Writing+Samples

The following are a few samples of my writing (both analytical and creative):

//Soul // By Regan Plekenpol Air. It’s needed to survive. It’s needed to sustain a steady heartbeat. But there’s more to life than oxygen. 6.8 billion people in this world - all searching for something. Something to find meaning. Something to keep them alive. Though we may not realize it, we are all searching for the same ____thing__ __. This perpetual pursuit for something bigger than us, connects us with a common thread. 9:05pm, Monday evening. South Station, New York. The sea of faceless people rushing past each other, consumed in their own world. No one pauses to notice another. Everyone remains strangers. Above the roar of the passing subway, a man yells, seemingly to himself. He stomps onto the subway, briefcase in hand, sighing as he shoves his cell phone violently into his pocket. He slumps down next to a woman, a stranger. He makes no notice of her. He merely closes his eyes, fingers on his temples, empty thoughts running through his head. He wonders if there’s more. When she notices him, the woman instinctively pulls her shirt down and ruffles her hair. Focused only on the image she’s projecting, her looks and her attitude. As the crowd shuffles through the doors, she scans the train, smirking provocatively. She meets eyes with a scruffy-looking man. His eyes red, jaw unshaven. She scoffs and looks away, detecting the apathy in his exhale. She stops. She reflects on what she’s become and what she used be. What happened? The man in the corner, head slumped into his hands, begins to doze off. He’s jerked awake as several children trip over his legs, without even acknowledging his presence. No one ever does. “I’m right here” he mumbles under his breath, “It’s like I’m invisible”. He finally drifts into sleep as the doors slide shut and the subway shifts into motion. The constant humming of the train releases the passengers into a state of peace – a rarity in the business of life. There’s a sudden movement inside the crowd. A shady black figure emerges from the corner and – BANG! Shock. Chaos. Fear. The passengers erupt in a frenzy – screaming, running, grabbing what they can of their possessions. Everything is moving so fast and in an instant everything is still. The stranger grabs the woman up from the plastic chair. Violently pulling her towards him, he puts a gun to her neck. The train stops. A flood of frantic passengers pushes through the doors – its every man for himself. BANG! BANG! As a bullet narrowly flies past her neck, her life flashes before her eyes. She struggles, but manages to escape his grasp. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The man, still perplexed, wakes up from his state of shock and reaches for his briefcase. Out of the corner of his eyes, the man in rags, still asleep. A pause. In a split second, he drops his bag to grab the man. He pulls him out of the door and doesn’t look back. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A man in a ripped suit, a woman in tears, and a confused ragged man stand paralyzed as the train speeds away. They stare. A moment of revelation – this could have been the end. Instantly they get swallowed into the crowd as the next train arrives. They would never see each other again, but they would never forget. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The most unlikely of circumstances can unite souls when you least expect it. In moments of desperation some find purpose. Some, forgiveness and the motivation to change, and others find a reason - A reason to live and a reason to stay alive. There will be a defining moment where you find that there is more to life than living. You can’t keep your soul alive merely with oxygen. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 14.6667px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">You’re still breathing. With the life left in your lungs, you can make a difference. What if this was your last breath, how did you live? With your final breaths, did you find purpose?

