The absence of a single, acute and quickly resolved conflict and the greater development of a descriptive image. Both differences depend on the specifics of the essay's problems. An essay is a semi-fictional, semi-documentary genre that describes real events and real people.
Essay literature does not address the problems of developing the character of an individual in its conflicts with the established social environment, as is inherent in the short story (and novel), but the problems of the civil and moral state of the “environment” (usually embodied in individual individuals) - “moral descriptive” problems; it has great cognitive diversity. Essay literature usually combines features of fiction and journalism.
IN fiction an essay is one of the varieties of a story, it is more descriptive, it mainly concerns social problems. A journalistic, including documentary, essay presents and analyzes real facts and phenomena public life, usually accompanied by a direct interpretation by their author.
The main feature of an essay is writing from life. In the essay, fiction plays a much smaller role than in other literary genres. Typification in an essay is achieved, in addition to the selection of typical phenomena, by the selection of features that are especially typical for the phenomenon. From the predominantly descriptive nature of the essay, its compositional structure also follows. The essay may have no plot at all, or at least it is weakened. The author of an essay often moves from one characterized phenomenon or its aspect to another, only in general form outlining their dependence. Not bound by the need to clearly, in a figurative form, show the development of action, the author of an essay more often than authors of other genres intervenes in the course of the events described in the first person. This gives the essayist the opportunity to more freely group the material, the possibility of various comparisons, analogies, and so on. The essay contains much higher value than, for example, in a story, there are journalistic arguments, scientific generalizations, and sometimes even statistical material. The language of the essay, more than the language of any other literary genre, includes elements of journalistic and scientific language. The features of the essay as a genre do not remain constant.
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Types of essays
- Portrait (biographical) feature article. The author explores the personality of the hero, his inner world. Through this description, the reader guesses about the socio-psychological background of the committed actions. It is necessary to indicate the details that make the character of this person dramatic and elevate him above all other characters. In modern Russian publications, the portrait sketch looks different. Most often this is a brief summary of the biography, a set of classic human qualities. Therefore, the portrait essay is more of a literary genre than a journalistic one.
- Problem essay. The main task of the author is journalistic coverage of the problem. He enters into dialogue with the reader. First, he identifies a problematic situation, and then his thoughts on this matter, supporting them with his own knowledge, official data, and artistic and visual means. This genre is more popular in magazine periodicals, as it surpasses newspaper analytical articles in size and depth.
- Travel essay- It took shape much earlier than other types of essays. It is based on the author's story about the journey, about what he saw and heard. Many Russian writers turned to this genre:
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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND SCIENCE OF RUSSIA
Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution
Higher professional education
"Priamursky State University named after Sholom Aleichem"
Report on the topic
"Essay and its features. Types of essay."
4th year student
Birobidzhan
1. Types of essay
An essay is a type of artistic and journalistic genre, distinguished by its detailed construction, depth of creative thought, and the presence fiction and the skillful interweaving of genres such as fiction and documentary. In an essay, using journalistic techniques, you can recreate events, phenomena or human portraits.
The concept of "essay" has unclear origins. Although there is an opinion that A.M. was involved in its appearance. Gorky, who in one of his letters pointed out that the initial verb in defining a text that has a known literary form as an “essay” is “outline.” Among the founders of the Russian essay, researchers of Russian journalism name the names of Korolenko, Chekhov, Uspensky and others. Soviet time: Gorky, Koltsov, Polevoy, Simonov, A.A. Agranovsky and many others. From the point of view of preparation, the essay is one of the most labor-intensive. The genre nature of the essay is determined by the combination of three principles: sociological, journalistic and artistic.
1. Sociological - focus on research public relations and problems.
2. Journalistic - based on fact. Artistic - the desire to create a reliable picture of reality using imaginative thinking, in which pictures, situations and phenomena are socially typified.
Modern essays are most often characterized by documentary richness, often to the detriment of artistry. Typical features of a modern essay:
1. The journalist chooses a case typical of today's reality as the subject of display.
2. The narration is told on behalf of the biographical author, that is, a person who actually exists.
3. The dramaturgy of the work is based on the classical artistic creations the conflict of good, justice, law (on the one hand) and evil, injustice, crime (on the other hand).
