Complete English Discussion (BLANCH)

I don’t understand this English question and need help to study.

After you have read “Our Secret” by Susan Griffin, write a short (3-4 paragraphs) essay on the following:

Griffin argues that we — all of us, especially all of us who read her essay — are part of a complex web of connections. At one point she says,

“Who are we? The question is not simple. What we call the self is part of a larger matrix of relationships and society. Had we been born to a different family, in a different time, to a different world, we would not be the same. All the lives that surround us are in us. (p. 263)”

At another point she asks, “Is there any one of us who can count ourselves outside the circle circumscribed by our common past? She speaks of a ‘field,’

“like a field of gravity that is created by the movements of many bodies. Each life is influenced and in turn becomes an influence. Whatever the cause is also an effect. Childhood experience is just one element in the determining field. (p. 238)”

One way of thinking about this concept of the self (and of interrelatedness), at least under Griffin’s guidance, is to work on the connections that she implies and asserts. As you reread the selection, look for powerful and surprising juxtapositions, fragments that stand together in interesting and suggestive ways. Think about the arguments represented by the blank space between those sections. (And look for Griffin’s written statements about ‘relatedness’). Look for connections that seem important to the text (and to you) and representative of Griffin’s thinking (and yours). Then, write a SHORT essay in which you use these examples to think through your understanding of Griffin’s claims for this ‘larger matrix’, the ‘determining field,’ of our ‘common past.’