Personal Reflections

Just some general comments about your personal responses. Consider all of these as you move towards completing your APOLOGIA and PERSONAL REFLECTION.

1. MAINTAIN A CONSISTENT VERB TENSE
When you write about literature, and refer to the events of the text you have selected, write in present tense. The events still exist, just because you have read about them, doesn't make them past events.

For example: Instead of shifting tenses (from present to past):

In Robinson Crusoe, the main character as you might expect is Robinson Crusoe himself. Crusoe is not all alone on the island though; he meets another character named Friday. When Defoe introduced Crusoe, he was seen as a rebellious, lazy, English boy who just wanted to leave his parents. Although his housing was not bad, he was a part of a middle class family with a nice home and loving parents, Robinson could not [wait] to get away and this caused some problems with his family, more specifically his father.

WRITE:
In Robinson Crusoe, the main character as you might expect is Robinson Crusoe himself. Crusoe is not all alone on the island though; he meets another character named Friday. When Defoe introduces Crusoe, he is seen as a rebellious, lazy, English boy who just wants to leave his parents. Although his housing is not bad, he is a part of a middle class family with a nice home and loving parents, Robinson can not [wait] to get away and this causes some problems with his family, more specifically his father.

2. USE PROPER CITATIONS.
There is a link to the most recent changes in the MLA guide in your useful links section on the class blog. This guide and the rules are not for memorization, but if you care about the accuracy of your writing, check carefully to ensure that you are providing the right documentation.
FIRST QUOTATION FROM THE NOVEL: (Author, Title page#) (Stevenson, Treasure Island 56)
SHORT STORY, ESSAY, REVIEW: (Author, "title" page #) (Poe, "Tell Tale Heart" 3)
EVER AFTER: (page#)
If you are referring to more than one book by one author you can simply refer to the book's title in your writing and then place the page number after the quotation.

3. CHECK YOUR PUNCTUATION.
People are having trouble with apostrophes.
As a general rule: apostrophes indicate possession (Conrad's novel) and contraction (He didn't arrive on time).
Use a comma and a coordinating conjunction between two independent clauses.
Use a comma between a dependent clause (has a subject and verb but begins with a subordinating conjunction or preposition) and an independent clause, which is something we learned in class about complex sentences.

INCORRECT:
He is allowed to work on the ship because he discovers an important treasure map among a pirates possessions. When we meet him he is working at his parents inn.
CORRECT:
He is allowed to work on the ship, because he discovers an important treasure map among a pirate's possessions. When we meet him, he is working at his parents' inn.

4. INTEGRATE YOUR THINKING.
It is not enough to cycle through the text and identify evidence of style (pathos, suspense, humour, hyperbole, metaphor, symbolism etc...) theme, plot or character. You need to extend your thinking beyond the locate and cycle type activities to integrate your ideas with the text (or dare I say generate some ideas beyond the text) . Make connections to other texts, the world or your own experiences. Attempt to examine the significance of the use of various elements of the text in front of you. Your quotations should function to help you at the very least explain your thinking, but really you should be using these points in your novel to help you justify your ideas.

an example: This is the opening of a response focused on theme. Although there are no direct quotations (yet), you can see how this student has moved away from identify and describe to explain and justify in her exploration of the metaphor used by the author, and the connection he made to his own life experiences. It is these deep connections that create an integrated response.

As the title of the novel suggests, one of the main themes Dostoevsky explores in Crime and Punishment, is that of punishment. In order to fully analyze this theme, Dostoevsky draws on his own personal experiences. After being arrested for joining a group of liberal Utopians, Dostoevsky was sentenced to 8 years of hard labour in Siberia. In the novel, Raskolnikov is similarly sentenced to hard labour in Siberia for the murder of the old pawnbroker. Just as Dostoevsky was never the same after his experiences, Raskolnikov was also greatly changed by his time in Serbia. The hard labour he was forced to endure allowed him to come to terms with what he had done, and find redemption through it. Dostoevsky uses this scenario as a metaphor; it is his way of saying that redemption only comes to those who pay for what they have done, and understand the wrong in it.

5. SENTENCE STRUCTURE.
We went over the ways to fix sentence errors in class during the first unit. You need to start not only be critical readers of fiction, but critical readers of your own work. I found lots of examples of comma splices, sentence fragments and run-on sentences.

an example: He is somewhat of an outcast in the brave new world, or would be if people being alone was not some great crime in this story, something I find very interesting is that despite being an outcast he loves the world of the story, and he longs to be part of it, (CS) he desires the "happiness" of The Brave New World.

QUICK FIX - COMMA SPLICE - add a coordinating conjunction (and, so, or, but) OR change the comma to a semi colon (;).

another example: Bernard is an "Alpha plus" which is essentially the intellectuals of this world the leaders and such, however he has stunted growth and this created a mental excess of sorts making him smarter then most but he is unable to socialize as others veiw him as something of a freak. (RO)

QUICK FIX - RUN ON SENTENCE - separate the independent clauses; add commas before coordinating conjunctions that separate two independent clauses; add commas around non-essential information (which is essentially the intellectuals of this world the leaders and such)

still another: The argument of liberty and happiness, freedom and structure, individuals and the collective. (SF)

QUICK FIX - SENTENCE FRAGMENT - join it to the independent clause before the fragment or after (which ever one suits it best).