from domestic violence as well as heavy drug use. The relationship in Eye of the Night suffers from poor communication etc. I think your thesis should focus on routine, communication, and love. If you want to compare a different aspect of the relationships, that is fine. The stories:
Eye of the Night– Karla Suárez
Aurora–Junot Díaz Short
The Lie–T. Coraghessan Boyle
Please use textual evidence to support your claims. (At least two quotes per story)
Please use the MLA format when you are citing your sources.
A Works Cited page is required. Plagiarism of any kind will result in immediate failure (see syllabus). (Times New Roman 12 point font)
Do not use “I,” “my” or “you.”
Do not use contractions.
1000-minimum (Not including the Works Cited page)
Essay 2 outline:
Introduction
• Introduce the theme or issue. You can also define love or a healthy relationship.
• Introduce the authors and short stories. Give a quick summary of each short story. (1-2 sentences per story.)
• Introduce the issue.
• Present your thesis. (The argument can focus on routine, communication, and love)
Here is an example of the essay structure for the supporting paragraphs if the thesis focuses on routine, communication, and love:
• Supporting paragraph 1 will focus on communication in Eye of the night.
• Supporting paragraph 2 will focus on communication in The Lie.
• Supporting paragraph 3 will focus on the lack of love in Eye of the Night.
• Supporting paragraph 4 will focus on the lack of love in The Lie.
• Supporting paragraph 5 will focus on routine in Eye of the Night.
• Supporting paragraph 6 will focus on routine in The Lie
• Remember—this is a sample outline
Conclusion:
• The conclusion should follow the supporting paragraphs. Remember, it will rehash the ideas that you have explored in your supporting paragraphs.
This is one of the links
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/14/the-…
Karla Suarez The Eye of the Night
For Ode and Alfredo, for the idea
Because everything has a beginning and we almost always want to know what it is. It’s an insistent need to define the causes that precede effects, and since the causes aren’t always clear or perhaps we don’t want to see them clearly, then we go ahead and invent them, add details, assign them one name or another, label them with dates and wrap it all into a complete package, so we can say: that’s how it all began.
It all began the day Jorge came home with a telescope. I’ve always been nocturnal. I like wandering around the house in the dark, reaching out my fingers to touch the furniture until I learn it all by heart. Jorge doesn’t like this, but I’ve always been this way. He likes to fall asleep feeling my body next to his. I go along with this to please him, and I stretch out alongside him after we make love, staring up at the ceiling and waiting until he’s fallen asleep before I get up. Night fascinates me, I don’t know why he doesn’t understand this.
That day he showed up at home with a telescope, he said that a friend had given it to him and that I could have fun counting stars. I liked that idea. From then on, before I went to sleep, I’d sit out on the balcony to gaze at the stars, just as he’d said. Jorge would come over, have a look through it, say something, and then a little later he’d invite me to “come to bed.” “Come to bed” meant “come make love,” and he’d start stripping off his clothes and get into bed naked, calling out that he was sorry he’d ever brought home that instrument, since I was neither an astrologer nor was I going to discover a new comet and if it was stars I wanted to see, he’d help me on that. That’s the way Jorge is.
So my late nights changed a bit, I didn’t just wander around and peer down into the street. With the telescope I could look at the constellations, I could spy on my neighborhood beyond my usual range of view. My balcony looks over an avenue that rarely has any late night traffic. Beyond that, there are houses and buildings, a park full of broken streetlights, little alleyways that get lost in the trees. I could see all of this. I turned into the busybody of the neighborhood, the eye of the night, and it was odd to think that at this very moment someone could be watching me through another telescope. We are never alone. Darkness is an accomplice with many faces.
One of those nights while I was running my eyes over those buildings, I saw him leaning on his balcony rail. A young man, smoking slowly and gazing down at the avenue as though he weren’t seeing a thing, like someone who is just finishing his cigarette before he goes to bed. I’d never seen him before, so I peered at him with interest. Maybe he had the same crazy habit I did, or maybe he’d just had a bad day and couldn’t get to sleep, how do I know, the eye of the night has its limits. In this case, he tossed his cigarette butt down and stayed there leaning on the railing. I kept watching him. He and I might be the only witnesses of the night; it’s a good feeling to have company in an enterprise even if that venture seems totally absurd. The man lit another cigarette. At the back of his balcony there was a door, and a window with the curtains open, the room dark behind it. I couldn’t make out whether there was someone inside snoring like Jorge over
on this side, and it really didn’t make much difference. The man stayed there leaning on the rail for a long time, he smoked three cigarettes and, as he was tossing the last butt, he stood up, stretched his body and went into the room. Pretty boring, I thought, so I forgot all about the neighbors and stayed there watching the stars until dawn made it impossible.
