Writing about General Apache & Simplicity

Writing about General Apache was very interesting to me. A teacher trying to write about a student trying to write and express his feelings can seem a little confusing at first. I really enjoyed the fact that this teacher allowed his students to choose topics that particularly interested them, in turn making their writing more powerful and great. It's really meaningful that through sitting down and listening to General Apache's life and experience this teacher was able to compile it into a nice poem that truly expressed and perfectly expressed what went on throughout his life and all of the topics they spoke about in their meetings. This lets me see that the message a writer (General Apache) is always there it's just difficult to express and an experienced writer (Harrington) is able to express it because he has had practice and taken time to write it out. The poem that he has written reflects upon when happened during the Vietnam War and it reflects on the troubles that General Apache has had in the past. In the second to last chunk of the poem it explains how Apache uses the past that he has to help kids with the same sort of problems and he uses his knowledge and experience to do so.

SImplicity by William Zinsser is also very interesting. I never really noticed that some things are so unnecessarily complicated sometimes. It makes sense though that things tend to be complicated, as our brains are complicated themselves. With all of the stimulus and different things going on it is hard to clear our heads and get a straight path and train of thought. People may feel like making things too simple would be bad and perhaps it would make things sound childish or unprofessional. This is not the case at all though. If you would like to get a point across to a maximum amount of people it is best to use language in a way that will apply and be understood by all. Just because language is simple doesn't make it bad, it can be very good, even better than complicated words that cloud up the message you are trying to get across. Like Zinsser says, it takes work and hard work at that so if anybody tries to simplify and be straightforward with their ideas their writing will be simplistic but very powerful, understood and enjoyed by many. He reflects on the different examples of airline pilots, presidents, and authors that use complicated and simple language and he goes on to tell the reader that they can accomplish these things through hard work and clearing of our minds before we can clear up our writing.