Primary Text: "How to Watch your Brother Die" by Micheal Lassell
Secondary Text: "Wally's Girl" from Leave it to Beaver
Theme: Homosexuality and the way it is perceived by society
Intro:
- historical context of both texts (year, mentality of the time regarding homosexuality, etc)
- what the "moral" of each text is, what it is trying to say about homosexuals
- thesis, something like: As the clip "Wally's Girl" only hints at homosexuality (no direct relationship is made), "How to wath your Brother Die" openly speaks of homosexuals, which allows us to observe the evolution of society's perception of homosexuals over time.
First Paragraph:
- Wally's girl
- Hints made toward homosexuality (very feminine looking boy who claims to have a girlfriend to conceal his true affiliations)
- The boy is not proud to be a homosexual, tries to hide it and makes himself look ridiculous
- The fact that he ridiculizes himself implies that homosexuals are the same
- Related to silly matter (trying to get a girlfriend), not very emotionally profound, only meant to entertain audience
Second Paragraph:
- How to watch your Brother Die
- Homosexual character openly speaks of it
- Doesn't try to conceal homosexuality (more open and proud of it)
- Emotionally profound, tries to convey a real message of distress to the audience
- Shows how society is slowly beginning to accept homosexuality, but how there still are "sticks in the mud" who do not accept it (like the character's wife who doesn't want to have anything to do with the brother's homosexual life").
ETC...
(These paragraphs can probably be broken down even more and made into more specific paragraphs...I will see how I need to adjust while writing the essay. These are just guidelines that can be expanded into more paragraphs!)
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Journal #8
I chose to analyze sentences from my first essay.
Passive/Active Verbs: I employed quite a bit of passive verbs in this analysis.
For example:
"Playful diction is depicted in the following fragment..." could have been more active by simply being reversed into "The following fragment depicts playful diction...".
"The playful expressions were meant to appease his reaction..." which could have been "To appease his reaction, I employed playful expressions..."
"I meant to demonstrate through this structure..." opposed to "Through this structure, I demonstrated that..." or "This structure helped me demonstrate that..."
"In previous essays, I rarely permitted myself to..." instead of "In previous essays, I had rarely permitted myself to..."
"I chose a different tone..." instead of "I decided to choose a different tone..."
Transitions: I noticed lack of transitions, especially from paragraph to paragrpah.
For example:
"I am scorning...Mr. Winsprout: 'Mr. Winsprout was...'". The transition from the sentence to the quote and the introduction of the quote could have been improved to something like this: "I am scorning... Mr. Winsprout. For instance, I wrote 'Mr. Winsprout was...'".
Since it is kind of hard to give the original version and the corrected version for transitions between paragraphs, I will just give an example of what the transition could have sounded like.
First transition: "In these long sentences, I was able to incorporate my own voice and a mocking tone..."
Second transition: "By analyzing the voice of my paper, I remarked that specific diction contributed to building the mocking tone..."
Clarity: I noticed one instance of "unclarity"
"...as if the readers did not have enough breath to follow my descriptions from head to toes" which would have been more clear like so: "as the readers did not have enough breath to follow my descriptions from Mr. Winsprout's head to his toes."
Overall, I did not notice very many mistakes regarding that and where, when, and reason...is because or the unnecessary repetition of words. My greatest weakness was definitly using passive verbs instead of active ones, which is sort of ironic since I thought my weakness was transitions. Nonetheless, I should definitly work on transitions, especially relating paragraphs to each other since I have trouble with that. I think passive use of verbs comes in when the author is trying not to say "I", which was ok for this essay.
Revising an essay a while after writing it allowed me to get more perspective on my "old" writing. I have grown as a writer since writing that essay, which allows me to identify and pin point my weaknesses, and try to improve them for later essays.
Passive/Active Verbs: I employed quite a bit of passive verbs in this analysis.
For example:
"Playful diction is depicted in the following fragment..." could have been more active by simply being reversed into "The following fragment depicts playful diction...".
"The playful expressions were meant to appease his reaction..." which could have been "To appease his reaction, I employed playful expressions..."
"I meant to demonstrate through this structure..." opposed to "Through this structure, I demonstrated that..." or "This structure helped me demonstrate that..."
"In previous essays, I rarely permitted myself to..." instead of "In previous essays, I had rarely permitted myself to..."
"I chose a different tone..." instead of "I decided to choose a different tone..."
Transitions: I noticed lack of transitions, especially from paragraph to paragrpah.
For example:
"I am scorning...Mr. Winsprout: 'Mr. Winsprout was...'". The transition from the sentence to the quote and the introduction of the quote could have been improved to something like this: "I am scorning... Mr. Winsprout. For instance, I wrote 'Mr. Winsprout was...'".
Since it is kind of hard to give the original version and the corrected version for transitions between paragraphs, I will just give an example of what the transition could have sounded like.
First transition: "In these long sentences, I was able to incorporate my own voice and a mocking tone..."
Second transition: "By analyzing the voice of my paper, I remarked that specific diction contributed to building the mocking tone..."
Clarity: I noticed one instance of "unclarity"
"...as if the readers did not have enough breath to follow my descriptions from head to toes" which would have been more clear like so: "as the readers did not have enough breath to follow my descriptions from Mr. Winsprout's head to his toes."
Overall, I did not notice very many mistakes regarding that and where, when, and reason...is because or the unnecessary repetition of words. My greatest weakness was definitly using passive verbs instead of active ones, which is sort of ironic since I thought my weakness was transitions. Nonetheless, I should definitly work on transitions, especially relating paragraphs to each other since I have trouble with that. I think passive use of verbs comes in when the author is trying not to say "I", which was ok for this essay.
Revising an essay a while after writing it allowed me to get more perspective on my "old" writing. I have grown as a writer since writing that essay, which allows me to identify and pin point my weaknesses, and try to improve them for later essays.
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