Quarter 3 Reflection

I didn’t have a really good thesis in my quarter 2 paper. Or maybe I did but I didn’t elaborate well. That’s why I got a lower grade on that than I did on my quarters 1 and 3 papers. Then again maybe Ms. Ahearn was a little more lenient during the first quarter, considering the fact that I was writing my first pancake paper. Yes, that’s what it was. In quarters one and two, I didn’t have an ultimate thesis. For my Oedipus paper, my thesis was, “In Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Oedipus’s relentless quest to get out of the darkness, a metaphor for ignorance, leads to his downfall, so he literally blinds himself in an attempt to return to that ignorance,” and my thesis for the Othello paper was “Throughout Shakespeare’s Othello, Othello is perceived as a beast even though he is of the noble class, so when he kills Desdemona, he proves that these perceptions are factual.” There is no trace of “the author uses literary device to advance the overall meaning of story.” This is what killed me. I would have gotten an 8 on my Othello paper if I had a better thesis. This quarter, I am more confident about coming up with an ultimate thesis that still sounds like me. My thesis for the comparison paper was “Dostoevsky and Brontë use characterization of two very different, almost antonymous characters, Heathcliff and the Underground Man to depict how differently they interpret the universal theme of revenge.” This thesis clearly states the literary device (characterization) and how it contributes to the overall meaning (“universal theme of revenge”).

I think I also proved my thesis better. I had more evidence and analysis and my voice shone through, I hope. My favorite thing about this paper was that I used the wise words of the Underground man to describe Heathcliff. I said, “To the Underground man, Heathcliff is ‘l’homme de la nature et de la vérité’ because when such men ‘are seized with feelings of revenge, nothing exists within them at the moment except those feelings.’ Heathcliff is completely obsessed with revenge. He exhibits his revenge by getting control over everything that controlled him.” This ties the two stories together because it shows how the underground man’s words relate to Heathcliff, who existed in earlier times. Thus, it proves that some stories are truly timeless.

I’m not as confident about conclusions. I don’t know how to end a paper as well as I would like. A good conclusion is supposed to summarize the paper and give the reader something to ponder. My conclusions in all three papers just end with a generalized statement, especially in the first two quarters. In the third paper, I try to break free of this, but I don’t do as well as I should.

I think I have become a more sophisticated writer over the course of the year. However, my sentence structure tends to get very convoluted and difficult to understand. With that said, I need to work on writing in a way that is both sophisticated and easier to understand. I will still use “latter” and “former,” but in a less confusing way. Also, I will work on my conclusions. I have to get better so that it will be easier for me to transition to college-level writing.