4. The characters in the essay are “drawn” through a detailed study of the most significant and emotionally intense episodes, detailed description facts.
Portraitfeature article. The subject is personality. It is very important for the author to discover the "plot" on life path a hero who contains some extraordinary difficulties has a dramatic character. Port. feature article. arises as a result artistic analysis the personality of the hero, based on the study of its various aspects. Finding a full-fledged portrait essay on the pages of the modern Russian press is quite difficult. Most portraits famous people arise most often as a result of relatively summary their biographies or career descriptions and some business characteristics.
Problemfeature article. The subject of the display is a problematic situation. In its logical design it may be similar to an article. As in the article, in a problem essay the author finds out the causes of the problem, tries to determine further development, identify solutions. Difference: in a problem essay, development problematic situation is never presented “nakedly”, i.e. in the form of statistical patterns or generalized judgments, conclusions, etc., which is characteristic of the article as a genre. The problem in the essay appears as an obstacle that very specific people with their advantages and disadvantages are trying to overcome.
Travelerfeature article. Refers to the most early forms texts that marked the emergence of journalism. This is explained by the fact that a form of depicting reality similar to a travel sketch was almost the first in fiction. And therefore it was well mastered. The authors who glorified the travelogue were A.S. Pushkin, N.I. Novikov, A.N. Radishchev, A.A. Bestuzhev and others. Of all the essay forms, the travel essay makes the greatest claim to the adventurous nature of the plot (the original meaning of the word “adventure” is “adventure”). Such adventurism is determined by the very nature of the preparation of this type of publication. Since a travelogue is a description of certain events, incidents, meetings with different people, which the author encounters during his creative journey, then the plot of the essay reflects the sequence of these events, incidents, meetings, which are the content of the journalist’s journey (adventures). Travel essays can serve a variety of purposes. Thus, the main thing for a journalist may be to show how one problem is solved in different cities or regions through which he passes (for example, how the state takes care of people with disabilities).
2. Additional classification of the essay
portrait (reveals the inner world of a particular person with his inherent individual traits);
travel (conveys impressions of a journey or reveals events against the background of events that occurred along the way, and the central place of the plot is always occupied by the journey);
popular science (reveals the essence of the current phenomenon);
eventful (advertises an important event from the life of society);
sociological (is a social research centered on social activity person);
problematic (the essay is devoted to the development of a problem situation);
essay on morals;
judicial essay;
by type of funds mass media Stories can be newspaper, television, radio and film stories.
essay genre travel portrait
An essay can always be distinguished from a story in artistic style because in it the author describes events that actually happen in life.
Essay is a genre that attracts the reader. According to research, the most popular essays are:
a) essay - portrait about interesting people with maximum transmission of their unique spiritual world;
b) travel essay about interesting places;
c) a popular science essay about interesting phenomena.
It should be noted that it is not acceptable to call a chaotic expression of thoughts on a piece of paper an essay. The most important thing for an essay is the presence of a script and composition based on real facts, often using the dates, time period and location of the event.
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Literature and journalism are rich in various genres. One of these genres is the essay. The first acquaintance with the essay occurs at school during Russian language lessons, and those who in the future study at the Faculty of Philology or Journalism study the essay in more detail.
Definition of essay
In order to understand the essence of the issue and understand what an essay is, you need to know its definition. Essay is literary work not very large in size, which describes true events or incidents. Any essay is always based on a description of facts or events that happened previously. A distinctive feature of such a story is its descriptive nature through the eyes of an eyewitness. An essay is an inexhaustible source of truthful historical information about certain people, events, and facts. There is no time frame in the essay. The event that is presented to the reader can be either past or present. The main thing is that the actions or incidents described in the essay are important to society. Such a story excludes the use of the author’s own assumptions and subjective assessment.
Place of the essay in literature
What place does the essay take in cultural development person, why is this literary genre important, and what is an essay in literature? The main purpose of an essay in literature is to convey to the reader information about an event “uncut,” for example, about war or reforms, about any events in any country. The focus is not on the person, but on what is happening. A short narrative, called an essay, makes it possible to accurately and reliably learn about dates and specific people. In modern literary world You can observe events in the country and the world thanks to newspaper essays. There is not a single area of human activity where this method of reporting factual events is not used. We can come to the conclusion: the essay is one of the most important literary genres, where you can find out a lot of necessary, and most importantly, truthful information.
