You Owe Me by Miah Arnold

You Owe Me is about a teacher who teaches in a hospital. She teaches a writing class filled with children from all ages who are either fighting cancer, or suffering from cancer. She isn't just there to teach though, she really tries to connect with the kids and make every minute worth it. Everytime a child she has grown close to, or too close to, arrives near their death, she feels as though she will leave after their death. It will be the end to her teaching career at the hospital, for she cannot bare to teach a day further without that certain child. It's been a few years now, and she hasn't left. She feels as though she must stay for the other children, as hard as it can be, she needs to be there for them. For instance, Michael, a nine year old boy coming to his wits end, would just simply sit on the teachers lap everyday. He felt secure there, he needed the warmth of her arms around him as she read him poetry. He needed faith.
Miah Arnold is an author of several short pieces of literature. "Her work has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Nanofiction, Confrontation, Painted Bride Quarterly, and the South Dakota Review. She has received a Barthelme Award, an Inprint/Diana P. Hobby Award, and an Established Artists Grant from the Houston Arts Alliance for her work." (miaharnold.com) You Owe Me was published in the Michigan Quaterly Review reaching out to the audience of children, parents, teachers, or pretty much anyone else. Teachers can recieve a new apprectation for what they do everyday, whether it's for teaching sick children, or teaching healthy ones. Kids who read this essay can appreciate their well being, and be thankful or maybe kids with an illness can connect to this. Also a person who may be connected to sick people or children such as Miah can connect to her feelings throughout the essay. Leading to the purpose of You Owe Me, I believe Miah Arnold acheived her purpose of the essay of really transfering her feelings into words and giving the reader a full affect in just 13 pages. It had me basically in tears, and I didn't really even have a special connection from previous personal experiences to connect to the essay. (Thank God, knock on wood!) It gave me a new appreciation for teachers who do teach children or people like this and that it is actually a really diffcult place to be in when you put your heart into it.
For rhetorical devices, I was able to point out a few metaphors right away as I was reading. It gave me an even better grasp of some of the characteristics described throughout the essay. "I am a Dixie cup, and these children's lives and needs are the hundreds of oceans, and by some increible grace I have been able to contain them." (37) It gives the essay a different view on how to see it, as well as "his bones, in my mind, were dried-out honeycombs." (40) I as a reader, as able to fully understand certain details as they were compared to real life or different situations.

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