Metacognitive Reflection #1

My participation in the socratic circle was limited. Not having read the proper source brought me into the experience completely unprepared, and as such I had little to say. Reflecting on my participation and learning is difficult because I was under such exceptional circumstances; the whole experience was not indicative of my common role in a group. I could be described as "uninvolved". Unfortunately, it wasn't a very meaningful experience -- there's no more to be said.

Revision

You call this literature? Mk. II

Looking through the "Literature" section of the newspaper and expecting to find articles on Woolf and Morrison, Pound and Hazlitt, I was astonished to see "Dan Brown" littered all over the place like candy wrappers in a field, and I realized that the place of literature in society has changed for the worst. This is not to criticise Brown, but what I find appalling is how a bestseller, based on plot instead of arguments and thematic content, is what defines what our society talks and thinks about.

Popular literature nowadays is of exceedingly low quality. Chapters, supposed to bookstore, "aiming to achieve Wal-Mart excellence", has candles and pens at the front of the store now. The tables nearest the entrance are covered with shiny, colourful bestsellers written by Dan Brown and anything with Oprah's Book Club's seal of approval sticker, while the rest of the books are at the back. This is a reflection of how today, most people read what Oprah tells them read, find it at the front of Chapters, and are satisfied. The select few of us who actually want to read more of an author's work are hardly able to find anything else he wrote in the store. It seems most people want what is generally considered "best," without doing any research, digging through piles of books, or finding the overarching narrative of an author's career. After all, it is much easier just to read the author that the New York Times deems "Dazzlingly unique" and rely on the most accessible opinion.

It seems everyone wants to "escape." Everyone wants to read for enjoyment and to experience situations and ideas that are easy to relate to when they are reading. Because of this, many people choose to simply read best-sellers. However, great and challenging writers like Brand and Rhys and Joyce and Chesterton can inform and inspire as well as delight. This is the true purpose of literature; it is what makes us human. And if we are reading clichéd, predictable books, I'm concerned about us, and, more importantly, where humanity is headed.

Poetry Analysis

"A Fire Truck" by Richard Wilbur

"A Fire Truck" is good poetry, intended for anyone who has experienced something that completely absorbs their attention. The author's purpose, to recreate those feelings with a speeding fire truck as the subject, is successfully achieved through transparent structure and effective use of rhetorical devices.

Transparent structure is evident in how the poem is clearly divided into four stanzas that progress in plainly chronological order: the first discusses the narrator's immediate perception of the truck, the second regards the connotations of the truck, the third involves the narrator's internal reflections on the truck in the moment, and the fourth describes the lasting impression of the experience after the truck has gone. The fact that the poem is simple and proceeds directly in short basic steps, in much the same way as the narrator's thoughts, creates an overall impression of the non-stop torrent of experience caused by the truck.

The first stanza is characterized by its descriptive language: "shocked street", "skittering to the curb", "redness, brass, ladders, and hats", "blurring to sheer verb". This use of imagery, alliteration, consonance and assonance creates a strong impression of the truck's physical presence, which is often what is first perceived when experiencing something new. Particularly the words "blurring to sheer verb" should be noted: the implication is that the truck's force of presence is so overwhelming that an observer can only describe it in terms of verbs, unable to use sophisticated parts of speech. The second stanza is one great personification, illustrating the truck as a symbol of simplicity and presence: "thought is degraded action", the message of the "headlong bell" (a personification), implies that the truck, could it express itself, would not bother with airy, abstracted analyses in the way most humans do at all times. In the third stanza the narrator's astonishment is clear. The periodic exclamatory sentence "beautiful, heavy, unweary, loud, obvious thing!" conveys the strength of the truck's impression in the narrator's mind; he must struggle to spout as much description as possible before finishing a thought. Suddenly, his mind is "purged of nuance", and the analogy "all I was brooding upon has taken wing", which compares tangled thoughts to baby birds with the nest symbolizing the narrator's mind, displays how the narrator has become like the truck in having lost the capacity to over-analyze. The third stanza perfectly concludes how the experience of the truck, as it "howl[s] beyond hearing" (a highly evocative alliteration), has made a valuable impression on the narrator: its "phoenix-red simplicity", that sensation of being purged by pure experience, is something to remember. The reader is left as calm, collected and empty as the narrator; the feeling is breathtaking. Clearly, "A Fire Truck" is an effective poem.

Paragraphs for Evaluation II

Paragraph 3:

This sample is an example of poor writing. Well-communicated as it is, the content is weak and wanders from the topic. Initially, the author's claim is that "the power of office has steadily increased since 1867"; throughout the rest of the essay, this point is abandoned and, in fact, contradicted. The first supporting point, that "the decisions of the men who worked with [Macdonald] were often reflections of his individual vision", establishes that even in the past, the Prime Minister has had a lot of power and influence. A logical next step, then, would be to describe how much the influence of the Prime Minister and the government has expanded. Instead, a weakness of government (it has "proliferated into an enormously complicated network of administration") is described. Suddenly, the specific influence of the Prime Minister, who "holds the nation's purse, dominates the Parliament, chooses the men who run the country and is ultimately responsible for their actions", is discussed, with no reference to the power of office on the whole. Concluding weakly, the author states that "the Prime Minister is still easily the most powerful man in the country" (a truism, and quite unrelated to the initial claim) with no supporting evidence, instead arguing that "despite the growing responsibilities of the provinces", the new claim is true. Each of the author's points is well articulated and accurate for the most part, but they form no cohesive argument, making the essay confusing and frustrating to read.

