Thinking About my Sins

When I first drafted this paper after I read “All Seven Deadly Sins Committed at Church Bake Sale” I did not know how to begin. I did not know how I was going to get all of the deadly sins committed in one place. I struggled with how to connect the sins together into a coherent, flowing essay. Also when I first drafted the paper, I was struggling with coming up with examples of how a deadly sin could be committed. I am not extremely familiar with the deadly sins and did not know what they all implied. When I was working on the draft after I had brainstormed ideas for how the sins would be committed, I found the writing of each of the sins relatively easy. The sins were hard to connect together with no story connecting the essay. In this paper I learned that exemplification is when one uses a series of examples to support a point. In my essay I used examples of deadly sins committed at thanksgiving. In exemplification you need to use other forms of writing to expand on each of the examples and show the reader the examples. While working on this draft I realized that in exemplification it is hard to connect all of the examples in a flowing manner. All of the examples support one main point but do not necessarily flow from one point to another.

When I read this draft again yesterday, I did not think it was my best paper. I thought that I may have tried to use to many sophisticated words and that they could have fit into the paper better. Also in the paper it was very obvious that the assignment was to write about the seven deadly sins. I believe that the greatest strengths of this paper are the descriptions of what is happening when the sins are committed. When I am describing the sin of greed I think I did a good job of using dialog to exemplify this sin. My greatest weakness is that the sins do not flow together. I think that I need to have a more connecting story. Based on my self-revision I need to work on making a conclusion. For some reason I did not add a conclusion to my essay. I also need to add a title to the essay. Another thing that I need to revise is that I did not always start a new paragraph when a new person starts speaking. This occurs in paragraph three where a new person starts speaking and someone else also has dialog in the paragraph. In the last paragraph I need to add more dialog about the dart game and the wrath that was committed as a result of it.

            Thanksgiving, a big get-together with all of your family, there are apt to be problems. That is what happened last thanksgiving all of the seven deadly sins were committed a plethora of times. Every one there committed a sin including my frail old grandmother.

            Despite the fact that Thanksgiving is suppose to be all about being happy and thankful for what you have people’s pity issues come out and disturb the event. It is the natural way of things that when a lot of people get together in a small over crowded house things will go bad. This is especially true when the people are family. No one is trying their hardest to be polite and nice; everyone is themselves which can be not the best thing. Arguments and disagreements from long ago are sometimes brought to the surface and replayed with new light. Family are the only people that you are forced to be with your entire life that you do not get to choose.

One obvious sin committed at Thanksgiving is gluttony. It is ok to eat a lot at Thanksgiving but my uncle Earl took it to a new level. I am surprised he did not explode from all of the food he ate. When he asked for me to pass him the turkey for his third helping I could not help but wonder how he was still hungry. My cousin Cassandra whispered to me “Well with uncle Earl around at least we do not have to worry about leftovers.” I giggled this was so true. He was now taking the last of the turkey to complete his second helping. Every one else had eaten a lot and I heard my cousin Rebecca comment “This was all so good I ate too much but I could not stop”. Uncle Earl replied, “Well then don’t”.  We had all committed the sin of gluttony at Thanksgiving some more than others but after we had pie every one was completely stuffed.

            The sin of greed was also committed at Thanksgiving by my aunt Joan. She was always responsible for bringing the mashed potatoes and everyone raved about how good they were. She would commit the crime of pride and say, “I know I make the best mashed potatoes I am the best cook I know”. Being modest was not Aunt Joan’s strong point. She would never tell others the recipe for her mashed potatoes which really irked my aunt Cathy. She had recently married Aunt Joan’s youngest brother and did not fully comprehend Aunt Joan’s greed yet. I over heard their discussion in the kitchen about the mashed potato recipe.

            Aunt Cathy questioned, “Why will you not share your mashed potato recipe with me?  We are family. That is what family is suppose to do.”

            “It is a special recipe that took me years to perfect and it is the only thing special I can bring to Thanksgiving. Mashed potatoes are my dish to bring you can bring the pies” Aunt Joan replied a little fed up with Aunt Cathy.

            “I am not trying to steel your recipe and your claim to fame around here. I want the recipe so I can make it at my house for my family on days other than Thanksgiving.”

            “Well you will have to make your own mashed potato recipe because this one is mine” This was the end of the conservation as Aunt Joan stormed out of the kitchen.

            My cousin Emily who is 25 brought her boyfriend to Thanksgiving and his brother. This caused an opportunity for the sin of lust to be committed. The brother is good looking and some of the other cousins admired his good looks. No one acted on their feelings but flirting did occur. My cousin Cassandra believed that he was good looking and got extremely nervous around him and tried to flirt with him all of Thanksgiving. He did not seem the slightest bit interested so nothing materialized out of the occurrence. 

            My grandmother was envious of every ones youth and health. She gave me many lectures on how I should not let my youth slip away and how she wishes she was us. When I was sitting around the house watching the Thanksgiving Day parade. She came into the family room and sat down with me. She then questioned “What are you doing sitting around you should be outside getting some exercise or helping out in the kitchen.”

            I responded “It is cold outside and there is nothing to do in the kitchen the turkey is already in the oven and it is too early to start preparing the rest of the food.”

            “When I was your age I did not sit around and watch TV I was active and never thought it was to cold out to go out. Kids these days do not use their youth and energy as people in my day did.”

            She continued on like this for a little while and then I left and said that I would try to help out in the kitchen.

            Uncle Wilbert is the sloth of the family. He does absolutely nothing and surprisingly gets away with most of it. All of Thanksgiving Day he sat around the house and did nothing but watch the Thanksgiving Day parade. Then after diner he did not even help clean up the meal. Every one else in the family helped in some way with the diner except for him. He did not even play darts with all of the other men in their annual dart game.

            The annual dart game did expose the sin of wrath in Uncle Frank however so maybe it was best that uncle Wilbert did not participate. Uncle Frank had lost the dart game and was convinced that the others had cheated. He did not believe that they were good enough to beat him fairly in darts. They were playing cricket and Uncle Fred accused the rest of them of claiming that their dart hit the desired number when the dart would hit the board and then fall out. Everyone else said that the darts hit where they claimed and Uncle Fred did the same thing so if they did cheat they all cheated. This was not how he saw it and was not a happy camper.