Exams are coming up really fast! With the English diploma looming ahead, my English teacher had us write several essays, in-class and assigned. With the topic of the human condition, such a broad topic to interpret, I’m extremely nervous as to what is going to be on the diploma. For your reading pleasure, I have included a sample essay in a format my English teacher has definitely approved of! Recieving the award for Outstanding Student in English Language Arts in 30-1, you can be rest assure sure that this essay may be worth some of your time and is of some quality to read.

Some advice my English teacher gave me for writing essay: simple, straightforward, and relevant!

Any feedback would be great, comments, criticism, its all in the context of learning! I highly recommend this book for anyone planning to write the English diploma, as the book has many themes, and is a very powerful book that is available to be written upon.

Fugitive Pieces Essay

By: Lisa Bui

An individual’s ability to emerge living with the capacity for faith and love despite being constrained by difficult circumstances comes from the freeing powers of human love. In the novel, Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, Jakob Beers bears a traumatic journey of the painful memory and past, to be healed only by the redemptive human powers of compassion and kindness.  Through the discovery of human love; Jakob Beers attempts to live life with a renewed human connection, rather than the spectral connection to Bella.  Also the kindness and compassion Michaela offer Jakob, releases him from the haunting memories of his past, and allows him to start to look forward to a bright and cheerful future, with Michaela. Finally, despite having been affected with the repercussions of the war, in the forms of trauma and guilt, Jakob Beers feels there is a possibility of a brighter future, of when and he Michaela can conceive their first child into the world. How can a person truly love life, if their hearts are with the dead?

Jakob Beers is able to break away from the constraints of incorporating Bella’s spectre in all facets of his life, having prevented Jakob from truly appreciating life in the world of the living, through the redemptive powers of human sympathy and love. “Michaela’s hand above my head; I stroke the fragile place on the back of her smooth, soft upper arms. She is sobbing. She has heard everything- her heart an ear, her skin an ear. Michaela is crying for Bella. The light and heat of her tears enter my bones. The joy of being recognized and the stabbing loss: recognized for the first time.” Jakob’s prolonged melancholy produced from the traumatic loss of his sister is not healed by repressing or forgetting his past, as his former and intellectual wife Alex pushes him to do, but both Bella’s and his soul are put to rest, by the imaginative, but powerful, emotions of recognition and sympathy.  In this, Jakob’s body no longer provides a house for Bella’s soul, as his body and is filled with the peace of mind of having shared his memory and story of Bella, of her own individual existence. Bella’s soul is finally released from being attached to objects that belong to the world of the living, which had painfully reminded Jakob of his loss of Bella, Michaela imaginary tears acknowledges and displays human consideration that pulls Jakob from his terrifying memories of the Holocaust and gives him, and his heart, a renewed hope for living a life of companionship in the land of the living.

Jakob Beers successfully comes to terms with the painful and repressed memories that have self-deprecated him, and  instead, is experiencing happiness and the joy of being alive though his discovery of human love. “The first morning I woke to Michaela… I knew that this was my first experience of the colour yellow.” At the same party at which Jakob had met Michaela, Jakob also meets a Polish artist, born ten years before World War II, painting in dark ochres and browns, without the ability to bring himself to use vibrant and cheery shade of yellow, the artist utters the line” All my life, I’ve asked myself one question: How can you hate all you have come from and not hate yourself?”  Now together with Michaela, through the reaffirmation and the restatement of love, Michaela’s love and its strength has built in Jakob a better self, teaching him the importance of the possible pleasures offered in human life. Jakob does not wake up to the sounds or spectral presence of Bella, but instead wakes in the presence of a unique, compassionate, and tangible human being, whom shares loving affections towards him. Jakob no longer lives with the shadows and dark colours of his past haunting him, and has instead, brought himself to move forward towards a brighter and happier life, with reciprocated kindness and love, with Michaela.

Jakob Beers remains faithful to humanity, despite having survived the devastating destruction caused by the war and bearing witness to the murder of his family members. “My son, my daughter: May you never be deaf to love. Bela, Bella: Once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid. My blood pounded in my chest and I knew my heart’s strength would soon be exhausted. I save myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name.”  His faith in humanity is recognized by “feeling” a future inhabited by his son or daughter, with Jakob finally acknowledging the fixation he held upon Bella. Jakob’s survival and life was dependant on the strength of his love for Bella. Providing advice to his future children, Jakob’s   that it was his love for Bella; her strength that had saved him from the vast and dark terrors that emerged from the Holocaust.  Having survived his past,  his beloved memories of his love for Bella can survive him and live to be a physical manifestation of either a son or a daughter that they will conceive.

An individual’s emergence from the depths of their constraints, and their ability to be able to receive faith and love comes from the healing nature of human love. In the novel, Fugitive Pieces, Jakob Beers, despite bearing the emotional loss of his sister, is healed by the timeless and redemptive powers of human empathy and kindness. Jakob Beers discovers in a physical human connection, through Michaela’s empathy and understanding, releases him from incorporating the Bella’s spectral spirit from his past, painfully into the present and future.  Finally despite having his life influenced from the consequences of the war, he has faith in the future, having survived his past, and having his children survive him into the future. An individual may never have all their imprinted scars smooth themselves and disappear however; human compassion can shed away one’s old and heavy skins.