Thinking through essays

We're going to look at different approaches to essays today. Let's start with Shawn Vestal's essay: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jun/04/shawn-vestal-on-the-run-with-my-dad

Here's the opening:  Two days after my father died, I was cleaning his house when I came across something strange in the bottom drawer of his bathroom: An alligator skin purse with the carcass of a baby alligator stitched on to the front flap. The more I looked at it, the more convinced I became that it was real, down to the tiny teeth and claws and desiccated eyeballs loose in the sockets. Inside was a small, square black-and-white photo of my father on the day of his high school graduation, standing next to his mother. He looked like a baby, like a tadpole – a tiny version of the man I came to know, though never truly.

A small, dead version of himself.

A before.

What hints or foreshadowing are present here?

Why did he include this detail about the alligator skin purse? What might it suggest?

What are the themes of this story?

Here's the ending:

The night I arrived, a nice woman was waiting in her car to talk to me, and we stood outside while she said the polite, comforting things that people say at those times. She had worked with my dad at the local grocery store and seemed to know him pretty well. But I could tell something was nagging at her, and at the end, hesitantly, she told me that she believed Dad had some money hidden in the house. Maybe a lot of money. He played the lottery, she said, and people thought he’d won big.

She nearly whispered. I nearly laughed. In my experience, Dad never spent anything less than more than he had, and he always tried to give off a fake impression of wealth. He was a debtor and a thief and a great pretender, and I was sure there were no riches in my father’s home.

Still, the notion entertained my sister and me as we cleaned out that sad, filthy house. Every now and then, as we were working, my sister would call from the other room – “Found it!” or “Here it is!” – and once again we would laugh.

Why does the essay end this way?

How is the ending connected to the beginning?

What about that purse? What did it represent?

In "My Dead Dad's Porno Tapes," we see a string of items from the essayist's past. As we watch the opening, write down as many of those items as you can. Obviously, his dad's videotapes are in there -- but watch other collected and found materials fill out this essay?

What is this essay about? Why would the son disclose something so personal and potentially embarrassing about his dad?