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> Verisimilitude vs. Utopian Idealism <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Suffering acts as a crucible - removing all impurities and leaving an individual stronger than before. Characters find themselves subjected to trials and torments, heat in extreme degrees, and reform as different elements interact to produce something new – change, strength. However, if the temperature becomes too hot, or the suffering too great to bear, good qualities can be incinerated along with the bad. Struggles can both positively and negatively affect a person – the individual’s response, thus, determines the outcome. Just as certain effects of suffering hinge on the reaction of the individual, the repercussions of a situation depend on how a character reacts and deals with the struggles he or she faces. Part of the human condition, struggles are inevitable. However, the characters are in control of their response and, subsequently, the ramifications of their distress – how they emerge in the end. Strife, in this novel, is ubiquitous in the lives of each character as Steinbeck demonstrates that suffering doesn’t strengthen an idealist, but rather, a realist. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Facing transformation, people who consciously fight their tormentors with realistic ideals and assertive actions grow stronger through hard times. On the other end of the scale, idealists tend not to take the simple steps to realistic action. Merely hoping life will get better, an idealist relies on his dreams but never finds the motivation to pursue them. Prime examples of men unable to overcome the barriers of denial, dreams, or nostalgia, Connie, Al, and Grandpa exhibit the unfortunate truth that idealistic dreaming is in vain. Steinbeck uses these characters to convey the ineffectiveness of idealism, and the endless struggle these men emerge on, only to come out unchanged and empty handed. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Connie, focusing only on his idealistic, unachievable goals, doesn’t focus on the real problems at hand. Useless to the rest of the family, his head remains stuck in a dream where he is educated, rich, and happy. He fails to understand what is really important in life – family. Steinbeck stresses this theme throughout the novel; money does not guarantee happiness, nor does power ensure joy. Just as the man with a million acres doesn’t find happiness, a man whose heart sets in the wrong place will never fully live. Life is unforgiving to a man who is alone and selfish, “If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich…he need it ‘cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he’s poor in hisself, there ain’t no million acres gonna make him feel rich” (Steinbeck 207). Family and “people”, as Jim Casy is convinced, are the most important factors that come to play in a man’s life. No amount of worldly possessions can override this idea, no matter how hard a man tries to please himself with land, education, or money. Connie acts as a manifestation of this ideal as he walks away from his loved ones in pursuit of an unattainable fantasy. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">//<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Grapes of Wrath // portrays dreamers. In hard times, one finds ease in escaping a harsh reality by imaging a different future, pretending life offers more than it does, and hoping for future rewards. During his journey home, Tom encounters a truck driver with a lot of dreams; “I’m thinkin’ of it. Then I won’t have to drive no truck. Then I’ll tell other guys to drive trucks” (Steinbeck 11). Tirelessly, he hopes for the day that he would be in control and life would be better. Similar to the truck driver Tom encounters in the beginning of the novel, Al constantly fights for a better life. Life appears more durable when he believes something better will come, that life wouldn’t remain stagnant forever. When faced with problems, Al relies on this mindset, however dangerous, which stops him from progressing and making valid efforts to change. Beginning to accept his fate, he will finally bend under the “wracking misery heaped up before [him]” to the point where he “can feel it no more” (Owens, Torres 120). If Al succumbs to this acceptance and denial, he will have no further desire to fight, and no will to survive. Al spends more time drooling over women, dreaming of a job in the garage, and taking pride in his teenage “swag” than he does putting his abilities to use. Too selfish to care about the needs of the family, he serves no use to them as they tirelessly struggle to survive. He remains oblivious to his capacity, and ignores the fact of his uselessness. Stuck in denial, Al never admits to his inhibitions and never accepts the fact that change is all but necessary. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Likewise, Grandpa dreams about his life in California and the grape juice he would pour over his body. But when reality hits and struggles come, he finds himself too weak to handle it. His head stuck in daydream, he is never fully aware of the problems the family face until his feeble body eventually breaks down. Grandpa embodies a man unwilling to let go of the past – he refuses to leave his land and namesake behind. Nostalgia served to hinder him from acting realistically. Believing irrationally that he could survive alone on the land that was not rightfully his, grandpa exhibits an idealist mindset and a stubborn disposition. