Paper oh paper, what have I done wrong?

So in my paper about the short story “Fiesta” I understand what I did wrong and how I can better improve my paper. First thing is that i need to improve on my academic voice. One thing I struggle with when I am writing a paper is I want it to be as relatable as possible; I want people to feel as though they have really connected with me through my paper, as if they have heard my voice. That is not necessarily a bad thing but what is bad about that is that when I try to make my paper easier to relate to I lose my academic voice, I’m no longer identifying the characters by their names, but I start saying kid or people. When I depersonalize my characters makes my paper less academic. Secondly I tend to go off on tangents; when I make a thesis that is the idea or thought or argument I plan on writing my paper on. When I actually start writing my paper the paragraph normally falls right along with the thesis statement, but in this paper I start to fall away from the thesis. I think that in this particular paper my thesis is not strong enough to cover what it is that I am trying to prove in my paper. Then there are my grammatical errors; not ending quotes the way they should be ended and putting commas in the right place which stem from the lack of proofreading my essay before it gets turned in. Another issue is when I made a claim then went on to try and incorporate my quotation to support my claim rather than completely dissecting that quotation so that it fit into my claim and supported the thesis I more summarized what was happening in the story around that quotation rather than analyzing how that quotation fits into my paper based off of the literary element that I was supposed to be talking about.  Summarizing is OK to point but it should just be adding detail to my claim rather than fully explaining. So I really need to focus on analyzing the text. Not just analyzing though but working on including more text support. I think that when I am actually discussing a novel or short story in a seminar I use more text support and dissect the text more than when I am actually writing a paper about the novel or short story because sometimes I feel like I am using so much text that my whole paper is the novel rather than the dissection. I need to work on balancing using the text and dissecting the text. The last thing that Mrs. Clinch pointed out in my paper was to watch for awkward and wordy constructions; what I have noticed in this paper is that my sentences are either too long or awkwardly put together, I need to work on clearly organizing each sentence, shorten them add in commas, colons, semicolons, etc. by being more concise in my sentence I will be able to better produce stronger, clearer papers.

Who are ya dude?

Most of what I write is me fighting with myself on different issues such as themes, imagery, symbolism, or reoccurring motifs that I have noticed in the novels we have been reading in class. They are normally based off of ideas and discussions that we have in class or something that I’ve discussed in a group that I really want to elaborate on. This post won’t be that different but there are two different things I want to discuss in this blog; what I have noticed so far and what I have read of All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren up until this point and my college essays (since that is something that is really important right now).

Firstly who is the king and who are all his men? This would sound like a stupid question but when you really think about it, it makes you wonder. So far I have gathered that this book is about a politician, Willie Stark, he already has the title of “The Boss” but where would he get the name “The King?” Then that leads to another question; who are all his men? Would that mean be people such as Jack and the rest of the posse? Why, because they are Willie Stark? They are his every decision, his every political move, his every statement, wardrobe, they are his source and friend. They are what make Willie, Willie. But then i suppose that kind of makes sense, a king is more of a representative symbol then an actual person of influence. I’m not saying that they aren’t influential just not nearly as influential as a president. The thing about kings is that they think they are in control like they are the puppeteers but really they are the puppets.  Then there is the whole thing about Jacks relationship with his mom. Well I for one thing that it’s a tad creepy. There’s no way that a woman of her age, should get excited like an innocent little girl when her son comes home. It’s weird. Then the couch scene when Jack’s head is in her lap and she is rubbing his face, I connected that to the end of the chapter where they are talking about Lucy and how she wanted to hold Tom back, I think that deep down Jack’s mom is trying to hold Jack back so that he can be in the position of lover whenever she is in-between lovers. Lastly you start to wonder how important Jack is. Who is he really? For someone who was working on his PHD how did he end up underneath serving someone like Willie? I just wonder so much about Jack.

Now college, they ask you all these hypothetical questions where you have to write your response in 32,000 characters. Some of the questions ask you to tell those more about yourself and your unsure as to which angle you should take. Do you say too much? Is what I have already said enough? Too informative?Did I give enough details? That’s the kind of essay I’m writing and I know I want it to be moving but I don’t quite know how to go about that without feeling like I have shared too much. Food for thought I suppose.

