Tanmayee Yenumula: Outside Readings (Set 5): Reflective Essay 3.20.11

Hidden Truths by Emily Rapp is a reflective essay recounting her memory of her stay in Korea. The basic summary of the story is that Rapp is a college student taking part in a study abroad program in Korea. Rapp has been through challenges due to her disability—she has a prosthetic leg. As part of her training, she has been dropped off in the city and must get back to the university before a certain time, using only the map that’s written in Korean, and her own limited knowledge of the language in order to communicate with the locals. The point of this essay is to talk about how she faced her latest challenge in a completely foreign country, where disabled people are looked down.

Rapp’s tone is introspective—thoughtful and reflective as she considers her own internal feelings. One of the most important techniques that Rapp uses to create this tone is her diction choice. She doesn’t attempt to use “higher-level” words. She uses common everyday language that the reader, like myself, can relate to very easily and understand her position. 
She also makes use of a more humor in her language in order to create the tone. The result of her introspection is that she wants to succeed and that she should remain optimistic no matter the situation. She uses humor to convey that. Earlier in the piece, when Rapp’s leg loses a screw, she needs help, and “[She] was starting to make [her]self sick with worry, but [she] tried to look exceptionally friendly…the man responded with a deep textured, smoker’s laugh”. She turns what might have been a terrifying situation in something a little lighter and more comedic. After Rapp narrates about getting the help she needed, she heads back to the university, thinking about her internal state of feelings. She states, “I could not lose. If I arrived last, I thought, I would be nothing but a cripple”. She continues to reflect thoughtfully about her state of mind at that time. When she found that she had arrived first at the meeting point, she “felt a rush of relief mixed with a kind of intoxicating pride”. As she starts to freshen up and fix the leg, she begins to consider how she manages with her disability. Rapp states that “Bitterness and anger would never help. I had learned to manage my disability by putting on a determined smile and believing that with the right adaptive strategies…I could adjust to any situation”. 
Rapp also uses excessive imagery in order to truly transport the reader to this situation and to make this whole account more relatable. One example of her imagery is used when she describes "chaos of smells of car exhaust, rotting vegetables, melting tar, and frying garlic". The imagery here allows the reader to understand how the chaos can truly be frightening in a new scenario. 

The piece had very few weaknesses. Its strength was that the piece was easy to relate with, even though many people can’t even begin to imagine the hardships of a disabled person. Maybe the one weakness was that the there was too much description at the beginning that really didn’t need to be there, but to each unto his own.

This would be a good piece for the AP because the tone can be supported by many different writing techniques and there is much evidence that is available to use for analysis of this piece.