Write a unified, coherent, and supported essay in which you agree or disagree with the authors claim.

Essay 3
Mode: Example/Illustration (or combination of any except narration)
Aim: Persuade w/ Textual Analysis

Directions:

Write a unified, coherent, and supported essay in which you agree or disagree with the authors claim in one of the readings from this module.

In other words, your analysis should identify the authors thesis and evaluate the essays effectiveness.

Article that needs to be used:
“Neat People vs. Sloppy People” appears in Britt’s collection Show and Tel!.
Mingling humor with seriousness (as she often does), Britt has called the
book a report on her journey inco “the awful cave of self: You shout your
name and voices come back in exultant response, telling you their names.”
In this essay, Britt uses comparison mainly to entertain by showing us aspects
of our own selves, awful or not. For another approach to a similarsubject, see
the next essay, by Dave Barry.
I’ve finally figured out the difference between neat people and sloppy
people. The distinction is, as always, moral. Neat people are lazier and meaner
than sloppy people.
Sloppy people, you see, are not really sloppy. Their sloppiness is merely
the unfortunate consequence of their extreme moral rectitude. Sloppy people
carry in their mind’s eye a heavenly vision, a precise plan, that is so stupendous, so perfect, it can’t be achieved in this world or the next.
Sloppy people live in Never-Never Land. Someday is their metier. Someday they are planning to alphabetize all their books and set up home catalogs.
Someday they will go through their wardrobes and mark certain items for tentative mending and certain items for passing on to relatives of similar shape
and size. Someday sloppy people will make family scrapbooks into which they
will put newspaper clippings, postcards, locks of hair, and the dried corsage
from their senior prom. Someday they will file everything on the surface of
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240 Comparison and Contrast
their desks, including the cash receipts from coffee purchases at the snack shop.
Someday they will sit down and read all the back issues of The New YO/ker.
For all these noble reasons and more, sloppy people never get neat. They 4
aim too high and wide. They save everything, planning someday to file, order,
and straighten out the world. But while these ambitious plans take clearer and
clearer shape in their heads, the books spill from the shelves onto the floor,
the clothes pile up in the hamper and closet, the family mementos accumulate
in every drawer, the surface of the desk is buried under mounds of paper, and
the unread magazines threaten to reach the ceiling.
Sloppy people can’t bear to part with anything. They give loving attention to every detail. Xlhen sloppy people say they’re going to tackle the surface of a desk, they really mean it. Not a paper will go untumed; not a rubber
band will go unboxed. Four hours or two weeks into the excavation, the desk
looks exactly the same, primarily because the sloppy person is meticulously
creating new piles of papers with new headings and scrupulously stopping to
read all the old book catalogs before he throws them away. A neat person
would just bulldoze the desk.
Neat peopl are bums and clods at heart. They have cavalier attitudes
toward possessions, including family heirlooms. Everything is just another
dust-catcher to them. If anything collects dust, it’s got to go and that’s that.
Neat people will toy with the idea of throwing the children out of the house
just to cut down on the clutter.
Neat people don’t care about process. They like results. Xlhat they want
to do is get the whole thing over with so they can sit down and watch the
rasslin’ on TV. Neat people operate on two unvarying principles: Never handle
any item twice, and throw everything away.
The only thing messy in a neat person’s house is the trash can. The
minute something comes to a neat person’s hand, he will look at it, try to
decide if it has immediate use and, finding none, throw it in the trash.
Neat people are especially vicious with mail. They never go through their
mail unless they are standing directly over a trash can. If the trash can is
beside the mailbox, even better. All ads, catalogs, pleas for charitable contributions, church bulletins, and money-saving coupons go straight into the trash
can without being opened. All letters from home, postcards from Europe, bills,
and paychec are opened, immediately responded to, then dropped in the
trash can. Neat people keep their receipts only for tax purposes. That’s it. No
sentimental salvaging of birthday cards or the last letter a dying relative ever
wrote. Into the trash it goes.
Neat people place neatness above everything, even economics. They are
incredibly wasteful. Neat people throwaway several toys every time they walk
through the den, 1knew a neat person once who threw away a perfectly good
Britt / Neat People V5. Sloppy People 241
dish drainer because it had mold on it. The drainer was too much trouble to
wash. And neat people sell their furniture when they move. They will sell a
La-Z-Boy recliner while you are reclining in it.
Neat people are no good to borrow from. Neat people buy everything in 11
expensive little single portions. They get their flour and sugar in two-pound
bags. They wouldn’t consider clipping a coupon, saving a leftover, reusing
plastic nondairy whipped cream containers, or rinsing off tin foil and draping
it over the unmoldy dish ch-ainer. You can never borrow a neat person’s newspaper to see what’s playing at the movies. Neat people have the paper all
wadded up and in the trash by 7:05 AM.
Neat people cut a clean swath through the organic as well as the inorganic l2
world. People, animals, and things are all one to them. They are so insensitive. After they’ve finished with the pantry, the medicine cabinet, and the
attic, they will throw out the red geranium (too many leaves), sell the dog
(too many fleas), and send the children off to boarding school (too many
scuff-marks on the hardwood floors).

Parameters:
You should mention/analyze at least two rhetorical strategies.
Do NOT use first person; use third person.
Do NOT use secondary sources; only use the text and your own ideas.
You must have a clear thesis in the first paragraph
You must include quotations from the text to support your claims
Use MLA format for parenthetical citations and work cited
3-4 pages (not including work cited)

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