This week, I found myself struggling to figure out what what exactly DuPliess was trying to say in her essay on essays. She presents an interesting series of points about how an essay is such a unique place for text to exist, because of its powerful, almost fascist like attempt to control your emotions for the duration of the text. You are presented an opinion, and you don't get to see any other side of the opinion that hasn't been filtered into just being more support for the argument. It's very controlling.
Although, in a sense, all text is very manipulative. In a fictional story, you can interpret things in a variety of ways, but the author is always trying to pull your emotions in very very specific directions. You have choice, but you're strongly influenced. In fact, even the choices are sometimes intended to manipulate you. The ending especially tries with all its might to make you believe in the answer it has provided for the question that provoked the author into writing the story. Very manipulative.
Ok, go back to DuPlessis, she's kind of saying the opposite actually, that the essay is an open space, a kind of non-genre that doesn't have the constraints that other kinds of writing have. Spend a little time with it, there are some intriguing things in there. 8/10 points.
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