Sunday, September 5, 2021

BLOG POST #3 Prose Short Fiction Benchmark Essay Reflection

  Benchmark Essay


The playful excerpt from Tim Winton’s novel Breathe, captures the notorious childhood memory of a young boy recollecting the joyful encounter he had with a friend, Ivan Loonie. Tim Winton captures the significance of the riverbank incident and his coincidental meeting with Ivan Loonie, who seemed to never have even “the remotest thing in common” with the narrator’s caricature of each character’s emotions, settings, and suspenseful start coherently add to the warm and spontaneous scene along with providing a reflection of the situation that unfolded.


The introduction to Ivan Loonie is presented in a somewhat mysterious way, with eerie commentary of how “there was a crisis”, and how a woman was screaming that there was a boy in the water.” Here, the narrator builds suspense and takes the reader route of believing that the boy might have drowned and died. Conversely, the next few lines indicate that this was a “prank” . 


When the boy bolted towards rescuing Ivan Loonie the anxiety building up in him, skeptical thoughts and complete fear of the unknown subconsciously lurk in the author, which all add to the suspenseful scene. 


However, once the boy realizes that Ivan Loonie was ultimately trying to prank the women at the pool, the words used resonate with the feeling expressed and experienced by each of the characters. 

Ultimately, the author, astonished by the situation realizes that “it was more fun to pull this prank than '' stand by while some else did it. The author experiences a character shift from a playful young lad to a more self conscious boy that felt “guilt” over “glee”.


While this encounter marked the characters’ commencement of a  new friendship, “also conveys realization the author made after finding himself in the sticky “riverside panic” situation. 



Reflection 


I was tasked to read an excerpt from Tim Winton’s novel, Breathe and analyze Winton’s use of literary elements and techniques that represent the complex response of the narrator to the incident at the riverbank. 


I hoped to receive a 0-1-0  on the essay I wrote. As my essay as a whole lacked the logical comprehension of the excerpt and as a result, I misinterpreted what the prompt was asking for and could not cohesively link the thesis statement to the rest of the essay.


I expected to earn a 0 for the thesis statement because the thesis presented is weak and provides a summary of the issue without any apparent claim. As is evident when I describe how the scene was ‘joyful’, which is the polar opposite of what is present there. I made a very vague analysis of the excerpt and thereby framed a broken thesis statement.

I expected to earn a 1 for the evidence and commentary because most of the evidence I presented was irrelevant to the prompt and was branched off of a feeble thesis statement.

The evidence lacked reference to the prompt and was a melting pot of unrelated material and commentary. However, the 1 point was for the specific evidence I offered on the character shift the narrator experienced, and that coherently linked that to the evidence from the text. 

I also loosely made references to literary elements, devices and techniques used but offer little evidence on the reasoning behind their usage.


I expected to earn a 0 for the sophistication because instead of exploring the tensions and complexities of the piece, and relating them to the broader context, I have made sweeping generalizations and the piece lacked complexity or deeper analysis of any sort. 


I noticed similarities between the reflection of this essay to the song analysis in that in both of the cases we were tasked to analyze a piece of work, make inferences about the deeper meaning behind the works and articulate that clearly in a well written manner. For example: In the individual song analysis, we were required to make  border observations on the song, investigate the deeper meaning the song encapsulated and articulate that clearly, likewise, the reflection of this essay, was similar in that we were tasked to analyze our mistakes and figure out the deeper meaning behind the requirements of the prompt and the mistakes that we made due to the our faulty understanding of the prompt. 


From this reflection, I recognized the gravity of my current situation, in terms of writing an essay after analyzing a piece of work and was able to gain a clearer understanding of the weak articulation I made, how I can work towards improving my writing skills, and frame a more concise, eloquent thesis. Right off the bat, I observed my improper understanding of the prompt, a faulty thesis statement, loose evidence, shallow reasoning, and lack of sophistication. When I loosely analyzed the excerpt, and consequently framed a thesis statement that lacked any understanding of the prompt, where I instead vaguely discussed the devices used without logically connecting their usage to the essay, which followed a weak essay. The reflection allowed me to gain a more critical understanding of my essay and has liberated me towards picking up the minute details in the text, making broader connections, and understanding the conflicts by articulating them clearly onto paper.

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