The First Five Methods of Development

Process - "The Spider and the Wasp" by Alexander Petrunkevitch

This sample is an example of good writing because the style is perfectly fitted to the content. Beginning by introducing and explaining every possible piece of relevant data in a thorough and scientific way fits appropriately into the deductive structure of the essay. What is especially brilliant is the way that each piece of underlying data contributing to our understanding of the main process (the actual encounter between the tarantula and digger wasp), like the nature of the tarantula's tactile responses and the wasp's reproductive cycles, is its own smaller process. Each of these processes is described succintly with frequent but short pauses which provide vital information, such as "the eyesight of tarantulas is poor"; the main process itself then requires less explanation. The overall effect is akin to a good mystery novel: the scene is set, and all of the necessary evidence is presented, but some facts do not seem entirely relevant until the crucial moment when the curtains are drawn away and the truth glares the reader in the face. In the essay, the presentation of many sub-processes beforehand is useful, because at the "climax" of the essay (when the interaction between the animals is described), all of the (at first seemingly unrelated) details, like the tarantula's breeding and living conditions ("deep cylindrical burrows"), collapse into one perfectly clear, yet mysterious whole: the wasp is optimally engineered to destroy the tarantula. It can even take its sweet time getting the job done perfectly. But how the tarantula is deceived can't be told, even from direct observation of the phenomenon and a researched understanding of all the parts involved. As the essay is informative, surely the author's purpose is to educate, intrigue and entertain the audience in this way. Developing the essay by processes fits the content very well because of the way processes combine to inform and excite the reader. All of the processes are detailed effectively; each is developed chronologically, and interrupted only for immediately relevant information. Combining form and function in this way makes for an extremely effective essay.

Paragraphs for Evaluation I

Paragraph 1:

This sample is poor writing because it lacks direction. Each sentence makes a new assertion which relates to the topic, but there are no demonstrations or explanations of any of the content. The thesis could be "the present day revolution in education has been a long time on its way", but the actual history and circumstances influencing education are never discussed, and neither is the "revolution" itself; what the thesis actually is is very unclear. As a stand-alone piece of writing, it is uninformative because it only refers to ideas and events abstractly without specific examples. This shows a poor sense of audience. On the whole, the paragraph is unspecific and fails to advance understanding.

Paragraph 2:

This sample has strong content, made useless by a weak thesis and awkward style. The central claim is clear and obvious in the first sentence: "weather has its effect on how most people feel". Unfortunately, this is about as much a truism as "light has its effect on how most people see". On the other hand, the thesis is well-supported with many varied (as much as is possible given the topic) and effective examples, from sun to rain to snow. The effectiveness of these examples is impeded by the sentences "not only does nearly everyone talk about the weather..." and "a continued period of rainy weather..."; they are entirely unnecessary as they restate the content of adjacent sentences almost exactly. The writer's purpose is further obscured by uninteresting vocabulary ("a nice bright, sunny day... [makes people feel]... cheery and bright") and unnecessary words ("Myself, nothing makes me..."). Overall, this piece is unoriginal and uninteresting.

Good and Bad Writing

Examples of Bad Writing:

"There is an individual": This example is bad writing because it "has no direction" and "gets hyped up"; the thesis (my paraphrase), "everything in the world just may be precisely what it is", is revisited many times, under the needlessly pretentious title "ethical relativism", and is left thoroughly undeveloped by the end of the essay. A priceless quote: "It has been said that ethical relativist's [sic] are believed to think ethical relativism is true" (my emphasis). Are you kidding!?

"This change": This example is bad writing because it "is too clever by half". The whole (run-on) sentence could be summarized, with minimal loss of detail, as "this helps".

"a child that is lost": This example is bad writing because it "tells lies" and "has no direction". The fact that religion is sometimes present in the presence of parents does not mean that it is useless in the absence of parents. Also, the initial thesis is "how is it said that people have such strong emotions from a science experiment", but somehow the paragraph concludes talking about God and Freud, with no mention of the origins of the universe. The only link between those two is maybe that they are deterministic scientific theories, whose methods probably imply that the universe is a "science experiment", but this connection goes totally unmentioned.

Examples of Good Writing:

"The Spawning of the Capelin": This example is good writing because it is highly descriptive and precise, while maintaining conciseness. The author's awareness of the audience (Scientific American readers) is clear through the amount well-condensed relevant (factual and emotional) information.

"The Genes for Color Vision": This example is good writing because it is well-directed and is highly aware of its audience. Personally, I found the introductory quote misleading (I was expecting the article to read more like a science textbook), but because the piece is intended to expose and illustrate the scientific phenomenon of sight instead of explain its reasons, the quote is well-placed. It contains an excellent poetic image to demonstrate what sight is and how it works. The mechanical description of the eye is clear and unhindered by theories or specific jargon.

"Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?": This is example is good writing because it gives concise, logically accurate demonstrations of its (non-trivial) arguments. It also effectively exposes the current interests of science as compared to the typical person's interests (Scientific American exists for this purpose).

Reflection:

When assessing the quality of writing, consideration of the audience is crucial because different people will respond very differently to different kinds of style and content. Despite the fact that I did not respond positively to a quote from a 19th-century poet in a science article, my understanding of the author's intended audience allowed me to correctly assess the writing as good. However, making the realization I did was quite difficult, simply because I began reading with an expectation very different from that of the author, so I quickly became confused and upset. The audience is the most decisive factor when assessing writing because reactions vary widely from person to person; if you are not the intended audience, even if the writing is good, you are likely not to appreciate it. The audience is a very difficult factor to assess because it requires a thorough understanding of the writing's context and a willingness to step outside yourself for the sake of accuracy; if you're at all like me, this can be very difficult.