Reality vs fantasy.......or not

In what I have read of All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, which only two chapters (so far), there is this theme of reality vs. fantasy. The narrator of the story,  Jack Burden, seems to be traveling between these two worlds that are both fantasy and what's actually happening as he sets the scene of what is currently going and by going backwards to explain how the current events came to be. But Jack isn't the only one who bounces between the two worlds; the main character, Willie Stark, seems to be also. But before I continue I'm going to veer from the topic a little to vent about the things I have noticed about this book; firstly Warren introduces the main character and the minor characters but as you continue reading, you realize that the main character and the narrator are two different people, now that isnt that unusual but in the way that Warren writes this novel it just sounds a little weird. Secondly because you realize that narrator is a different person, there is a period of time where you're wondering who the main character is and why it's taking Warren so long to introduce him. Jack Burden thinks of himself as the wallpaper, the one who is constantly forgotten and the fact that Warren takes so long to introduce makes me feel as though Burden isn't as important to the story as the other characters , when he actually is. But i digress so anyways back to reality vs. fantasy. I see the theme as less of reality vs fantasy but more of real vs. fake. For Jack the life that he wished he had vs. the one he's lived and is living is the difference between real and fake. For example Jack says, "I was so much in love with her that I lived in a dream. In that dream my heart seemed to be ready to burst, for it seemed that the whole world was inside it swelling to get out and be the world. But that summer came to an end. Time passed and nothing happened that we had felt so certain at one time would happen (Warren 39-40)." In Jack's dreams ( the fantasy world) things between him and Anne  are perfect. She is no longer a little girl but now she has grow into a woman. But in this world both of their feelings run wild and then would meet at the same time , but in reality what was only a fling wont go to be anymore than that . In Burden's fantasy he is happy have his girlfriend but in the real world he doesn't have her because they don't last after that summer. then there is the idea of change in that when Jack returns back to Mason City everything is different than how he remembers it so that it really can't be real " they ain't real, I thought as I walked down the hall, nary one. But I knew they were. You come into a strange place , into a town like Mason City, and they don't seem real but you know they are (Warren 57)."  When Jack thinks about the town he thinks of the people , the people he sees now can't be real because they aren't the same people that he used to know, there's no way that they can be different even though it is common for the people of Mason city like that, in his fantasy world the people are different they are who they used to be. Then there is Willie Stark who is the Boss, his personality fits right in with real vs. fake. It's as if Stark is many different people; his fake side is when he is politician mode, he does whatever he can to appeal to the masses, to make them feel like there is some common ground between them. Even Lucy knows that this isn't his true self. But there is also his real self the self that isnt politician mode like when he is talking to Lucy, his pappy, or his posse. The way to notice the difference is in his voice,"In his old voice, his own voice. Or was that his voice? Which was his true voice, which one of all the voices, you would wonder (Warren 10)." his changes in his voice show the real self but also show the fake self. Most people who know can't decipher which one is real or which voice is fake. He uses so many different personalities that it's almost hard to tell who is Willie Stark reall.

Final thoughts

Since we are finishing up Winesburg, Ohio, I’ll just make this post about my final thoughts of Winesburg. Well to begin with I really did enjoy this book, well actually the book is a tad bit confusing but the discussions we have had based off the book helped me better understand the book, look at it in a different way but then at the same time I questioned more. It made me wonder how Anderson really intended for this book to be read. Did he want people to read it as if it were a collection of short stories that just seemed to be intertwined? Or as a novel and each of the short stories were just really flashbacks and a description of the people who were once young and innocent and then in a moment of their innocence, something came and disrupted them, causing them to become grotesques? Anderson allowed you to build a connection with these characters’ you weren’t angry at them, you pitied them. As I learned about Doctor Reefy, Elizabeth, Wing Biddlebaum, Tandy, Enoch, and Doctor Parcival, my heart opened up a little more because of their loneliness. With these people who are considered grotesques I think more about the people that I see every day. We all start off innocent, as a baby we are filled with excitement and amusement for the world and at the same time filled with youth and innocence.  But how many times do we see people that walk past us that may be dressed a little different, look a little different, act a little bit more dramatized, walk a little funny, or seem a little bit more out there? And what do we do? We judge them. We get an idea in our heads and that’s it, there is no stop to think that they might have some kind of story, one that would make us feel sorry for them and want to comfort them rather than poking fun at the things that we see is wrong in them. Winesburg, Ohio makes me consider how many of us are really grotesque; it’s as if Anderson has created this guide for us to ultimately recognize that in a way we are all grotesque and that we are no better than the woman on the street who tries to dress like her daughter. The structure of the work had me reconsidering what it means for a text to be a novel vs. a short story; here the lines blur a bit, and I was a little unsure. But concluded that it is a slight combination of both in that , each short story is a chapter that is part of the “The Book of the Grotesque”, but that also each of the “chapters” could stand alone and tell their own story. I related it to the structure of the bible and how it is one story that is the Bible but within in the overall collection of the bible there are little stories inside it , that make up chapters that can stand alone.