Essay #3:Smell

Pre Writing Statement

            For Essay #3, I plan to write about my sense of smell.  I have chosen to write this essay in a persuasive format.  I hope to be able to persuade my readers that the sense of smell is one of the most important senses we as humans obtain, if not the most important.  I plan to accomplish this by citing sources from various readings, as well as personal experiences.  My audience is my classmate(s).  I hope by the end of the reading my audience will feel differently about the sense of smell than they possibly did before reading this essay.

Jeffrey Veach

English 101-013

Professor Harrison

08 February 2009

 

The Gateway

 

Imagine eating in your favorite restaurant.  All of the variety of smells makes your appetite grow with every breath.  Without the sense of smell, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy foods like we do now.  The best example I can use to show how smell interacts with our taste is the example of fine wine.  The best wine isn’t just about the taste. It is also about the smell of the wine before, or while I taste it.  These two senses come together to bring me a unique experience. Taste isn’t the same without the sense of smell.

     I remember moments in my life when I would be sick with a cold.  The kind of sickness that just makes your nose and sinuses “blocked up” to where I couldn’t seem to smell anything.  I always hated when this would happen, because when I would eat a food that I already knew how the taste was going to be, I would eat the food expecting the flavor, but get nothing.  My sense of smell was gone, which affected my sense of taste.  Everything would have little to no flavor, or the taste would be bitter.  The enjoyment of taste was destroyed by the unavailability of the sense of smell.

     When I think about the senses I think of them all as very separate pieces of the big puzzle.  What the sense of smell makes me realize is that when I can’t smell; I can’t taste as well.  This made me realize that just like pieces of a puzzle, if one of our senses, or one of the pieces of the puzzle aren’t connected correctly, that means that another sense isn’t corresponding with another, which throws our whole puzzle out of place.  This is why when I am sick; my senses seem to have lost their edge.  The sense of smell is a wonder because it is the gateway to the realization to all of our other senses.  The sense of smell isn’t important to me because of the ability to smell things, but because without it, all of my other senses wouldn’t seem to be in place.  Without the sense of smell, my puzzle wouldn’t be complete.

            Diane Ackerman wrote in her book A Natural History of the Senses “We think because we smelled.” This is one of the most influential comments that suggest that our sense of smell started our realization to learn more about our other senses.  I imagine myself as “cavemen”, and walk myself through a simple morning. I have the use of all of my senses, and I use each of them. First, I wake up, and see where I am. Not much effort or thought goes into this action. Second I feel whatever it is I touch that day.  I then begin to walk outside of my cave, and hear birds in the distance “singing.”  I eat, and taste the animal I chose to kill for food for breakfast. As I journey through the woods, I pick up on a variety of smells that I have never encountered before. I begin to wonder what these smells could be. I walk around to a variety of objects in the woods, and sniff them to find this new smell I have encountered.  My mind is racing with what the new smell could possibly be.  The day goes on, and I never found the source of this new smell I have encountered.  The rest of the day I wonder what the smell could have possibly been, but because my sense of sight did not see the source of this new smell, I can only think, or imagine what it may be.  Of course, this sense of smell is assumed to be a pleasant smell, because I wouldn’t be chasing around a smell that I found to be fowl.

            I find it amusing just how certain smells can change my mood so quickly.  If I am smelling the scent of a vanilla candle, I feel eased and relaxed.  My mood becomes calm, and sedative.  When my sense of smell picks up the scent of feces, my mood automatically changes into a feeling of disgust.  One of the most interesting things about my sense of smell is that it causes me to fear certain things.  The best example I can think of is the fear that I have for the animal named skunk.  Skunks are mammals best known for their ability to excrete a strong, foul-smelling odor.  Scientists have proven that the only fear humans have of skunks, is simply the “fear of getting sprayed by the foul smelling odor that skunks excrete as a form of defense.”  The reason behind this fear in my standpoint is that I am very conscious about how I smell. I think most humans are self conscious about how they smell around other humans for the same reason that I fear the skunk.  One of the first impressions I get of another person, besides how the person appears in my sense of sight, is how the person may smell if they are near me.  If someone else has a scent that is pleasant, it makes for a much more pleasant experience.  If that same individual may smell fowl in anyway, I feel that I may want to end the interaction I am having with that individual much quicker so I don’t have to smell the unpleasant aroma for a longer period of time. This is how the sense of smell may affect our interaction with other humans, as well as other animal or object we come in contact with.  The sense of smell is the gateway to my other sense, as well as my mind.

            The sense of smell does open up the human mind.  Sybil Kapoor explains this in his writing stating “The smells that surround us affect our mood, mind, and health. These days, people rely more on vision, hearing and touch, rather than smell and taste, yet our environment is becoming increasingly polluted by different, often synthetic scents.”  This brings me to think about how certain scents can have different affects on our state of mood, and mindset.  The scent of freshly ground coffee beans in the morning right when I wake up can bring me to feel more awake, and ready to start the day.  The smell of freshly baked bread may make me feel hungry.  Each scent tunes our minds into a certain aspect of mood or mindset.  Smell isn’t only a scent in which we have the ability to smell objects.  The sense of smell is much more complicated than what is appears to be. 

The sense of smell interacts with our other senses, as well as our mind.  The sense of smell has always been an important staple in human life. In biblical stories, incense was the first gift given to the newborn son of Christ.  We use smells to describe different items (sugar, smoky, etc.)  The sense of smell is one of the most important sense we as humans have the ability to use.  The sense of smell is not simply one of the senses we obtain, it’s the key to our thoughts, memories, and feelings.  Smell is the gateway to my mind.

Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived.  The odors of fruits waft me to my southern home, to my childhood frolics in the peach orchard.  Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heard to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief.  Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start to awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening fields far away.  – Helen Keller

           

 

Works Cited

Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Wood W. F., Sollers B. G., Dragoo G. A., Dragoo J. W. (2002). “Volatile Components in Defensive Spray of the Hooked Skunk, Mephitis macroura”. Journal of Chemical Ecology 28 (9): 1865

Kapoor, Sybil. “Mind: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee”. The Independent on Sunday October 10, 2004: Page 2-Page 4.

 

Post Writing Statement

            I feel that I succeeded in writing a persuasive essay on the selected topic.  I used various examples, ideas, and cited information from various sources to back-up my argument.  I feel that I stayed true to the persuasive format.  Although parts of this essay seemed to be descriptive, I feel that the use of some descriptions were necessary to have my readers relate to the topic.  I also feel that ending with a quote was a great way to end a persuasive essay, because there is always someone who has said what you mean to say, but better.  I hope that this encouraged my readers to think a different way in relation to the topic.