The Brown Wasps Essay, Research Paper

The Brown Wasps

?The Brown Wasps? is in my personal opinion, a very good narrative

essay that not only has interesting description but comes to a more personal

level with his reader. His choice of words and the way he presents the

emotional content of situations make the reader think of his own life and

how he may associate parts of the character?s life with his own.

I think that Eisley?s main point or thesis reflects in his examples that

many forms and variations of life try to keep in their mind, a sense of home.

A place where they can feel comfortable and not have worry of outside

pressures but feel content in knowing that they exist. The first couple of

examples, of the elderly men in the train station. All of which are scattered

in the floor and lying on the benches, helpless and wanting to die as the rest

the rest of the world goes on with life as usual.

Note how the Security guard makes his hourly pass and does his job but

chooses to ignore the old men as they attempt to get up. He uses this style

that makes human emotion in writing more appealing to the reader. He

compares this to that of wasps who come back to their nest to die. Stressing

a need for closeness with a community. Death is an underlying factor in both

cases. I guess he tries to make us feel that the thought of death may bring a

sense of what home is, much clearer.

Later on he uses two more examples dealing with even stronger

emotions. The field mouse who became scared and was forced from his

home. And the person who went back to their childhood home to find the

tree that he and his father had planted sixty years before. Remembering that

his dad had promised they would not move and put down roots.

But sixty years later when he returns home and finds the tree had been

gone years before, it didn?t matter because the image was in his mind and

just the simple thought of this made him happy. As I said before, it makes us

think of a time and place where all was peaceful and we will always have

that moment until it is our turn to return home and lay in the shadow of our

own tree and wait to die.

I think that all of the situations bring a sense of values of who we are.

What we have been exposed to over time becomes a part of us. What we

value as humans as being peaceful may be very different, yet it may all have

the same emotional meaning to each as an individual. Just as the blind man

in the subway and the pigeons that flew in search for the peanuts. After it

was all torn down, it didn?t matter that it couldn?t be seen. I was their place

all to themselves that reminded them of good times.