The next night everything went as usual. Jorge sweating on top of me and me pumping faster and faster to hurry him along. Then the pause. A final sigh and Jorge stretched out beside me face down murmuring a faint “see you tomorrow.” Then it was my time, when I could get up, look at Jorge breathing peacefully, and go out on the balcony. The neighborhood as usual, all quiet. Me spying behind my glass eye, like Corrieri in Memories of Underdevelopment. It’s odd how you start staring at something and your head fills with all kinds of images, if I could just tape record everything that goes through my mind late at night, I’d write a novel, or a sociology book, or maybe, I don’t know, you start thinking about so many things… I thought about the insomniac I’d seen the night before, his balcony was dark, he was probably sleeping like everyone else, like Jorge, who is sleeping peacefully in my bed. And why in my bed? Because that’s how it is, it’s been like that for a while now. First we went out occasionally, we’d see each other, he’d stay over once in a while, then more and more often, he’d leave a pair of pants here one day, a shirt another day, and somehow the house filled up with Jorge who sleeps while I think about things as I gaze at the windows over there on the other side.
At some point, I saw a light switch on in one of the windows. That was an event in these late night hours, and I had my eye focused on the apartment of the man I’d seen the night before. The window curtains were still open. If you’ve got something to hide, you take care to close your windows, but he didn’t suspect that I was here. He came in followed by a woman, a thin woman with long hair who smiled all the time. A man and a woman in an intimate setting clearly visible to anyone who wanted to watch. If Jorge woke up he was going to accuse me of being a pervert, or he might grab the telescope away from me, you never know what crosses someone else’s mind. The idea of keeping my eye on them really appealed to me, and I watched as the skinny woman undressed while he drank from a bottle he held in his hand. I’ve never seen a pornographic movie, so I was really intrigued by this show. She got into bed and out of my sight; he took off his shirt, lit a small lamp, and turned off the light. Off limits to snoops. The apartment turned into a very dim glow where surely a man and a woman were making love just like Jorge and I before Jorge went to sleep. Quite a while went by and I saw my neighbor get up, take another drink from the bottle, put on his shorts and come out on the balcony to smoke. Exactly like the night before, looking at the emptiness of the streets. The woman must be sleeping and he was as wide awake as I was. He smoked for a while, tossed the butt, and then lit up another cigarette, looking out over the streets just as I did in those early hours. I always wonder what other people think about when they are sitting quietly, smoking by themselves. Jorge never does things like that, we’re together at night, only at night. We talk a bit, he tells me stuff, he says he’s tired and bored, I listen to him. You couldn’t exactly say we’re in love, we’re not really living together, the clothes he leaves over at my house don’t at all mean that we live together. But we’re here most nights, making love until he turns his back on me and falls asleep —why do we always say “making love”?– there are other ways to say it, of course, but I don’t much like them. Would I be making love with the man across the street? How do I know. The man
smoked a few cigarettes and went to bed, turned off the light and nothing else happened all night.
A week later I was more than convinced that the man across the street suffered from insomnia and that besides, he couldn’t be making love, because you can’t be in love with a different woman every night. His routine was a closed circle, a woman, the little bedroom light and a short while later out smoking on the balcony, like every other late night. It never varied, cigarette after cigarette that he tossed into the street while the woman slept on, like Jorge. I thought it might be interesting to go over to his house in the morning and invite him to spend the night with me. I could even show him my telescope and maybe we’d discover something. A silly idea of course, because if you choose to be out there late at night leaning on the balcony rail, it’s because you want to be alone and you don’t want to be confronted with evidence that someone has been spying on you. But that man puzzled me. Why that insistence on smoking and smoking silently, looking down over the street as if the street could applaud his conquests, his tired face and his lack of sleep? I don’t know, men just don’t cope well with being alone. He filled up his nights with women, and then what? What’s the cure for a fascination with the void? You lean on the balcony rail and that’s when suddenly all the truths slip out from behind their masks. Night is the great mirror. You can make a big effort to patch together the big picture with scraps, like parts of an infinite mosaic, but something happens when those subterfuges turn into buffoons making fun of us. What was Jorge doing in my bed? Besides sleeping, turning his back on me, and falling asleep after we’d sweated without loving each other, because Jorge is asleep in my bed and snoring and before he goes off to work we’ll have breakfast together and then he’ll come back and it’s night again, another night when there I’ll be gazing through the crystal eye watching how the guy across the street smokes, makes love and smokes, leans on the balcony rail and runs his hand over his face, tosses the butt into the street or rests it on the balcony rail and peers out to see if anything is going on, like I do, hoping every night that something different will happen, something different that won’t be Jorge sleeping on his stomach like the women in the apartment across the way, and isn’t it all the same thing? The neighbor at least changes his expression, and who knows if on one of these nights…
I began to feel obsessed. I’d slip away from Jorge’s side a little sooner every night to go out on the balcony. He began to get annoyed asking what on earth I was doing in the middle of the night and complaining when I’d find some excuse to not make love. We women have some terrific excuses. Finally he’d fall asleep and I could settle myself behind the eye of the night to wait for the lamp in the apartment across the way to light up.
