It's The End of The [Paper] as We Know It

This video is a summarizes the details and theme of my final paper. I uploaded it to YouTube, and then posted the link to my Facebook wall. The post received several "likes" and I heard from several people personally that they watched it and enjoyed it. I hope you may say the same. Below, you will also find a link to the google doc of my paper.

Final Paper

The Long and Winding Road

In the early stages of conception for my paper I, like many people, had no idea what to write about. Even in the middle stages of conception when things we supposed to be more solidified and serious, I found myself wondering how I was going to put my ideas together. Everyone else was coming up with themes of feminism or some other interesting topic that tied their favorite book to Alice in Wonderland. I quickly chose the topic of a biographical comparison simply because I couldn't think of anything else. I always had the thought “I'll change it later when I think of something better.” After a while though, it didn't seem like I was going to think of anything better.

Out On The Tiles

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Last week I was able to aquire my final stage of social proof. I was feeling pretty confident with where my paper was going and at that point I was on page five. It seemed to me that I was nearing the home stretch. I only had a few more pages to go, and I only needed to go through one more round of social proof. For my "expert" level of social proof, I chose to speak to Dr. Westover, a professor here at BYU. Although he's not a specialist in the topic I am am writing on, he does have a Ph.D. in English, and as a result I found his insights very helpful. I sent him an email and presented my thesis to him and the direction I was going and he responded with several ideas. Here is what he wrote: 

Perpetual Change

As I was working on my paper, I feel like I lost a little of my new found enthusiasm. The task feels daunting once again. I realize that there is still much work ahead of me, but I do take comfort in one thing, and that is the two pages we were required to write and bring in for review a few weeks ago. Looking back at those two pages, I noticed that all of my ideas are very shallow and unfinished. One step I took for this assignment for the 4-5 page draft was to go back and flesh out all of those ideas. Although I have a tad bit of anxiety about how to pull of this paper as a whole, I do feel confident in the ideas I currently have. After they are developed a little more and expanded upon, I'll have a pretty solid portion of my paper. From there it should be easy to continue to develop on the theme of my thesis and keep the ideas flowing. I'm very interested to see where my paper ends up in its finished form.

Dazed and Confused

As the time for writing my paper draws near, I find myself reverting back to a state of anxiety and confusion as to how I'm going to pull this task off. I still have a good framework in mind of how I'm going to structure my paper, and what I want to write about, but I know there is a lot lacking. Since I'm doing a biographical comparison of Adams and Carroll based on similarities in their writing, I decided to check out biographies on both of them last week. I've been putting it off, but I know the next step is to start investing serious time to peruse through them and solidify the material I plan on using for my paper. I think I have just about all the feedback I need. More feedback is never a bad thing, but I've been noticing a lot of repetition in the suggestions I've been receiving, so it's apparent to me that I need to just quit stalling and dive right in. The time is now.

Misty Mountain Hop

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I attended a symposium that related the themes of Nature, Fairy Tales, and Songs of the Hobbit. The first speaker was a junior who spoke about Emerson's essay entitled "Nature." He highlighted some of the main points about how we connect to nature and how we can receive revelation from being alone in nature. Next was a graduate student who talked about fairy tales and the frame stories that often accompany them. She focused on one particularly obscure fairy tale called "The Yellow Dwarf." She emphasized how this tale was one that lacked a happy ending, but was meant to be more of a teaching tool. The Third and final speaker presented a paper entitled "Tunes of a Tale" focusing on the songs of the Hobbit. She mentioned how long lines of poetry in the literature we read can often make that literature boring, but in The Hobbit is serves as more of a way to progress the story along. All three talks had interesting elements that I benefited from and new things that I learned.

