Synthesis Essay Sample 

Read this essay written by a student in an E.S.L. advanced composition course. Which authors are cited?

How many sources are integrated? How are these sources connected?

What should be included as part of MLA style?

What should this student do to improve the content/organization of the essay? 

Changing the Future: Replacing Bad for Good

As well as a garden with different plants, humankind is composed by many races, people with diverse degrees of knowledge, experiences of life, personalities, and religions, amid others. Laura Pulido in her book A People’s Guide to Los Angeles shows, in many articles, how an event could negatively transform the life of different communities living in Los Angeles in the last century, for instance, the Mexican American habitants of Chavez Ravine, the Chinese Americans of Chinatown, and the Japanese Americans in the West Coast of California. In all those examples, immigrants and their following generations have been displaced, suffering, once again, the duel of leaving and losing their homes, their lands, and burying even their dreams … Readers can easily imagine the scenario of each episodes, and feel the sorrows and the desperation of all of those people, produced by such psychological and economic instability. James Thomas Jackson, a well-known American journalist and magazine writer, presents in his article “Waiting in Line at the Drugstore” a different experience of life going from ignorance to knowledge making possible the effacement of his inferiority complex. It would be interesting to add this article as another section in Laura Pulido’s book because it is a new approach of how to face and deal with a sad reality transforming it as a successful life. Working for a photographic studio, James Jackson, a 13-year-old African American boy, decides to stop studying. One of his daily duties in his job was to buy food and drinks from the drugstore for the office’s workers; it was for him the worst experience, because being “black”, he was rejected and humiliated by white people. One day, waiting in line to be served, as he used to be every day, he discovers bookcase, he picks one book and began reading. From that moment, his personality and his complete life were positively transformed. The person who reads those pages will realize how James Thomas Jackson could delete two important barriers in his life: the inferiority complex caused by the color of his skin and a lack of knowledge.

In fact, the first barrier for James Thomas Jackson was the inferiority complex due to the color of his skin, a huge problem during many decades the 1930s, in the United States. At that time, usually this characteristic determined the past, the present and perhaps the future of the African American people. Jackson wrote: “Being thirteen is doubtless bad enough for white male youths, but for blacks -me in particular- it was a pure dee hell” (16). As an adolescent, Jackson was suffering a normal psychological unbalance, cruelly exacerbated by the color of his skin. In fact, the most important point to highlight in the adolescent period is the need of being accepted by his entourage; he was humiliated and rejected in the drugstore. In addition, adolescents are very sensitive, another negative factor that increase the humiliation and rejection coming from the racist white society. He is rebellious, it is why he repeat many times that he is black and he wants, but he knows that he can not fight against that society. He was really living the drama for being not only an adolescent, but an African American adolescent. In Jackson’s inner self, consciously or unconsciously, it carries out a battle against the racist white society. The consequences of this battle are presented as emotional instability, resentment, the interruption of any kind of positive progress and the origin of the substrate where the inferiority complexes will be build. His self is imprisoned by his age and the color of his skin. In this case, only a strong stimulus, like the acquisition of knowledge obtained by reading good books, -as we will see in the next paragraphs- will be able to change this continuous vicious circle, and will help him to overcome his inferiority complex.

The second barrier for James Thomas Jackson was the lack of knowledge; this element places a human being in a lower level, facing life with much more difficulties. Jackson was thirteen years old when he decided to stop studying, “I was thirteen, I dropped out of school” (16); adolescents usually wants to decide about their life, they begin to be open to the society and listening less their parents. He did his own decision. We can infer that, his degree of education was low in this period of life. He is perhaps satisfied having a bike and working as a messenger for a photo studio or it is just a way to scape to his sorrows. Analyzing the story, we can observe that his life is divided in two parts: before and after the act of reading, being reading in this case the source of knowledge. In fact, the first part was filed by rage and other negative emotions. The second part was followed by successful events. This crucial jumping was triggered by a simple glance at a bookcase. It is just in this moment when he began a new life, a reading life. “I was eighteen then and a drop-out, but I was deep into the wonderful world of literature and life. I found myself, and my niche, in the world” (18). In this quotation, we can realize that, according to Jean Piaget, one of the most important psychologist of the last century, adolescence is the period where we decide what to do in our life, and the education that we are receiving plays an important role in our decision. We can infer why Jackson chooses journalism for as his professional life. He has been immerse in the literature’s world. The fact of entering in this, represents an acquisition of knowledge, gives him new abilities, and takes him to great positions in his life. Knowledge, by itself, is a wealth that can not be replace for anything, nothing that can fill the emptiness produces by the lack of knowledge or learning. This process of learning opens the mind, and produces, most of the time, significant positive changes in the human being.

            On the other hand, perseverance was a very important element in this story; it helped Jackson to overcome his barriers. He was being exposed to literature but he keeps reading going every day to the drugstore and to the library; he found the way to do it. Thanks to his attitude, he could build his world of knowledge and to be the one that he is now. A person can be in love of some activity but at the same time, can find many reasons to pull out; that was not the case for Jackson. To sum up we can say that, there is a big difference between the human being and animals. This difference is based on the acquisition of knowledge, and it is in this knowledge where it will flourish the self-confidence, and at the same time, will destroy, little by little, his inferiority complex, replacing also the bad experiences for new good ones. It is just in this moment when a perseverant person begins his process of personal realization. Because this story is a good example of changing the future in a positive way, it is worth to introduce the article “Waiting in Line at the Drugstore” by James Thomas Jackson in Laura Pulido’s book A People’s Guide to Los Angeles.