One night the miracle happened. My neighbor switched on the light, followed by a new woman. She came in, tossed her purse down and walked around the room looking at everything, making comments that didn’t reach my ears. He went over to the bed, turned on the little lamp, and went over to switch off the main light, just as —in the very same moment— the woman turned toward the balcony. My neighbor followed her and they both leaned on the balcony railing and chatted. It was strange, that woman kept laughing and talking, he kept watching her and smiling. I assumed he must be tired of so many words and wanting, like every other night, to get to bed to then leave her sleeping and head for the balcony, but he didn’t act impatient. He certainly didn’t seem annoyed or detached like I’d been a few hours before, when Jorge was trying to kiss me. The man
didn’t seem irritated, he kept smoking and listening to the woman, who kept smiling and then once in a while would look serious, sigh, and then start talking again. What could they be talking about? I don’t know, my telescope is only a magic eye, and seeing is not like being there. All I could really conclude is that I felt really uncomfortable seeing them there talking for hours and hours, while this here-every-night man was sleeping in my bed, and once in a while he’d cough and then I’d be aware of his presence. Yes, because if Jorge didn’t make a sound the entire night, then I could swear I was definitely alone, but Jorge always snored and coughed. Physically I was not alone. Physically there were two bodies in my apartment, each one occupying its space, spaces that were connected only in the interval between Jorge’s “let’s go to bed now” and when he fell asleep. What was he doing there every night while I was peering into the apartments across the street in the middle of the night? Peering into the apartment where the man and the woman kept on talking. Every once in a while he’d say something and run his hand over her face, smoothing her hair out of the way. He seemed like an entirely different neighbor, but it was the same man, my telescope knew him perfectly well. They kept talking. I was the spy. The telltale eye that keeps watch on plotters who are conferring in low voices, checking each other out to make sure, just a conqueror, taking over territories rightfully theirs. In the hundreds of minutes that make up the hours before the cocks crow -roosters crow a lot before dawn breaks, Jorge wouldn’t know about that because he isn’t an insomniac—. She straightened up, he said something and they walked toward the apartment. They stayed inside for a few minutes, someone turned off the little bedside lamp and he appeared in the doorway again, but looking different. He didn’t come out and lean on the rail and smoke and look out over the street he must know by heart by now. He leaned against the door frame, gazing into the apartment, toward where I know the bed must be. I’d have liked to do the same thing. I’d have liked to give up my post, stretch my back out and gaze inside, but it wouldn’t make sense. Inside, 1 was only going to find Jorge, lying on his stomach on one side of my bed, still hours away from waking up and wanting his breakfast. So 1 preferred to just stay on there to see how he stopped gazing at her and sat down on the balcony floor, across from me, leaning his head back against the wall and smiling, without smoking, without doing any of the things he and I are so used to. He stayed there like that for a bit until the woman appeared in the doorway, barefoot, with her hair loose and a sweater wrapped around her. She walked toward the man, crouched down by him and they looked at each other for a long time, I know that. It doesn’t matter that her back blocked my view. Nor does it matter that I couldn’t see their faces when she sat down holding out her arms and the man’s hands appeared on her hair. It no longer mattered to me to see, my telescopic eye didn’t matter, nor my lack of headphones that would let me overhear what perhaps they weren’t going to say. He pulled her close to him and I knew they were kissing without it mattering that I was gazing at them from over here. Who was I? What effect could I have? Nothing, absolutely nothing, conclusively nothing. I was the spectator who dries her tears timidly while the projectionist rewinds the film. I wasn’t anything, that’s why they were kissing. He held her very close and they stayed that way, together and happy, and I felt so happy, I was surprised at my happiness watching them. She leaning against him and I seeing their faces, smiling, he kissing her ear while the woman stretched up and turned her face to kiss him and they stayed that way, so quietly, whispering things to each other, waiting for the dawn, to greet the dawn together while Jorge slept on. Jorge’s such an idiot; he’s
incapable of experiencing the birth of a day; he never understands anything. And I stayed there for the birth, I was there when the sky began to flood with light and the sparrows left their nests and they got up from the floor. He stretched his body and put his hands on the balcony rail to shout out something to the day that was beginning while she watched him tenderly, leaning against the wall. Then they embraced again, he put his arm around her back and they went back inside, they were lost in the shadows, they closed the curtains, pulling away from me, from my crystal eye filled with the morning light, without the dim bedside lamp. I stayed on the balcony surprised by the dawn, without accomplice stars in my eagerness to profane other’s spaces, without the man and the woman, who must be lying in bed, either making love or sleeping, how do I know, sleeping probably, what does it matter, but he didn’t get up again, he didn’t come back to the balcony to smoke the way he did at the end of each late night. He left me alone waiting for him to appear. He left me alone the way I am. Alone. A few moments alone and now I don’t need the eye of the night in order to make out the cars that are beginning to move along the street, the old men bringing their dogs out to pee, alarm clocks going off, radios blaring the morning news and Jorge rolling over in bed.