There are several varieties literary essay, each of which reveals to the reader a specific problem. The main types of essays: travel, portrait and problem.
Travel essay
The author of such an essay talks about his own or someone else’s journey, describing the entire path. Everything that the author saw, heard or tried - true information. Such an essay is characterized by a description of the culture, customs and characteristics of the area visited by the author.
Portrait sketch
The basis of such an essay is a detailed, true story about this or that historically significant or interesting person for readers. For example, it could be the president political figure, famous artist or poet. Many examples can be found in biographical articles and memoirs.
Problem essay
A story that accurately and without exaggeration describes important historical event or a problem of society - war, revolution, reforms, etc. To write this type of work, one takes as a basis an event that was important to others, which took place in the world or country and influenced the development and course of history.
Essay - 1. A short literary work, short description life events (usually socially significant). Documentary, journalistic, everyday essay.2. A general statement of a question. Essay on Russian history. (Dictionary)
Essay - 1. In fiction, one of the varieties of the story, characterized by great descriptiveness, deals primarily with social problems... A journalistic, including documentary, essay sets out and analyzes various facts and phenomena of social life, usually accompanied by a direct interpretation by their author. (Encyclopedic Dictionary)
So, based on dictionary definitions, we can conclude that characteristic feature the essay is documentary, authenticity of facts, events about which we're talking about. It names the real names and surnames of the persons depicted, real and not fictitious places of events, describes the real situation, and indicates the time of action. In an essay, as in a work of fiction, we use visual arts, elements of artistic typification are introduced.
The essay is the most characteristic genre for journalism, built according to the laws of drama and based on facts, it comes as close as possible to artistic genres. The depth of the author's understanding - distinguishing feature essay. He not only describes, comments or analyzes a fact, but also melts it into the creative consciousness of the author. The personality of the author is no less important in an essay than a fact or event. This may include creative portrait. Right choice expressive means is of fundamental importance. TO expressive means include: style, language, selection of images, comparisons and epithets, composition, etc.
Portrait sketch. The hero of a portrait sketch is a specific person who has certain advantages and disadvantages. In a portrait essay, the author gives not only a portrait in the narrow sense of the word, but also a description of the environment in which the hero of the essay lives and works, talks about his work, interests, hobbies, and his relationships with others. All this together helps to reveal the inner world of the hero of the essay. This portrait sketch arises as a result of an artistic analysis of the hero’s personality, based on the study of its various aspects (moral, intellectual, creative, etc.), i.e. as a result of identifying the character of the hero.
Problem essay. At the center of the problematic essay are socially significant issues: political, economic, moral and ethical, etc. The author of the essay tries to intervene in the solution of important problems, enters into polemics with his opponents.
Portrait sketches can be used in this genre, but the main thing here is not the character of this or that person, but his attitude to these issues, different points of view, different views. In such an essay you can also find travel notes and sketches. But they also serve as confirmation of the author’s position in the dispute, an expression of a certain view, and one of the means of proof. An essay of this type is polemical in nature.
In its logical structure, a problem essay may be similar to such a representative of analytical genres as an article. The reason for this similarity is, first of all, the dominance of the research principle in the process of displaying the problem situation. As in the article, in a problem essay the author finds out the reasons for the occurrence of a particular problem, tries to determine its further development, and identify solutions.
At the same time, a problematic essay can always be fairly easily distinguished from a problematic article. The most important difference is that in a problem essay the development of a problem situation is never presented, so to speak, “in its bare form,” i.e. in the form of statistical patterns or generalized judgments, conclusions, etc., which is characteristic of the article as a genre. The problem in the essay appears as an obstacle that very specific people with their advantages and disadvantages are trying to overcome. On the surface of a particular activity that the essayist examines, the problem very often manifests itself through a conflict (or conflicts), through clashes of people’s interests. By examining these conflicts and their development, he can get to the core of the problem.
