Assignment 4.2

Peter Ho Davies wrote, “What You Know.” The more times you read “What You Know” the more you will begin to understand or question. Now for a brief outline. Peter Ho Davies begins “What You Know” with talking about teaching and writing in general. Then all of the sudden he changes to “No suicides” (Davis, 82). Then Peter Ho Davies continues on with the suicide idea. It could help that one of his students had committed suicide. That students name was Clark. After Peter Ho Davies brings up the idea of suicide, he continues to tell about just shooting in general. He shares about his shooting experience, almost as if trying to see what was so great about shooting a gun, or just trying to imagine what was going through Clark’s mind at the time of suicide.
Peter Ho Davies uses a lot of repetition with, “What You Know.” He tells his students to write about what you know. He tells you what you don’t know, like suicide. Thus you are not allowed to write about it. Now they are left with their feelings, family, friends, etc. Now all of that could seem repetitive, but it’s also easiest to write about. You can draw from specific instances that you have lived through to make the story a little more interesting. I know that I find it hard to write about things I don’t know about. It usually will turn out to be a comic or fiction in general. Then you have to feel sorry for the reader who knows everything about the topic in which you chose to write about, because you sound kind of dumb, when you are writing what you don’t know about. You would constantly be making up detail which may or may not make sense. I think we should take Peter Ho Davies advice and write “What You Know.” It’s easier to write about and you sound much wiser, while doing so.
Peter Ho Davies also enjoys making fun of the student who can’t write throughout the text. In one of the passages he uses the wrong dear or wait maybe its deer. He also lets the students take a vote as to whether to use knoll or knell (Davies, 83). Also within that passage he says you could replace knoll with any other word, and it would sound just as ridiculous. You know how tons of students rely on spell check? Peter Ho Davies dares to ask, “Who makes up spell check anyways?” Were they good spellers in the first place? It’s a valid question. Seeing as if you look at middle, high, and college students, millions if not billions of them are relying on spell check to catch everything wrong and to correct it before they turn in their paper. From my experience spell check can be useful; it can also try to fix items in your paper that isn’t wrong to begin with (i.e. names). He also mentions that he can’t write as badly as students do. That could have been one of the causes of Peter Ho Davies writer’s block, while trying to write Clark’s story.
Peter Ho Davies tries to teach his students how to tell stories. It is a great lesson; after all if you look around you will notice people telling stories about what happened last night, about friends, or even family. Peter Ho Davies says that life is all stories, while fiction is all plots. Based on that, I believe that everyone needs to learn how to write plots. It seems as though not everyone is as truthful and straightforward so you can get real life stories. There always appears to be some fiction rolled into the story one is trying to tell.
When you tell those stories, I want to be able to make sense of what you are trying to say. If the reader can’t understand you then what’s the point of writing anything? So I believe every writer will tell you to have a good story that interests your readers, and then also write it so your reader can understand.
Within “What You Know” Peter Ho Davies is contemplating a couple of things. He wants to write a story that is supposedly written by Clark telling about Clark’s suicide mission. Then Peter Ho Davies gets writers block so he goes shooting, almost as if trying to get into Clark’s mind. Maybe to see what could have been going through Clark’s mind. Peter Ho Davies is just trying to get rid of writers block. Peter Ho Davies is also contemplating if he might have driven Clark to commit suicide. Peter Ho Davies tells the students to write “What You Know,” so there are only so many stories that the typical high school or college student can write about. We haven’t been alive long enough to pick up many more experiences that we could write about. Clark took not being able to write about suicide as a challenge, so he killed himself, now Clark could, if he were alive, write about suicide. Even his other classmates could write about how someone else committing suicide has affected them personally.
If you are told to only write about what you know, then should a teacher jump out and question you if you are suddenly writing about suicide? What should your teacher know about you? Is it more than just your writing? Should your teacher know how you normally feel or how you will react to certain circumstances? I think your teacher should know a little bit about you, so they know if you suddenly start writing about suicide and you normally don’t, maybe they should try to get you help. After all the students safety should be ranked pretty high on their list. Peter Ho Davies didn’t know very much about his students. Then what he thought of his students was quite negative. I almost have the feeling that he is only a teacher to see or make fun of the students’ horrible writing.