Why Do Women Smile [ Face ] The Reaper?

When “Women Smile,” Do They “[Face] the Reaper?” In Amy Cunningham’s twenty first century expository essay, “Why Women Smile,” Cunningham explains to her audience the complex reasons why women smile. She points out other emotions such as sorrow and the idea of protection to enforce her main idea. In contrast, Cunningham wrote a personal narrative, “Facing the Reaper with a Laden Table,” which describes a time when Cunningham was trying to understand why the people in her Southern town gave food to families who lost their loved ones. Although these two essays have contrasting style, the underlying themes of these two essays are what make them similar. The style of “Why Women Smile” contrasts with “Facing the Reaper with a Laden Table,” because

In “Why Women Smile,” Cunningham is trying to explain to its readers that there are various reasons behind a woman’s smile. The main point that Cunningham is trying to make is that a book must not be judged by its cover. Cunningham states in her essay that “Psychologist Paul Ekman, the head of the University of California's Human Interaction Lab in San Francisco, has identified 18 distinct types of smiles, including those that show misery, compliance, fear, and contempt” (11). There are so many other smiles that women could be showing instead of the happy smile that women are associated with. The reasoning that Cunningham uses throughout her essay is logos, and logos is found in expository essays to help validate the point the author is trying to bring across. In “Why Women Smile” Cunningham notes credible psychologists, states scientific facts, and notes parts of history to help emphasis her

The theme of Cunningham’s essay “Why Women Smile” is that a woman’s smile does not define who whoever the woman is. Although "Why Women Smile" is an expository essay, Cunningham put a bit of herself into the essay by commenting, "After smiling brilliantly for nearly four decades, I now find myself trying to quit… my smile has gleamed like a cheap plastic night-light so long and so reliably that certain friends and relatives worry that my mood will darken the moment my smile dims" (1-2). Cunningham is giving the reader a brief glimpse into what her essay will be about, and what her theme is. When she smiled all the time, the people around her began to associate her with her smile. The moment she stopped smiling as much as she had before or showed a different emotion, the people around her got sincerely worried. Instead of associating her with her smile, the people around her began directly linking her whole self to the "cheap plastic night-light" (2) smile. "The theme in Cunningham's "Facing the Reaper with a Laden Table” is that even though some rituals appear to be unusual, they were started for an important reason. Cunningham was one of the many people who thought the food and death ritual was odd, and she did not quite understand why the people give food instead of just mourning like