At the same time, observing the development of a conflict in an essay is usually accompanied by all sorts of experiences, both on the part of the heroes of the essay and on the part of the author himself. Trying to comprehend the essence of what is happening, a journalist often attracts all sorts of associations, parallels, and deviations from the topic. In an essay, this is a common thing, while in a problem article they are inappropriate. It is impossible to write a problem essay without understanding the field of activity that it touches on. Only a deep penetration into the essence of the matter can lead the author to an accurate understanding of the problem that underlies the situation under study, and describe it accordingly in his essay.
A travel essay is a description of certain events, incidents, meetings with different people that the author encounters during his creative journey (trip, business trip, etc.). Of course, a good travel essay cannot be a simple listing or presentation of everything that the author saw in during your trip. And the publication for which the essay is being prepared is unlikely to be able to afford to publish everything the journalist saw. One way or another, the essayist has to select the most interesting, the most important. What is considered the most interesting and important depends on the idea that he develops during the journey. Of course, the idea can arise long before the creative trip. The source material for it can be both the journalist’s past personal observations and newly obtained information from the same newspapers, magazines, radio and television. But it is possible that the journalist will receive a specific assignment from his editor, or that the idea will arise under the influence of some other factors (say, as a result of the journalist’s participation in some political action). As in the process of preparing any serious and voluminous material (and travel essays are just like that), during the preparation of the essay, already at the stage of collecting information, this plan can be adjusted or even radically changed - it all depends on the nature of the information that comes at the disposal of the journalist.
It is precisely this fully formed plan, or, as it is also called in another way, the main idea of the future work that all the facts and impressions collected by the author during the creative trip should work on.
Thus, the essay is one of the most important and difficult genres artistic journalism. Its peculiarity lies in the combination of two components: artistic and analytical. It is important for the author of an essay not only to explore his subject, but to comprehend it artistically, to emphasize the problematic situation with visual and figurative means, and to show the general in a particular case. It is precisely the artistry of the essay - necessary condition its effectiveness.
Artistic and visual means play a huge role in the essay. The strength of the essayist lies in the wide and skillful use of landscape, portrait, dialogue, description, and speech characteristics.
How is the outline of a text achieved? There are four main points here.
Firstly, important characteristic texts of this genre- documentary. The essayist strives to present in detail what happened, without missing a single significant detail.
Secondly, the subject of the essay is a typical, classic case in the conditions of the present time. That is, a case that clearly characterizes and illustrates the stage of social development.
Thirdly, this typical case is a manifestation of an obvious or hidden conflict(contradictions). Drama is an inherent feature of the essay.
Fourthly, the image is of great importance in the essay. Emotional, dramatic and organically rich, it represents “a generalization of life and an assessment of life phenomena.”
V.A. Bogdanov, based on the typology of V.G. Belinsky, claims that Leskov “found his real form in the genre of the essay. He can depict reality, seen and studied by him, if you like, create, but from ready-made material given by reality. He must always adhere to the soil of reality.”
The main feature of an essay is writing from life. In an essay, fiction plays a much smaller role than in other literary genres. Typification in an essay is achieved, in addition to the selection of typical phenomena, by the selection of features that are especially typical for the phenomenon. The essayist artistically embodies real historical persons and events in words, forming an opinion about them based on a systematic study of the object. Judgment is achieved through analysis, and the conclusion and conclusion are its logical conclusion.
The composition of the essays is very different: they can consist of episodes depicting meetings, conversations, relationships between characters, connected only by an external causal-temporal sequence; from descriptions of the conditions and circumstances of life in society and nature; from discussions about them.
Leskov uses the principles of the poetics of “little things” in his essays. He introduces many details into his narrative, which, at first glance, do not carry any accusatory charge, but only have a “situational” meaning. However, gradually these details increasingly capture the reader’s attention and turn out to be no less significant than the major events driving the plot.
To give unity to such heterogeneous components, the activity of the author’s generalizing thought, the expressiveness and color of his speech are important; big role can play the introduction of a narrator conveying his observations, impressions, describing meetings and conversations with the main characters.
An essay can be strictly artistic, creatively typifying characters in a “moral-descriptive” aspect.
