An autobiographical essay is a non-fiction short story about the writer’s life, which can be used to make a point or simply entertain. The writer can reflect on events from a distance and provide valuable insights, but there is potential for bias. Autobiographical essays are often assigned to students as practice or to highlight the subjective nature of such essays.
An autobiographical essay is a short story that relates some aspect of the essayist’s life. Such an essay might contain a single anecdote from the writer’s life, or it might present a brief outline of the writer’s entire life. An autobiographical essay can use events in the writer’s life to make a particular point, or it can simply tell the stories for the entertainment and education of the readers. Although a true autobiographical essay is a work of non-fiction, many fiction writers have published works that they present as “autobiographical” but which, in fact, are about wholly fictionalized people and events.
Whether an essay is fictional or non-fiction, the autobiographical essay style provides a valuable point of view that a writer can use to present his or her ideas. He is, first of all, presenting a story or series of stories about a period in his life, often quoting the thoughts and feelings he had during that period. On another level, though, he’s older and able to reflect on those events from a distance. This gives him the ability to comment on what he did right and wrong, the long-term consequences of his actions, and what he has learned from events in retrospect. Some autobiographical essays actually explicitly separate the younger narrator as a participant in the actions and the older writer as a reflective voice.
An interesting aspect of the autobiographical essay is the potential for bias. While many autobiographies are preceded by assurances that the information provided is objective and factual, the reader must remember that the writer can select the details that go into it. Since the autobiographical essay is about the writer, it is not uncommon for the writer to selectively detail or present situations in a way that casts a good light on the writer. Even a writer who strives for objectivity can fail simply because he perceives the events of his life non-objectively.
Many students are challenged to write autobiographical essays at some point in their education. In some cases, such essays are simply used as a practice for developing organized and cohesive essays. The autobiographical nature of such essays simply ensures that the student has access to adequate source material. In other cases, an educator may assign an autobiographical essay to make a point about the subjective, and often slanted, nature of the details contained in such essays.
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