Extra Credit

Deloria speaks about a ‘trickster,' which is a philosophical figure that traditionally appears in Native American stories and is meant to demonstrate "how to live by knowing how not to live; here's how to not live by knowing how to live.” He uses a trickster as this narrative voice in this piece of short fiction to show how the spa is not an accurate depiction of the life of a winner, and that in reality, a winner acquires a high status in society by making sure others are considered losers in comparison to them. To summarize this idea, he claims that life is actually "the delusion and privilege of the winner.” This statement stuck out to me initially because Deloria uses the word “privilege” because this concept frequently appeared towards the end of the semester around the time we were writing our personal narrative essays. I found his use of the spa metaphor particularly interesting because we have discussed so much in class the role of our social identities about others but in a more literal sense, like in McIntosh’s essay about her privileges as a white woman. While Deloria doesn’t directly reference minority groups in society like McIntosh does, he parallels the idea there is a social hierarchy of “winners” and "losers" in our society and one cannot exist without the presence of the other. 

During this discussion, Deloria claims that he believes structure and argument of a piece of writing are more important than narrative voice and tone. I found this particularly interesting because, in my educational career, this has not been the case in regards to the curriculum I’ve been taught. For example, after taking LHSP 125, I’ve been able to identify that one of my major weakness in writing is structure and organization of the overall piece because. I assume that this is because, before college, my lessons on writing mainly focused on developing a writer’s voice — which I believe is one of my biggest strengths in writing today. Also, Deloria states that narrative skill and fluidity compensate for solid structure in writing, and he uses his poetry as an example. I find this especially ironic because recently I have often looked to poetry when trying to improve my style of writing. The general point Deloria makes here caught my attention and got me thinking because it somewhat contradicted how I’ve personally developed as a writer throughout the course of my education.

When he was asked what advice he would give to students by the interviewer, Deloria says that they should take the drafting process very seriously and be honest with themselves during the writing process. By working and re-working a draft, he believes that the final product will be much better as well. Being open to constant revision and accepting that one’s writing is not as good as it can be, according to Deloria, is difficult but ultimately makes the best writers. This advice reminded me of the Thomas Mann quote that was put on the board earlier this year: “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” Deloria acknowledges that repeatedly drafting a piece of writing over and over is a super hard and time-consuming, but that this is what the best writers do — just like what Mann says in this quote. I found it interesting that we started and ended LHSP 125 with the same general idea about writing, but now I understand it so much better due to what I have learned in this course. Personally, I agree with Deloria and Mann because the best pieces of writing that I have produced (and the best pieces or art as well) have come from adapting it into several drafts and constantly re-structuring until I can’t bare to look at it anymore.