There may be an essay that is predominantly journalistic, expressing topical interest in a certain state or development trends. social life and reproducing its real typical features, and often significant individual facts, but without their emotional implementation and sharpening (speculation). Such essays often contain general arguments by the author or characters, analyzing and evaluating the life depicted (for example, the essay cycles of G.I. Uspensky “The Peasant and Peasant Labor” and “The Power of the Land,” depicting and condemning the decay of the village from a populist point of view, or “Regional everyday life" by V.V. Ovechkin, clarifying the contradictions of collective farm life in difficult times post-war decade). But there is also a purely documentary essay, which extremely accurately reproduces real facts and phenomena, often, however, accompanied by a direct journalistic interpretation or assessment of the author-narrator; Such an essay is usually considered a genre of journalism. Some researchers recognize only a documentary essay as a genuine essay, and documentary as a specific genre feature of an essay.
The rise of essay writing in history national literature arises when in society, due to a crisis in social relations or the emergence of a new way of life, “moral descriptive” interests sharply increase.
Musa is a guestFEATURE ARTICLE
Essay - one of the varieties of small form epic literature- a story that differs from its other form, the short story, in the absence of a single, acute and quickly resolved conflict and in the greater development of the descriptive image. Both differences depend on the specifics of the essay's problems. This is a semi-fictional, semi-documentary genre that describes real events and real people.
An essay is an artistic and journalistic genre that combines logical-rational and emotional-imaginative ways of reflecting reality to address certain aspects of the concept of a person or social life.
Essay literature does not touch upon the problems of developing the character of an individual in its conflicts with the established social environment, as is inherent in the short story (and novel), and the problems of the civil and moral state of the “environment” (usually embodied in individuals) are “moral descriptive” problems; it has great cognitive diversity. Essay literature usually combines features of fiction and journalism.
In fiction, an essay is one of the types of stories that is more descriptive and deals primarily with social problems. A journalistic essay, including a documentary one, presents and analyzes real facts and phenomena of social life, usually accompanied by a direct interpretation of them by the author.
The main feature of an essay is writing from life. In an essay, fiction plays a much smaller role than in other literary genres. Typification in an essay is achieved, in addition to the selection of typical phenomena, by the selection of features that are especially typical for the phenomenon. The essayist artistically embodies real historical persons and events in words, forming an opinion about them based on a systematic study of the object. Judgment is achieved through analysis, and the conclusion and conclusion are its logical conclusion. From the predominantly descriptive nature of the essay, its compositional structure also follows. The essay may have no plot at all, or at least it is weakened. The author of an essay often moves from one characterized phenomenon or its aspect to another, only outlining their dependence in a general form. Not bound by the need to clearly, in a figurative form, show the development of action, the author of an essay more often than authors of other genres intervenes in the course of the events described in the first person. This gives the essayist the opportunity to more freely group the material, the possibility of various comparisons, analogies, and so on. In an essay, journalistic arguments, scientific generalizations, and sometimes even statistical material are of much greater importance than, for example, in a story. The language of the essay, to a greater extent than the language of any other literary genre, includes elements of journalistic and scientific language. The features of the essay as a genre do not remain constant.
In short, the essay is both a documentary-scientific understanding of reality and an aesthetic exploration of the world. It is no coincidence that an essay is compared with works of art and even with painting, emphasizing: if a story is a picturesque picture, then an essay is graphic drawing or a sketch for a painting. It seems to be on the verge between a document and a generalized artistically. If historians today had no other sources other than essay literature, then even in this case they would be able to correctly imagine past life: the Russian essay contains enormous artistic and educational material, reflecting many important points development of the country over several decades.
In the history of Russian journalism, the essay has been known since the end of the 18th century. And it was distinguished not only by its breadth of coverage and thematic diversity, but also by its presentation of exciting, pressing problems of our time. That's why educational value Russian essay literature is inseparable from its active role in history liberation movement. Throughout its history - from its inception to modern development- the essay sought to acquaint the reader with new, emerging forms of life and its daily course, to awaken public opinion and to form an understanding of the right to put forward and defend advanced thoughts, combining an objective assessment of reality with subjective opinion, comparisons and parallels between them. Only when a publicist shows himself to be a competent researcher and a subtle analyst can he convince the reader of the correctness of his assessments and judgments.
TYPES OF ESSAYS:
Portrait sketch.
A portrait sketch develops a certain aspect of the concept of a person, reveals the inner world of the hero, the socio-psychological motivation of his actions, the individual and typical in character. The essayist is looking for a person in real life who would embody the main typical features of his social environment and at the same time be distinguished by the originality of his character traits and originality of thought. And only then creates photographic image, but an artistic and journalistic reflection of an individual image.