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Overcoming the various factors contributing to idealism, characters that oppose struggles realistically develop and gain life experience that increases their personal strength and intensity. Challenging struggles, facing affliction head on, standing up to adversity- such attitudes materialize as certain characters in John Steinbeck’s novel, //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Grapes of Wrath. // Fighting back amidst suffering gives the characters in the novel new motivation and new strength as “every beaten strike [proves steps are] being taken” (Steinbeck 371). As characters fight back in their own way, the eminence of change only proliferates. For as people continue to persevere, humanity will progress, or in the words of Brian E. Railsback, “There’s ignorance and filth and suffering, but it is utterly false to say the world isn’t better and going to be still better” (Railsback 188). To find and understand this potential for change, characters need to take action and come together in a common cause. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In order to sustain organized action and bring motivated individuals together, it is important for the figures of authority to be exemplary in strength and activism. As long as the family and its leaders are “whole”, the family can survive. “No misfortune [is] too great to bear if the men [are] whole” (Steinbeck 4), but if the leaders lose hope, the family crumbles and stops fighting for survival. In the leader of the family, there remains a necessity in a man with persistence and strength because “Anybody can break down, [but] it takes a man not to” (Steinbeck 141) Pa Joad, throughout the story, waivers in his faith but ultimately shows strength and growth in the end. Worried at times about his loss of faith, he laments that he is tired of “lookin’ for somepin’ [he] knows [he] ain’t gonna find” (Steinbeck 254). Accepting his fate, he begins to grow weary of fighting back; he begins to give up. However, in his defining moment, showcasing a desire to save the family, he tirelessly builds a trench around their matchbox-car home to spare them from the flood – a realistic step to action. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“As more Casys are martyred and Toms are created, the people will eventually move forward” (Railsback 227). As more people step out of their comfort zones, they use the resources they have to make change, to progress, to adapt. Tom is a prime example of a character that fought poverty by taking action. Throughout the novel, he shows his perseverance through every struggle the family endures; hard labor, hunger, death, disillusionment, whatever the problem, Tom faces it with an attitude of verisimilitude. He never wastes his time dreaming of what could be, but persistently tries to improve what is. Tired of being abused, overlooked, and taken advantage of, he decides to follow in the footsteps of his late mentor, Jim Casy. He makes a choice to fight the problems of the word with an activist attitude, not a dream. Inspired, he chooses to sacrifice his family, his chance at prosperity, and potentially his life to fight for the rights of the worker, to join the battle towards justice. Tom decides that he believed so passionately in this cause that he would “suffer and die for a concept. This one quality is the foundation of Manself” (Steinbeck 151) which Tom exhibited in his realistic persistence. There is a certain necessity in the idea of realism – the family had to be realistic and stop “praying” for a better life, but that didn’t mean they have to give up completely. “And the association of owners knew that someday the praying would stop. And there’s the end.” (Steinbeck 263). The end, however, is only the end for someone who would give up and //<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">hope // for a better life, not someone willing to fight for one. “The omniscient voice describes how in their suffering, people come together…soon they will see beyond themselves and the illusion of their religion”, then comes real action. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> "Homelessness and suffering [became] the occasion of spiritual growth" (Owens, Torres 15) as the Joads reach conclusions about their life and adapt in various ways. Pa and Tom have a “sense of victory” as they find strength through the struggles they overcame and constantly overcome – they create a “new race with strong blood—a race that can adapt and fight in a way the old one could not.” (Railsback 229) Accomplished and realistic, they overcome the boundary of the “I” and embrace the “we” as they fight together for a better life, for freedom from abuse, for the ability to provide and prosper. Those who lack the ability to form realistic ideas about life continue their irrational, unattainable dreaming and find no victory in the story. In order to generate a new being, to create something out of nothing, the basic rudiments are necessary to begin with – raw materials, aspirations, goals. If the only components added to the amalgam are dreams or memories from the past, no matter how hot the temperature, all will be burned away because the substance was lacking. It is evident that without real intention, nothing can be achieved- for foundation cannot be based in fantasy. The Joads, among other families facing homelessness, poverty, and starvation, discover that only practical action would save them from their fate. “The Joads were only a selected specimen…what Steinbeck is talking about is tragedy on an enormous, epic scale, tragedy for which no individual blame can be assigned”. (Torres 120) All men face heartbreak. All men witness pain and struggle unimaginable. But only some lose faith, only some give up, and only some keep on fighting. <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">