writing to me [part 2]

1. At the beginning of the course, you mentioned two or three aspects of your writing that you most wanted to work on. How well have you met your goal of improving in those areas?
I feel like I've been improving, slowly, but surely. As for as organizing my papers, I feel think I'm getting the hang of it. I just need to remember each paragraph needs, in order, rationale/examples, examples, then analysis. In my beginning papers I know the focus got a little confusing, but by paper 3, I was at least able to identify what exactly I needed to do to change the paragraphs to fit the correct style. This all goes hand-in-hand with the flow of the paper. I believe my introductions and conclusions "start" and "end" my papers much better than they used to.

2. At this point, what would you say are your strengths as a writer?
I focused a lot on the "why" of my topic in paper 3 which I feel is a great improvement and something I was on the verge of conquering. I also spend time making sure I address my audience and never sound one-side in any argument I present. I talked about curiosity in that first post, and looking back it reminds me of how intriguing I found my paper 2 that I wanted to go further into it and develop paper 3 from that!

3. What do you need to improve in your writing in the future?
Structure, Structure, Structure. Forming my paragraphs as neatly as possible is very important. Also, providing sufficient details and examples to back up my rationale is something someone can always improve on. My problem is sounding too repetitive trying to shove in all these reasons "why" that I disrupt the flow of the paragraph's structure. I feel like this is something I will always need to keep in the back of my head before, after, and during writing. Once I master structure (eventually), the style of my writing will be more evident. In getting my point across as directly and persuasively as I can, the tone will come across much better too.

This tandem has really been a unique experience. I've never been in a class so small - who would have thought it'd be in college! I've loved learning about different women and men in the spaces they inhibit and using similar concepts to create digital pieces in 2D. As a nursing major my schedule is pretty tight, but I was thrilled to find a W course that also let me incorporate art. I've had a blast in both 2D and HUST and am sad to see the semester end!

Translations

Translation:
1 : an act, process, or instance of translating: as a : a rendering from one language into another; also : the product of such a rendering

Translations is an appropriate name for the play in that a translation of something is not merely a renaming, but it is a reinterpretation of a word or words. This is exactly what the Owen and the British soldiers are doing. They are recreating something new out of something old. In reinterpreting something, the original will be lost, but the hope is that an essence of it will still remain. The British soldiers pay no attention to this at all, except for Yolland. Their only worry is to entirely Anglicize place names. Any Gaelic essence left is irrelevant to them. The original names most likely contain natures that cannot be translated and do the originals no justice. Therefore, the reconstruction—or the translation—of something is not completely real; something has been altered and will probably never resurface.

Fork in the Road

I find that Lucy's quest for identity is much like Omishto's. Both struggle between two entirely different settings. I chose to include a picture of a road split because it resembles their choices in their lives. Lucy's stuck between America and her homeland, Antigua, while Omishto's being pulled between modern society and her native heritage.

Mother figures are very important for both stories. It's funny how neither Lucy's mom nor Omishto's are main characters, but their presence remain with the girls forever. Lucy's mom provides a connection to her past in which she desperately tries to escape. Omishto's mother serves as her link into modern society and her potential future. The two also have other key influences in their lives, being Mariah and Ama. Their presence serves as a way for the girls to question their surroundings with what they know and what they don't know. Both girls want what the other has. Lucy looks for new experiences while Omishto searches for her roots to decide what path is best to take. That's where the two are different. Lucy made up her mind in the beginning to travel to a new land and almost forces herself to become a new person. Omishto's approach was far different. She observes rather than taking action. She finds Ama and her own Taiga heritage incredibly interesting and "watches" Ama and looks for reasons behind her actions. The panther's death and the two courts she attends symbolize the choices she has to make in her life.

Both girls are at an age in their lives where decisions they make now will forever effect their futures. Lucy must either make amends with her mother and accept her past or hold her peace and move on. Omishto has the choice to follow her mother or Ama who now has been banished from the tribe. This is a crucial moment for her, since Ama is no longer around, Omishto sees the tribe is at danger of disappearing like the panther.

POWER

Linda Hogan’s novel, Power, presents two different ways of perceiving the world from a couple female perspectives. The beauty of this novel is that it reveals the similarities and differences, uncovering the dangers in both and the ways in which power is used within both belief systems, for good and bad purposes. The story starts off very strong, with the storm scene and the climax of the panther’s death. I found this section very powerful and expressive.

“She. She has always watched for it. She has always believed it is there. Sometimes at night she has looked out into the darkness and seen its eyes. They have exchanged glances.” (57)

Ama is in complete control of her destiny, her actions directed toward bringing Omishto into the clan. Omishto finally connects the dots and realizes that Ama knows what she’s doing even if the panther is endangered. The sick panther represents the death of the old ways of the clan as Omishto represents their future. The language flows so well here, I felt embedded with the story. The world is portrayed here as hostile, not literally, but through the language. A split occurs after the initial storm scene. I feel that the remainder of the novel consists of Omishto’s journey to settle this schism and more importantly to understand it and where she belongs within it. Power in this novel is represented by the storm, the clan, and feminist power, in which Omishto’s power has potential in both worlds.

