Grealy's essay is a heartbreaking story. The main point of her essay, in my opinion is the connection between self-image and self-respect.
What I've noticed with this and a few other essays we've read so far is that it is not ordered chronologically. It's ordered , as you've indicated to read as an essay with paragraphs used as arguements to emphasize her points. She transitions between the past and present continually in the essay, by not indenting paragraphs in the past followed by an indentation with her thoughts and analysis in the following paragraph. This is a technique that has also been used with a few other readings we've read, and seems to be a common technique.
Grealy uses the story of her struggles with her self image as an example to emphasize the main arguements for her main idea. She talks about at first how society feeds us a perceived image of what we are supposed to look like, and when we do not look like this there is often hurtful backlash.
Interestingly enough after scanning the story after the initial reading I gathered a much different understanding on the main point of her essay. After reading it seemed like an evaluation of the writing process. As a writer we sift through muddled ideas and often at first it is horrifying to look at at, but over time we nurture the idea and take steps to polish it and make it "look" better. In the end we never fully accomplish the perfect "image" or perfect essay, instead we work it into something that we feel comfortable with and in the end accept the result. Even after the final product we are still not happy, much like Grealy doesn't completely accept her image, but comes to terms with it and eventually
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