Introduction
For this experiment, I decided to take a very different stylistic approach in terms of the genre that I would like to write in. I was greatly interested and influenced by romanticism writers after taking a Russian literature class. In the class, I read various works from Alexander Pushkin, and he is a big romantic writer and I wish to follow this trend. Writing in such vivid detail and while keeping the individual center staged, was a unique writing experience for me. While I always try to express myself in all my pieces, the added detail seemed to add to my understanding of myself and how I fit into it in relation to the city that I grew up in. The hyper focused nature of the piece was something that I truly loved. While I only wrote the start of my essay, I think that the start is what was necessary because it set the tone for what the rest of the essay should be like.
Genre Research
The definition of romanticism is as follows: “a movement in the arts and literature that originated in the late 18th century, emphasizing inspiration, subjectivity, and the primacy of the individual.” This is the style of literature work that I hope to write within. This is all about connecting with one’s emotions and getting very personal with the individual and the sense of “finding one’s sense” is extremely important to these pieces of work. An artist that I really admire for this is Alexander Pushkin who is one of the most renowned Russian poets and novelists. In one of his works “The Prisoner of The Caucasus,” Pushkin tells a beautiful story about a Russian officer being fed up with modern life as he feels out of place in it and moves to the Caucasus. This is the sort of style and themes I want to work within.
Essay Sketch
In the introduction of the essay, it is going to be a very introspective setting where I start off by writing my bike in the streets in the busy Chicago urban setting, feeling the rush of the wind on me and listening to sounds of the cars around me. Compared to pieces of romanticism in which the main character is traveling somewhere or begins their journey.
Following that, I will talk about the various memories I had in the city as I bike around my neighborhood, but it is going to be describing the people and the sort of environment that I grew up in. These paragraphs will be about describing the outside world outside myself which will lead me into the parts that I truly want to get into. This can be seen as where the journey has taken me.
In the third half of the piece, it will be about how I feel as if I do not fit right into the community that I grew up in, but I still have a love for it. This can be seen as where the journey has sort of taken me section of the essay.
This is the ending to my piece in which I reflect on the day’s journey and just talk about where I hope to go from where I came.
Sample
The sun feels the best at the stoplight after biking underneath the bridge for about 10 minutes. The feeling warms my body and spreads positivity across it, and when I look around at the cars around me and the city life moving about on this street, I am met with an immense amount of gratitude for the Windy City. Summer in Chicago are the best summers that I have ever witnessed. They all seem to be a reward for all of us natives that survive each brutal Chicago winter. Even in the age of COVID, the reward is still as satisfying just being out in the city that works hard.
When the light turns green and it is time to go, I am a bit disappointed as I wish I could’ve taken in more of the people around me. Nevertheless, I bike on feeling the wind blast through me which pushes me to bike faster. I feel free, and I want to be more free. Driving down the 4 lane busy street surrounded by all these cars going 30 miles per hour is an exhilarating feeling. I am temporarily trapped in the middle lane going fast enough to be in front of the car in front of me with no space to move into the next lane. The only way out of this situation is forward, and so I bike on.
I don’t even know where I am going quite frankly, but it doesn’t matter. I needed to leave my house. The memories of my childhood are still so etched in my mind, and the scars that they left behind are still so impactful on me that I need a break whenever I visit it. It's a weird sensation to feel both trapped and liberated at the same time depending on where I am within the city.
Reflection
I really did enjoy the little spin that I took on this essay. However, after writing it, I think that it would be better suited with the first essay that I am writing. This was a good experiment, and it was interesting to delve deeper into the the genre of writing I wanted to go into, but I think that I should bring the in the fundamentals I learned and put it into my first experiment, that of focusing on myself as an individual in my city and just trying to see how I exist with it and how it has fundamentally shaped who I am.