NAMES

Names take a powerful role in this novel. Lucy understands that her name symbolizes important characteristics of her own identity. Her last name, Potter, shows an influence of colonialism that she figures is from an English slaveholder. Lucy cannot stand how her mother ignores her dreams and expects only her brothers to attend college and for Lucy to simply become a nurse. Her middle name, Josephine, hints at this low expectation her mother has for her. It comes from a rich uncle of Lucy’s that died broke and lived in a tomb. Her first name, Lucy, has the worst meaning, deriving directly from the devil himself, Lucifer.

I chose to include an image of Lucifer because I really like the reference to Paradise Lost by Milton. The triumph of good over evil is very clear, but the way Lucifer is seen as sympathetic in his quest to be free from God’s control relates to Lucy’s struggle of rejecting morals. God’s morals are good, clearly, and do not need to be challenged. Setting one’s own path comes from human experiences. Lucy obviously despises most cultural norms out of the pride that people see in Lucifer. It is not clear either that Lucy strives to find new norms for herself as she searches for her new identity.

“I understood that I was inventing myself… I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition. I did not have anything exactly in mind, but when the picture was complete I would know” (134).

Lucy constantly contradicts herself throughout the entire novel. She wants to be free and love her new self but, to her, that would only mean she is not free at all. Eventually drastic freedom must let itself become real, life commitments. Lucy is hesitant at this idea. The way Lucy perceives her past as being “[a] person you no longer are, the situations you are no longer in" is completely untrue (137). Her past is what causes her to undergo such a difficult transition. After she frees herself from her past attachments, she now longs for “[loving] someone so much [she] would die from it” (164).

i d e n t i t y

“In a daydream I used to have, all these places were points of happiness to me; all these places were lifeboats to my drowning soul...Now that I saw these places, they looked ordinary, dirty, worn down by so many people entering and leaving them in real life, and it occurred to me that I could not be the only person in the world for whom they were a fixture of fantasy. It was not my first bout with the disappointment of reality and it would not be my last.” (3-4)

Lucy’s survival comes from her ability to handle disappointment and her continuance to create her own identity regardless of it. Although she is frustrated, Lucy remains loyal to dreaming. Dreams remain her “lifeboat” during her first few days in America. Even with that, she does not dream about her future but of “green figs cooked in coconut milk” (7). She dreams of home, because her memories keep herself connected with what she knows and understands. At the same time, they will continue to haunt her as she tries desperately to separate ties with her past.

As Lucy describes her living situation she builds independence and pushes past racial boundaries and class that she perceives. I feel that her room represents her alienated state and shows how difficult it is to fit in with the style society has laid out for her. She explains:

“I was only an unhappy young woman living in a maid's room, and I was not even the maid. I was the young girl who watches over the children and goes to school at night.” (7)

This is critical in realizing how Lucy perceives her own self. She makes note that she is not cargo. She also is not commodity, no source of labor whose purpose is related to her ability to work. Thirdly, she is not a maid. Lucy despises any job title. She does not even consider herself an au pair. Lucy only mentions her duties as watching the children and attending school in the evening rather than being defined by a title. Lucy brings up her “unhappy” emotional state as another reason to defend her difficult transition to her new environment.

The title of the chapter, “Poor Visitor,” enhances those feelings. Since everything Lucy is experiencing is new to her, like the running water and food, naming herself too quickly would initially limit herself. Though she exists in a brand new world, she feels alone. Her search for a link home has only brought her farther away.

O and Othello

When Shakespeare composed the play Othello, televisions were not around. Life around the late 1500s also had many different qualities than it does today. The time period of Othello did not have wars on drugs or high school shootings. Peer pressure back then was not an issue. Othello’s audiences in the 1500s did not face the situations that I, once an American high school student, faced. These significant differences make it hard to relate modern day tragedies to those of the 1500s. The common themes and characters from Othello were, I thought decently represented in the movie, O. The movie represents jealousy as a dominating factor over how people live their lives.

As I began thinking about the movie, 0, in comparison to Shakespeare’s Othello, I realized that I would not care much for the movie without having read the play beforehand. The drama, jealousy, and love are all very intriguing and relevant, but a few things caught my eye that I do not believe accurately represent the play. I feel that we never really understand why Hugo involves an unreliable, unpopular, rich kid, Roger, in his scheme. Also, I do not get why his own girlfriend and Desi's roommate, Emily, so easily go along with the deception Hugo presents them, including the scarf. Emily knew very well Desi and O were fighting and the scarf had something to do with it. A great deal of time is spent developing the honest and pure love story between Desi and O, so I find it hard to swallow the fact that O would throw away his obvious potential over a rumor concerning Desi’s impurity he heard from only one person. Though full of confrontations, I sense a missing scene one in which O demands the truth from both Desi and Michael face to face. Racial issues are dealt with in different ways-lightheartedly between Desi and O, obviously. O deals with it directly and Hugo, along with the adults, with understatement. I do, however, find it interesting that O is the only black student possibly in the entire school.