An interesting alternate scenario presented by Patricia Sullivan (2003) adverts to a more sophisticated use of the “nothing” position taken by one of her first-year composition students. Ellen refused to write the assigned personal narrative. Instead, she wrote “descriptions of nature… from the detached perspective a botanist or geologist might use” (p. 41), resisting Sullivan’s attempts to elicit language that was concrete and included more sensory detail “with a sort of deferential, apologetic smugness” (p. 41). Only once during the semester did the student reveal the source of her resistance, which could be reframed as an attempt to escape her past, in a brief reading response:

Response to a Text

Mr. Percy first suggests that we need to get off the beaten path in order to see, to really see. However, according to him, getting off the beaten path is the most beaten path of all. Apparently it is Mr. Percy’s belief that traveling the well worn path and viewing the sights others have seen dull our powers of observation so that we become blind to reality. All we see is the back of the head in front of us as we follow along like sheep.

What Mr. Percy fails to consider from his privileged upper class perch miles above the Grand Canyon is that the very thing he criticizes, the beaten path, is the place some of us want to be. Some people would give anything to be on that beaten path if they could. What is wanted most by some people is to be like everyone else.