The Song Remains The Same

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For this week's build to enthusiasts, I went the route of posting on another blog about Watership Down. Fortunately, I did get a response in short amount of time, but unfortunately the author who responded didn't know anything about Lewis Carroll and really had nothing to offer me that I didn't already know. No worries though! It was nice to get a reply. It furthered my faith in the probability of getting feedback through blogging. Here's the conversation:

Robbie

Hi, I just read your post and I admire your enthusiasm for Watership Down. I really liked the insights and quotes from the author your provided from the introduction to the 2005 edition. This book has been among my favorites since a high school teacher first recommended it to me several years ago. Currently I’m working on comparing Watership down to Alice and Wonderland, and I've found several comparisons between the two and they’re a lot more similar than I would have thought. In addition to literary comparisons, I’m doing biographical comparisons between the authors. However, I don’t know how to tie the two parts together to make it an interesting topic. I’m thinking about arguing that the similarities between the two authors is responsible for the similarities of their writing, but I don’t know if it’s strong enough. Do you have an suggestions for an angle I could take, or an interesting way to tie biographical comparisons with literary comparisons? I would appreciate any feedback, or ideas you may have.

Thanks for writing your blog. I’m excited to see what new discoveries I can make here.

Reply

• 

  March 24, 2014
  www.pineneedlesandpapertrails.com

  Thanks for your kind comments about my blog and the Watership Down post. I am intrigued by your work on comparing the book with Alice in Wonderland and investigating the common themes of the authors’ lives. I know next to nothing about Lewis Carroll, so I can’t help at all there! Richard Adams, however, has given many interviews and, of course, there is his autobiography for research sources. Please check back in to let me know about your progress!
Fortunately, I still had a lot of time left to find feedback so I posted on another blog that was comparing Tolkien's Lord of the Rings with Watership Down. Perfect! I explained how I was also doing a literary comparison and asked specific questions about how my thesis and topic could be improved. Unfortunately, I received no rely and seem to be in about the same position as I was before. However, I remain optimistic that I will get some good feedback in the next few days (hopefully also from my peers who have yet to comment and give feedback on my previous post *cough *cough.)

Over The Hills And Far Away

Expedition of Columbus

I had a very productive day at the library doing further research for new sources to incorporate into my topic. While spending two hours in the library searching for new biographical sources I could use to support my thesis, I not only felt like Christopher Columbus sailing around the world, I came up with the idea to include the literary movements of each author as part of my analysis. This led me to books on Modernism and the Victorian Era which characterize Adams and Carroll respectively. Here is the latest version of my thesis statement included in my introductory paragraph:

"Everyday, individuals all over the world are experiencing new things. These experiences shape the way these individuals think, and contribute largely to who they are. The same is especially true of writers. A writer's environment plays a major role in the perspective he takes when writing a novel. As seen in the examples of Richard Adams and Lewis Carroll, the similarity in their country of origin, family background, and social status all play a significant role in the similar themes and ideas these writers convey to their audiences, as evident throughout each of their texts."

The following is a list comprising my annotated bibliography:

Dancing In The Dark

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This is my working thesis and a two page draft of my thoughts up to this point. It's much less of a draft and more of my pre-write. I like to think of it as my thoughts and outline in paragraph form, which has made it very easy to start conceptualizing my paper. These ideas are all incomplete and are to be fleshed out in greater detail, but they should provide enough direction to know where I'm going with my topic. That being said, I'd like to get some more direction and feedback. I have a lot of good comparison to make, but does my paper really offer anything to the academic community? To find the answer to that question, I want ask a couple more.

1. What other direction/angle could I take in addition to the biographical approach?

2. How can I present the literary comparison based on biographical background in such a way as to make it interesting to my audience and provide real stakes of argumentation?

One Little Victory

I'll have to admit that I've been a tad apprehensive about getting my peer feedback. I posted on a blog about Watership Down sometime last week, but the results simply weren't showing up. It was looking like I'd have to resort to asking English majors in my French class for feedback. I wasn't entirely convinced that they would be enthusiastic about reading what I have so far.

This woman feels something close to my level of excitement right now
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Something great happened though! I checked the blog and the author responded to my question! They not only responded, but gave me some excellent biographical background I was unaware of, along with some great tips for directions I could take my paper that I had never even considered. I'm so glad that our previous assignment pushed me in a direction that I would never have moved toward on my own. My paper isn't written yet, but already I feel so enthusiastic and confident about what will become of it thanks to this one little victory. Check out the comments from the blog below.

