Tom Junod’s “The Falling Man”
Yesterday in class, before you began composing your analysis draft, we examined the beginning of Tom Junod‘s article “The Falling Man,” published in Esquire magazine two years after 9-11. One of the elements that we considered–and one that I asked you to address later in your journal–is the unusually long first paragraph.
The authors of Writing Analytically recommend that “[i]f you find a paragraph growing longer than half a page–particularly if it is your opening or second paragraph–find a place to make a paragraph break” (Rosenwasser and Stephen 308). Junod does not follow that advice. He opts instead to open his article with a paragraph of more than four hundred words.
If Junod had chosen to divide the first paragraph, where might he have divided it?
Work Cited
Rosenwasser, David, and Jill Stephen. “The Idea of the Paragraph.”Writing Analytically, 9th edition. Wadsworth/Cengage, 2024. pp. 307-313.
“The Falling Man” presents you with a seventh option for your analysis. (The others six are “MeTalk Pretty One Day,” “The Day Language Came into Life,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” the excerpt from the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird,” “The School,” and “Back Story.”)
If you would like to analyze more of Junod’s article than the first paragraph and the beginning of the second, you are welcome to study a larger section, just as you are welcome to examine a larger section of the first chapter of To Kill a Mockingbird. The complete first chapter of Harper Lee’s novel is posted in Blackboard. To access all of Junod’s article, see the directions below.
Unless you subscribe to Esquire, the magazine’s paywall will deny you access to the full text of “The Falling Man,” but you can access it through the HPU Library site by following these steps:
Directions for Accessing “The Falling Man” (Full Text)
- Go to the HPU Library site.
- Under the heading Search HPU Libraries . . . , click on the Articles tab.
- Under the Articles tab, type Tom Junod “Falling Man” Esquire in the search box and click search.
- On the next screen, you will see a brief summary of the article. Click View full text to see the complete article.
- On the next screen, click View full text beside one of the database options.
. . . Constant Consonants? Hmm
Learning phpht and hmm, pictured above, and other all-consonant words can enable you to continue a Scrabble game when you are faced with a rack without vowels.
- brr: used to indicate that one is cold
- crwth: an ancient stringed instrument (pl. -s)
- cwm: a cirque (a deep, steepwalled basin on a mountain, pl. -s, prounounced to rhyme with “boom”)
- hm: used to express thoughtful consideration (also “hmm“)
- mm: used to express assent or satisfaction
- nth: describing an unspecified number in a series
- phpht: used as an expression of mild anger or annoyance (also “pht“)
- psst: used to attract someone’s attention
- sh: used to urge silence (also “shh” and “sha“)
- tsk: to utter an exclamation of annoyance (-ed, -ing, -s)
- tsktsk: to “tsk” (-ed, -ing, -s)
Next Up
Wordplay Day! To prepare for class, revisit the Dictionary and World Builder pages on the Scrabble website, or the Merriam-Webster Scrabble Word Finder page, and review the blog posts with Scrabble tips, including this one
Coming Soon
In class on Monday, you will compose a midterm reflection focusing on the assignments and aspects of the course that have contributed the most to your development as a writer and a student. Tomorrow’s post will serve as a guide for your preparations.
Jane Lucas 