Analysis Of Ian Frazier's Taking The F

When I flipped through the page of the Norton Reader, I would stop at random pages, read the title, and debate whether it’d be interesting or not. I read about three or four titles that were probably interesting but didn’t peak my interest. Taking a turn at the front pages of the book, I stop at page 154. I read the title, “Taking the F” by Ian Frazier. Now this sounds like an interesting essay. I mean he title could say anything, so I scanned the first paragraph to see what the essay would be about and spotted “Brooklyn, New York. Now the title makes sense; it is about traveling through Brooklyn on the F train. The title still wasn’t a clear connection to the point of the author’s essay. The author instead uses his five senses to describe

his experiences while exploring Brooklyn and the distinctive imprint it has bestowed on him. Frazier uses methods while structuring this piece, to creatively involving the five senses, to reach his point: the amount of specificity.
When reading the essay its like actually being inside the author heads, the change of imagery could be hard to imagine when trying to devise a literary argument.

Frazier’s use of detail becomes apparent when rereading the essay. Each moment he describes himself traveling through Brooklyn is so explicitly detailed that his tone and language and layout of the essay starts to become apparent. Frazier detailed description gives the readers a feel of Brooklyn’s environment and the people that create it. When he talks about the bad things he sees in Brooklyn he states in the first sentence, “Brooklyn, New York, as the undefined, hard-to–remember the shape of a stain.” Then he continues to describe where he lives leading up to the F train in his neighborhood. He talks about the street and corner he lives on, “ I live on the edge of Park Slope, neighborhood by the crest of a low ridge that runs through the borough.” From there he continues to talk about the environment in his area. The sound of the planes that fly over his building, the touch of the shadow the plane makes, and the feel of the train makes when shaking his building. The next scene he takes us on is when he is on the F train, “Once a woman… pulled a knife. I remember the knife – it is flat,

curved wood-grain handle inlaid with brass fittings….” Now this quote is long and is cut from a few sentences, but when he describe the knife, he just keeps going into detail and tells every inch of what he remembers so much that it's like he was the one holding the knife. Then he takes us onto the street and all the people he sees and all the noises he hears. Frazier goes into detail trying to describe all the diverse cultures that gather in Brooklyn. “At Grand Army Plaza, I have seen traffic tie-ups caused by Haitians, and others rallying fro support of President Aristide, and by St. Patrick’s Day parades, and by Jews of the Lubavitcher sect celebrating the birthday of their Grans Rebbe…” This sentence is so specific and detailed with it is wording that when reading it you can hear the rallying, you can listen to the cheering of the parades and celebration. The author hits home when he talks about his walk south, north and in particular through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. “But in February or March a few flowering begin, the snowdrops and the crocuses, and then yellow daffodils climbs Daffodil Hill, and then the Magnolias – Star Magnolias, Saucer Magnolias – go off…” This sentence seems like the longest one in the essay, and it is just the first of the flowers that he begins to describe. As a reader, you can just see the flowers blooming and smell the start of spring. In his last paragraph, Frazier goes out of his way to describe all of his neighbors’ occupancies. “I like our neighbors – a guy who works for Off-Track Betting, a guy who works for the Department of Correction, a woman who works for Dean Witter, and in-flight steward….” Again this sentence just points out the unique individuals that live and make Brooklyn. There are so much more details in this essay that it could start to become overwhelming, especially because it such a short essay, but the authors particular layout gives the reader some time to examine the real meaning behind the piece.
The senses that Frazier uses to describe aren’t in routine order, but each section goes more in depth as he uses more of his sense. The author might seem chaotic and seem like he is rambling on about different areas he comes across while walking the streets of Brooklyn, but the more in depth each section becomes, the more the senses emerges. Frazier makes what he believes to be his strongest sensation more evident. The five senses -- perception, taste, hears, smell, feel – gives the section more continuity.
In the first part of the essay, Frazier gives us a visual point to where he is in Brooklyn and how he perceives it to be.

Just look at the quote I gave you earlier: “Brooklyn, New York, as the undefined, hard-to–remember the shape of a stain.” He sees it as nothing but a stain on the map. He goes on to talk about “…the sludge at the bottom of the canal causes it to bubble.” Giving us something we can see, something we can hear because you can just imagine being near the canal and hearing the sludge bubble make their popping noises as the gas is released. He “The train sounds different – lighter, quieter—in the open air,” when it comes from underground and the sight he sees on the rooftops. Although some are negative, such as the sagging of roofs and graffiti, his tone towards the moment seems to be admiration. In the second section, he talks about the smells of Brooklyn and the taste of food. He’d talk about how his daughter compares the tastes of pizzas with her “…stern judgments of pizza. Low end… New Hampshire pizza. … In the middle… zoo pizza. …very top… two blocks from our house,” and different it was where he’d grown up. He talks about the immense amount of “smells in Brooklyn: Coffee, fingernail polish, eucalyptus…” and how other might hate it, but he enjoys it. In the same section, he describes how he enjoys the Brooklyn accent and the noise and smells that other people make on the streets and at the park across from his house. “Charcoal smoke drifts into the

neighborhood.” The author discusses different celebrations and the time he helped with the school children program. “She asked the kids to tell me where they were from. One was from Korea, one from Brazil, one from Poland, and one from Guyana, one from Taiwan.” The reader will start to see the diversity of Brooklyn and what Frazier feels when he sees what transforms it. In the third section, he talks about what he can see when out on the walk. “ A bottle of Peter the Great vodka lies on its side, drops of water from it mouth making a small depression in the sand.” His choice of words and the word placement make the readers feel like we are the sand in which the bottle lies. Then he moves on to walking in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, “A rose called the Royal Gold smells like a new bathing suit and is as yellow,” and how “the lilacs bloom, each bush with a scent slightly different from the next….” Finally, he moves on to his neighbors, the faces he sees every day, and how each friend was touched when one was ill. “I hugged her at the door, and it was the whole building hugging her.” Not soon after that “I went to the Rose Garden and took a big Betsy McCall rose to my face and breathed into it as if it were an oxygen mask.” This was the last sentence of the essay, and it not only is the metaphor that indicates the purpose of this essay but a powerful way to describe his impression of Brooklyn, his home. As Frazier goes more into detail about how he feels living in Brooklyn his senses start increasing: perception, hear, taste or smell touch.
Everything that has been laid out is evidence to the how he uses in the essay and expands the information given. All the detail provided doesn’t signal the reader the purpose of the essay could be, but reading between the lines and looking at Frazier’s style you begin to see why the piece is flooded with details. You start to see the development in sensation rises with the growth in specificity. The author first starts with the vision, our dominant sense, and then hearing the second common sense to perceive things. He then moved on to both smelling and tasting something easy to write about, but most complicated sense, and finally touch the less exploited sense. Frazier uses the five senses to create more specificity and to help readers capture the point of his essay.