THESIS STATEMENT

One of our assignments for this semester is to write a position paper. The first thing that we all should do is to come out with a thesis statement that will summarize our focus on the story. I choose to do the story “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams. At first, I had difficulty in producing my thesis statement because I was not very clear with it even we had learned about it before. What I mean here is the way to write a thesis statement. At that moment, I had two issues that I wanted to focus on but I haven’t decided which one is the best. So, I created two thesis statements; the first one regarding the character of Stanley which is “Violence is Stanley’s way of showing power over women” and the second one regarding the character of Blanche which is “Blanche’s refusal to accept reality trapped her in world of fantasy”. During the class, Dr. Edwin asked all of us to write our thesis statement on the board. I think this is very effective activity for both the lecturer and the students as it saves a lot of time. For lecturer, it makes Dr. Edwin’s work easier because he can look at many thesis statements and corrected them at the same time as they were written on the board. As for the students, we can learn something from our friends’ thesis statement. Besides, we will know what story that our friends work on.

Talking about my thesis statement, I choose to write on the first one. Dr. Edwin liked my last sentence ‘…power over women’ but he did not like me to use the word ‘showing power’ and asked me to replace it with something else. So, I changed the word with ‘using power’ but he still did not approve it. Then, I decided to write my second thesis statement on the board because I think it sounds better than the first one. Luckily, Dr. Edwin accepted it and I was happy!

Intan Shuhada Masri
134186

This Is Just To Say

I admit that sometimes I feel scared in Dr. Edwin’s class even though there’s nothing wrong with him or his teaching. However, no matter how scared I am, I always enjoy his class because I feel lots of input was given to me. For instance, in the previous lesson, we learned something about the poem “This Is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams. Honestly, before he explained to us what the poem was all about, I never imagined that it could have other meaning which has something to do with sex. When I first looked at the poem, I just read it, understood it, and perceived plums as fruits and nothing else. Only after Dr. Edwin’s explanation that I started to see the poem in a different way. Now, I realize and more appreciate the beauty and the ambiguity of words and how sometimes, we can fooled by the use of certain words, even simple word like ‘plums’.

Intan Shuhada Masri
134186

Daedalus and Icarus

We were asked by Dr. Edwin to find pictures of “The Fall of Icarus” on the internet. I found many pictures about this but I didn’t know which kind of picture that Dr. Edwin preferred. There are two pictures that caught my attention which are pictures of two men who were flying but one of them was nearly fell down to earth. So, I am very confident that these were the pictures which Dr. Edwin wanted to see. Unfortunately, I was wrong! The right picture was a picture that consists of farmers with their horses and also a ship which was sailing to their destination. In the first place, I never think that this picture could have any relation to the story but after I looked at it a few times, I realized that there was a drowning man who was probably asking for help. However, nobody heard it or probably pretend not to hear it. According to what I have read on the internet, the farmers might pretend that they heard nothing because the death of the man brought nothing to them. His death is not an important failure to them. The same thing goes to the ship that might have seen Icarus but they just ignored him because they need to reach their destination. After I relate and recheck the image with the story in the textbook, I just realize that this is the appropriate picture to represent the story.

Intan Shuhada Masri
134186