Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Essay writing woes...
I found it incredibly difficult to write a paper on The Sun Also Rises. I had a lot to say about the book but I found it a formidable task, condensing my thoughts into one thesis. I really wanted to find one scene and write about it and why it is the most important scene in the novel. This idea crashed and burned. I tried to remember one scene that was particularly germane to the plot and dense enough to write a paper on but none came to mind. I skimmed and skimmed searching for inspiration. I was troubled by trying to write a paper on a certain character as there is little character description in the book and a lot of the information we know about the characters comes from interpreting Hemingway's rare descriptive passages. I guess that that stupid article about not trusting Jake had me nervous and resisting a character analysis. My essay was EXTREMELY close to being about Bill Gorton and what he brings to the story. I just wasn't feeling it though. I finally settled on writing about Cohn and particular passages that pertained to him. I guess it was fine but this essay gave me seriously depressing writers block.
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2 comments:
I had the same issue when it came to supporting my argument with textual evidence. Due to Hemingway's style of writing, where most of the significant stuff is implied, I couldn't support my arguments through quotes. It seemed like as I was writing I entered panic mode trying to find quotes because the topic I was writing on was never explicitly told to you. Therefore, the essay kind of resulted in a tone consisting of, "trust me I know what I'm talking about," with quotes thrown into support minor details. Due to the large implications and the massive inferences you have to make, I would argue that this has been the hardest response paper of the quarter, when it comes to supporting with textual evidence.
The novel really is difficult to write about. There's so much going on, but so much of it is open to interpretation. As seen in the panel presentations in our hour, there are incredibly different, even opposite, interpretations on many of the scenes and characters.
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