It's not simple curriculum vitae. A person's life cannot be revealed in its moral beauty, in her wealth creative expression, replacing the story about her with a statement of personal data or a description of the hero’s labor technology. For a portrait sketch to take up an entire newspaper page, you need a personality that would be very significant. After all, a journalist outlines the portrait of his hero only in detail, with strokes. However, the essayist is unlikely to keep it to less than 300-400 lines: the relative laconicism of the genre is combined here with a journalistic elaboration of an actual problem, an analysis of the hero’s psychology.
Problem essay.
The problematic essay includes a number of subtypes: economic, sociological, philosophical, environmental, judicial, polemical and others. Here, the role of a publicist is played by a specialist in a certain field. The subject of his research and artistic and journalistic reflection becomes current problem, facing society at a specific current moment. This is a conceptual author's monologue, illuminated by an individual vision of a person and the situation in which he acts.
An essayist not only develops a topic using emotional and figurative expressive means, but creates an image of the situation. What comes to the fore is no longer the display of a specific personality, but a scientific and journalistic study of the problem. The author's role here is always active - he enters into a direct conversation with the reader, freely using knowledge of the history of the issue, numbers, and statistical data.
This type of essay is not a frequent guest on the pages of newspapers. By creating a detailed image of the situation, it is much more voluminous than the problem-analytical genres - correspondence and articles. Therefore, a problem essay is a form of magazine or even book journalism.
Travel essay.
Travel sketch is one of the oldest types. Its features lie in the fact that the object of study unfolds gradually for the author. Indeed, while traveling, a publicist peers into people, situations, records facts and events, reflecting them through the prism of individual observations. The specificity of a travel essay lies in the transmission of personal impressions from the forms of life, customs, morals, and social contrasts that appear before the eyes of the essayist. It combines elements of portrait and problem essays.
This is not accidental: the very origins of the Russian essay should be sought precisely here, in this type of genre. The aggravation of social contradictions in Russia in the 18th century set the task of publicists to show a panorama of developing events. A new attitude to reality was combined with a search for new forms of its reflection. This is how “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” by A.N. Radishchev and “Letters of a Russian Traveler” by N.M. Karamzin appeared.
Often travel essays are published with continuations, creating the illusion of a joint journey between the author and readers. The essayist becomes the eyes of his audience, using reportage techniques for this.
The stylistic linguistic structure of the essay fully corresponds to the goal set by the author and the type of essay he chose for an artistic and journalistic understanding of reality. Brevity, laconism, the ability to say a lot in a concise form, to create a multifaceted picture - one of the main signs of high professional skill of an essayist.
Landscapes play a special role in the essay. A description of nature helps to reveal both the setting in which the action takes place and the emotional and psychological state of the characters in the essay or the essayist himself. In identifying the essential features of natural phenomena, showing their relationship with the main idea of the essay, expressive details and detail, the essayist can achieve an extraordinary depth of penetration into the very essence of what is being described.
However, in the practice of novice journalists, the depth of understanding of what they have experienced and seen is often replaced by the monotony of the topic, illustrative skimming over the surface of life, dryness of presentation of thoughts, poverty of vocabulary - here any description of a fact, event, or person is called an essay. And the bright, imaginative manner of narration, sharp individual speech characteristics, metaphors, comparisons, hyperboles contribute to greater expressiveness and artistic and journalistic reflection of reality.
One of effective methods the construction of an essay is an associative way of presentation, a typical manifestation of which is the author’s reflections. Author's associations, as a rule, deepen the figurative and psychological development of the main idea of the narrative.
It is very important that all situations, facts, events, associations represent a single whole, subordinate to a single goal - the development of the topic chosen by the essayist. At the same time, only after fully studying the material, facts, circumstances, people, can you finally decide what twist to give to the essay, what problem to put forward in it. Therefore, while working on an essay, the journalist records everything in his notebook and in his memory: general information, data, numbers, first and last names, positions, specific episodes, situations that reveal a person in action, so that later they can reveal what is characteristic, instructive, impressive. After all, the composition of a genre requires an indispensable connection, a collision of many facts, episodes, and reflections.
