4.2

Zac Chandre
English 101
10/6/08
8:00 a.m.


““What You Know” by Peter Ho Davies is a very interesting read. I enjoyed this piece very much, which my sound kind of creepy because it is about a school shooting, but I enjoyed the venting part of it. I also enjoyed how it was so informal with the incomplete sentences, cursing, and the self revisions within the piece it’s self.” (Assignment 4.1)
Peter Ho Davies seems to be a very personable type of writer. The reason that I feel this way is because of the technique that he used by putting this wonderful piece of writing into diary form. The way that the piece was written made it very easy for me/the audience to get into it. When a reader is able to really get into a story they tend to keep on reading, so this was a very intelligent way to tell his story.
“The narrator is an English teacher/substitute that has a typical teenage class. The part that I find shocking about this piece is that he refers to his students as stupid, he calls them stupid because most of them have never read a book or they can’t put their feelings down on paper or they just don’t care. I think it is very interesting that he is so negative about student writers when he himself had to of once been a student writer. I find it rather odd that he puts so many restrictions on the students work, “No stories about suicide”, “No flashbacks longer than a page”, “No narrators from beyond the grave”, “No. and then I woke up. Endings”, if this is what his students want to write about let them. After all, writing is supposed to be your emotions on paper” (Assignment 4.1)
One of the techniques he used was sort of a dull humor. He seemed to only use this technique in the beginning of the story when he was talking about his class and their surprising narrow-mindedness. An example of this humor would be when he said “The good ones are bad and the bad ones are tragic”.
“After the death of Clark the narrator spoke to CNN and gave them an over the phone interview. After this interview he started to think about why Clark would have done this? I think it is great that he tries to understand this by using examples from his own life, when he came home late and his father barred the door to his room and after arguing he punched his father in the face, he then said that if he had a gun it would have just not been worth killing for.
Up until this point he is confused as to why someone would do this, but when he is at the shooting range and Vern (the guy behind the counter) recognizes him and says what are you teaching these kids? It really gets to him he begins to show some emotion. This emotion he is feeling is shown when he goes to the school and reads the first letter and begins to tear up, but after he reads a couple more he becomes angry with the letters because of grammatical errors.
This entire story is about emotion and how different people deal with it. Emotion is shown in many different forms like crying, yelling, rage, or even the simple rolling of the eyes when someone says something that you don’t believe.” (Assignment 4.1)
During this story Peter tries to put us in the writer’s shoes. He tries to makes us a part of the story by taking us through his life after the tragic shooting. He takes us into the CNN interview, the gun range, his head, and finally the school where it all started except now he feels sick and shows some emotion.
The title of this story is “What You Know” but in my opinion it should be titled “What We Don’t Know”. This is because throughout the entire piece the narrator is trying to figure out why Clark would do such a thing. The fact that he tries and tries to figure it out and he just can’t is what makes us human. Everyone as a human has their own feelings and their own thoughts, this just proves that no matter how well you think you know someone there are always some things that you just don’t know and you never will.