Here, There and Everywhere

Open Clipart

At this point in the process, it seems that my ideas have been all over the place. I've been very unsure about my topic throughout the entire ordeal...that is until today. By creating this "paper shell" and reflecting back on what initially inspired me to pick my topic, I've realized that there's a lot that I can do with it. I've also realized for the first time the I'm super stoked to write this paper. I've been dreading it from the abstract perspective of "what am I doing?!" Now, however, I realize that it's actually a work in progress. It's becoming something, rather than just sitting in a loose pile of thoughts in my mind. The thing I owe credit to for this stage of progress is the out line I initially made when we received the assignment to spend time with our book and "rediscover" why we ever liked it to begin with. Here are my ideas from that time.

No Quarter

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In the fantasy world of books, anything can happen. Events can be as wild and fantastic as the imagination that is willing to foster them. Reality, on the other hand, is quite different. In the real world, it seems far more common that we find opposing forces pitted against one another. It's a dog-eat-dog world where no quarter is asked for, and none is given; you have to fend for yourself. Why is it this way? What is it about human nature (or animal nature as the case may be) that has the world fraught with so much turmoil when there is so much more benefit one can receive comes from cooperating with others?

“He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running.”

-Watership Down pg. 467

Rabbit Will Run

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As this Iron and Wine song states, a rabbit will no doubt run when faced with danger. That's the main theme of Watership Down. The entire book is comprised of rabbits running from one place to another; always seeking stability and a place to call their own. In a very broad sense, Watership Down is no different than any other adventure story. There are protagonists and antagonists, conflicts and resolutions, victories and defeats. This story is unique because of the way it is depicted. Adams has a very interesting way of creating his characters that gives them a legitimacy and reality with far greater than characters that are merely used for plot development. Adams rabbits are not just small furry animals running up and down a green hillside, they are a civilization with rich historical background that could rival that of the Angelo Saxons and the Galls. They have a complex language that is all their own. They have their own myths and fairy tales. There is far more to these rabbits than most characters you've read about. How does Adams do it?

Is There Anybody Out There?

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It turns out that posting my "tweethis statement" on Facebook for all to see yielded not results. So I sent it to one of my friends in Kentucky that I haven't seen since graduation four years ago. She's an English major and I figured she'd have some good things to contribute. Unfortunately, she didn't reply to the message I sent specifically to her, but I still have hope! In the mean time, I did receive some good feedback from Kate and Tori who offered some good suggestions on how my thesis could be a little more specific. Every attempt I have ever made at a thesis statement always starts out far too broad, so I'm very grateful when people offer suggestions on how I can channel my ideas and make them more concise. In addition to Kate and Tori, I asked one of my roommates to read it and he offered some suggestions on how I might lead into it a little bit better. Ultimately, writing a thesis statement is the hardest part of the whole paper. Once I can nail it down, the rest of the paper is a breeze. I'm glad then to get some casual feedback about how I can improve this task that proves the most difficult for me.

We Can Work It Out

This my general idea, so feedback and criticism are definitely welcome.

Through the examples of Lewis Carroll and Richard Adams, it is clear that an author's environment plays a major role in the perspective he takes when writing a novel. Many factors including the author's personality and country of origin play a significant role in the ideas he conveys to his audience.

Music Lyrics in Academia? Well...not quite.

Fallen Gypsies 2013

In recent years I have found that the greatest expression of my thoughts and feelings has come through writing. Probably not the type of writing you have in mind though. I'm not talking about term papers and academic scholarship, I'm talking about music. In my band, I take the primary responsibility for writing the lyrics for all of our music. I've written some things I thought were pretty strange and would never be made into songs, but every time we play a show I get to hear those words sung by my vocalist. I get to have my ideas and my feelings shared with a room full of people, (many of them strangers) and I don't anything except hide behind my drum set! It's marvelous. I get an outlet for my words without wondering what people are thinking. That can be very intimidating.

Finding Myself On Watership Down

 Whenever I walk the streets of Chicago, I marvel at what I see and I wonder if what I am experiencing is anything close to what my father experienced as a child growing up there. When I struggle to learn certain concepts in a university class, I gaze at my professor and wonder if he has ever wrestled with those same issues. Anytime I tread ground that has been trod by others, I have to stop and wonder if what I am experiencing is anything close to to what they saw, heard, and felt as they came before me. The first time I read Watership down was no different.