Essay Topics

A Collection of Memories Collecting is an art form that has been around for generations now and will continue to be around. Collecting means to accumulate something that has relevance to you and storing over time. This meaning however, can go deeper; one’s collection should tell a story, whether pertaining to the individual or in relevance to someone they know. A collector is someone who takes interest in something and decides to gather palpable or intangible forms of that particular something. Collecting is a way for the collectors to feel one with themselves; a collection should in someway define the collector. For a collection to be defined as a collection and not as a gathering of meaningless objects, the collection must tell a story or have a connection to you; this is evident in “After Life” by Joan Didion, where her collection defines her connection with her husband. A collector collects with some type of purpose also clear in “After Life” as Didion collects to retain her husband’s memory. Collecting is an art form; a collector knows the value and importance of the collection to themselves. Interest in collecting can be generated spontaneously, which is evident in the text “The Art of Collecting Lightbulbs” by Michael Kimmelman. Kimmelman talks about a man named Hugh Francis Hicks who has a fascination with lightbulbs that led to large collection of 75,000 of them. Hicks became a collector, but his interest in light bulbs began when his mother saw he was bored with toys and for some reason gave him a light bulbs, thus supporting the spontaneous interest that leads to collecting. In “After Life” by Joan Didion, we see another form of collecting as a death of Didion’s husband leads her collecting memories and objects pertaining to him, therefore supporting the intangible form of collecting and generally supporting that Didion is a collector. Joan Didion is classified as a collector; one reason being because of the tangible items she collects pertaining to