1. Choose a topic to write 1- page Essay: The inheritance of Tools by Scott Russell Sanders or Alone by Maya Angelou.

2. In your essay include the following: Using any critical approach, discuss in an essay how the language and/or other elements contribute to the overall effect of the selection. Support your discussion with specific references to the text.

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Assignment Essay

Instruction

1. Choose a topic to write 1- page Essay: The inheritance of Tools by Scott Russell Sanders or Alone by Maya Angelou.

2. In your essay include the following: Using any critical approach, discuss in an essay how the language and/or other elements contribute to the overall effect of the selection. Support your discussion with specific references to the text.

The Inheritance of Tools

As the saw teeth bit down, the wood released its smell, each kind with its own fragrance, oak or walnut or cherry or pine usually pine because it was the softest, easiest for a child to work. No matter how weathered and gray the board, no matter how warped and cracked, inside there was this smell waiting, as of something freshly baked. I gathered every smidgen of sawdust and stored it away in coffee cans, which I kept in a drawer of the workbench. When I did not feel like hammering nails, I would dump my sawdust on the concrete floor of the garage and landscape it into highways and farms and towns, running miniature cars and trucks along miniature roads. Looming as huge as a colossus, my father worked over and around me, now and again bending down to inspect my work, careful not to trample my creations. It was a landscape that smelled dizzyingly of wood. Even after a bath my skin would carry the smell, and so would my father’s hair, when he lifted me for a bedtime hug.

Scott Russell Sanders

Sanders, S.R. (1986/1991). The Inheritance of Tools. In The Essay Connection: Readings for Writers, Third Edition (p. 200). Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Company.

Alone

Lying, thinking Last night How to find my soul a home Where water is not thirsty And bread loaf is not stone I came up with one thing And I don’t believe I’m wrong That nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone. There are some millionaires With money they can’t use Their wives run round like banshees Their children sing the blues They’ve got expensive doctors To cure their hearts of stone. But nobody No, nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely I’ll tell you what I know Storm clouds are gathering The wind is gonna blow The race of man is suffering And I can hear the moan, ‘Cause nobody, But nobody Can make it out here alone. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.

Maya Angelou

Angelou, M. (1975). Alone. In Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well. New York: Random House.