Beyond Expectations

I have had a lot of fun writing my research paper about the Phantom Tollbooth. I ended up deciding to focus on the importance of perspective in the novel, rather than identifying The Hero's Journey like I originally planned. To be more specific, my thesis was that "Milo saved the day not because he gained new knowledge, but because he gained new perspective." I made this change because I felt it was more close-to-home in my own mind and heart, and I figured it would make a more significant argument.

Here is a masterfully rendered video of me telling you what you just read:

And, for those curious fans of mine, this was my writing process

I had found plenty of examples of "perspective is more important than knowledge" in the book, so in a very rough-hewn way I slapped down as many as I could think of onto the page. Then I picked the ones that would tie together well, fleshed them out, rearranged them and polished them.

While I was doing all of that, I got feedback from my classmates (special thanks to Robbie!); I got ideas from people I had contacted on Goodreads and Facebook; and I found lots of useful articles and sources through BYU's Harold B. Lee Library website, lib.byu.edu. These sources of input helped me figure out what was most important to my paper and what I shouldn't care about so much, and I'm really glad because I had a lot of useless stuff in there to begin with.

In the end, I think the thing that helped me most to write the paper was my love for the subject. The Phantom Tollbooth has been a favorite book of mine for a long time, and I'm glad I finally got to sit down and take a more formal look at what makes me love it so much.

The Journey's End

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Initially, I had no idea what direction to take for my paper. I knew I wanted to write about Anthem, and I knew I wanted to write about either Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass, and I knew I wanted to tie the two together somehow, but I really didn't know which way to go.

Then I looked back at the Personal Literary Narrative I'd written about Anthem, and the thing I said I loved the most about this novel was the language. And then, as I thought about it, I realized that all of the papers I've written in this class so far have had some sort of linguistic twist. Language is my thing, apparently. And since language is such an integral part of both novels anyway, it seemed like a good topic to discuss.

But even though I had a topic, I still didn't know exactly which route to take. My first idea was actually to write about how language controls thought. I circulated this vague idea around to a few of my friends, who gave me some decent feedback and suggested that I talk about how language affects identity.

"I Love It When a Plan Comes Together"

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From the beginning I knew that I wanted to write my paper about the narrator of The Book Thief who just so happens to be Death. Basically I had my paper planned from the beginning, it was simply lacking social proof and a solid structure. I knew where I was going, but I was still figuring out a details. Throughout this entire process I've received a lot of weird looks as I explained my paper to those around me. However, after the initial shock of my topic wore off, most people were willing to offer advice and some even got excited about it.

Research, on the other hand, was not as easy to come by. I scoured the Internet looking for anything that was even remotely related to my topic of the personification of death. Then I scoured the BYU library, and finally the public library. Eventually, I found an encyclopedia about mythology that had dozens of representations of death listed and explained. After that I had more ideas of what to search for, and research became an easy task. As I found those different representations of death, it became easier to compare them to The Book Thief. 

Down the Rabbit Hole of Writing: A Survivor's Tale

It’s hard to exactly pinpoint when the idea for this final paper really began. In some ways, it’s been building throughout this entire semester, becoming refined in each of the smaller papers we have written on Alice in Wonderland. From talking with Professor Burton in the paper conferences we've had after each one, I did start this paper with the intent of talking about existential meaning in some way. But I think the real beginning came as I went back to one of my favorite books, The Count of Monte Cristo and wrote about why I love it so much. I think a lot of times, being English majors, we forget this important detail as we get so focused in getting an essay done—that we love books. In this whole process, the only thing that kept me from despairing over my attempt to compare Alice in Wonderland to The Count of Monte Cristo was the constant reminder of why I love the book: because of its fascinating ending.