When Jorge got up, I was still outside.
“Hey, you should look for a job as a night guard, it would be perfect for you, you’re so crazy… How about fixing breakfast now, come on…”
He went into the bathroom and 1 stayed on the balcony. A little later he came out with his pants on and the towel hanging over his shoulder.
“What are you doing still here? Hey, girl, obviously you don’t have to get to work early. Breakfast ready?”
I leaned on the doorframe and watched him while he put on his shoes. “Leave, Jorge.” He kept on tying his shoes.
“Of course, I’m going to work, come on, fix breakfast, hurry up now, then you can lie down and get some sleep, you’ve got circles under your eyes…”
“No, Jorge, leave, I want you to leave.”
He looked up unwillingly.
“What’s wrong, girl?”
“I want you to leave… to pack up everything and not come back…to leave.” Jorge straightened up and looked at me with a slight smile.
“What’s wrong? The stars going to your head, or what?”
I didn’t say anything, he sighed, stood up and walked toward me with his arms open.
“Hey now, what’s wrong with my astrologer? Are you really tired?” I stepped away from his body.
“I’m tired of you and, besides, I’m not an astrologer.”
He stopped and stared at me, annoyed.
“What’s going on, girl? Are you saying this seriously?”
“Yes, I want you to leave, to pack up all your stuff and leave me alone, Jorge, leave.”
“But why?”
He started to get impatient, but in contrast, I was as calm as the dawn. I sat down on the bed while he stood there, half dressed.
“Give me one reason, Jorge, give me one single reason why you and I are together.”
He raised his head to stare at the walls, his mouth twisted, and he took a few quick steps over to pick up his shirt.
“Look, girl, it’s seven in the morning and you’re giving me this. I’m going to work, let’s talk later, okay?”
I shook my head no, and I saw his face harden as he raised his voice.
“You really want me to leave?”
“Give me one reason why you shouldn’t.”
Jorge stood there for a few seconds looking at me with hatred, then his face
slowly relaxed, without looking at me, lost in who knows what inside his head.
“I don’t know…A reason?…! don’t know.”
“Then leave.”
I stood up and went back to the balcony doorway to watch the morning that was
beginning to fill with people. I could feel his cold eyes piercing my back.
“Then what the fuck,” he started to move around quickly and opened the closet,
“I’ve been kicked out of better places, but when I leave, I leave for good, you hear that?…”
I didn’t have to answer, there was no need to. I kept standing there with my back to him, watching how the curtains of the apartment across the way were still pulled closed while on this side, Jorge was muttering words and I didn’t need to look at him. I knew perfectly well that he was tossing his clothes into the suitcase, was looking for something in the bathroom, and then came back and pulled the zipper closed, furiously.
“Did you hear me? That’s why you’re so messed up, no one can put up with a woman who prowls around awake all night, night was made for sleeping and for fucking, you hear that? Go on like this and you’ll be even more messed up than you are, that’s why I’m getting the hell out of here…”
I turned my back on my neighbor’s balcony and looked at Jorge with the suitcase in his hand.
“You left this,” I pointed to the telescope, “It’s yours.”
“Keep it…, what would I want that shit for…I’m out of here…”
Jorge left the room, slamming the door like in The Dollhouse. He didn’t want to
take the telescope, he thought he didn’t need it, and maybe he was right, he certainly didn’t need it, but I didn’t either. I didn’t need it any longer. On the following nights, the curtains of the apartment across the way were never again left open. I could see that the light was being turned on and off, but I didn’t need my crystal eye to see that. I’d stand out on the balcony awhile to gaze at the streets, the park full of trees, the avenue empty of traffic, knowing that over on the other side a light would be turned on and then later turned off, all through the night, even if I weren’t keeping watch any longer, even if I weren’t on my balcony to notice everything. I knew that. I knew perfectly well that my neighbor wouldn’t be coming out to smoke and then toss the butts into the street. I didn’t need him any longer, so I could close my eyes and, smile, and sleep, while out on the balcony, the eye of the night remained alone, spying on the birth of the dawn.
[translated by Mary G. Berg]
Solution Preview
Healthy relationships will be built on love and a routine which will involve communication between the couple or between the husband and the wife. Healthy relationships will be based on the couple will communicate with each other and will be based on the respect each partner will have towards the other partner. With that in mind, love will act as the relationship binding force that will keep the couple together.
(1,496 words)