8/9/2019 DeeAnna Rollins -- Essay Outline

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Essay Outline – DeeAnna Rollins

Introductory Paragraph:Perspectives can change who a person is. How they experiencesomething and how it affects them. In Hey Nostradamus!, Douglas

Coupland portrays this by writing from four very different perspectives.Cheryl and Jason will be the main focus. In any case, all people wouldexplain the same situation in so many different ways.

Argument 1:When Cheryl and Jason both explain what is happening to DuncanBoyle, the third gunman. After reading Cheryl’s part, it is thought thatit is the only way to explain it. The event is explained in full detail andit is very well thought out. Then Jason’s perspective of the same thingshows up.

• “They charged into Duncan, pressing him against a blankspot of cinder block wall. I saw the rifle fall to the ground,and then I saw the boys from the camera club laying thetable flat on the ground on top of Duncan and begin jumping up and down on it like a grape press. (page 41,lines 7-11). – Cheryl

• “...her eyes on the third gunman, who had been capturedbeneath a large, heavy tabletop. Students were nowfighting each other for a place on top of the table…andthen they all began to jump in unison, crushing the bodylike a Christmas walnut...as I held Cheryl in my arms, the

students – unbeknownst to the forces of the law outside –might just as well have been squishing mud between thefloor and table” (page 59, lines 2-12). – Jason

After you read it, you realize that Cheryl and Jason were not the onlytwo people who saw or felt this happen differently. The students thatwere jumping on the table top would have explained the thrill of theputting pressure on the body of the gunman. Duncan Boyle, dead,would have explained the excruciating pain he was going through.

Argument 2:Both Cheryl and Jason both explain their marriage in a different way.

Cheryl sounding like she was scared to do it, but thrilled for whatcomes with it, like sex. Jason, sounding proud and confident that this iseverything he ever wanted (also starving for sex), and that Cheryl isthe woman who had received his prayers.

• “What I didn’t go on about was the sexiness of it all. Sex – finally – plus freedom from guilt or retribution. My only concern wasthat Jason would develop chilly feet and blab to his buddies orPastor Fields. I told him the blabbing would be a deal breaker,

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and I made him vow, under threat-of-hell conditions, that thiswould be our secret…People are leaky” (page 20, lines 21-26). –Cheryl

• “It was insane, really. I was seventeen and starved for sex, but Iwas still stuck in my family’s religious warp, so only

husband/wife sex was allowed, and even then for procreationonly, and even then only while both partners wore heavy wooltweeds so as to drain the act of pleasure” (page 49, lines 7-12).

• “…I could never look at a girl without wondering if she had beenthe target of my prayer...When I first saw Cheryl, in ninth grade,it was obvious that she was the antenna who’d been receivingmy prayers...And when she became religious, that was myconfirmation” (page 60, lines 6-12).

Argument 3:Cheryl and Jason both think differently about religion. Cheryl became

religious over time, after finding out that God makes things happen.She had experienced the presence of God in her life. Jason, on theother hand, hadn’t really experienced God yet. He was born into areligious family, and having religion pushed upon you isn’t always agood thing..