Reflections on Revisions

http://www.youtube.com/user/richardnixon55

Well what’s funny is that my writing process actually takes two different stances since it depends on what kind of writing I’m doing. If I’m doing an essay, then the writing process will be a bit more restricted and trying to not go off topic, which I am still having a problem with because of my second type of writing. This would be my fiction writing where my writing process completely takes a 180 and it’s easier going and less restricted. I kind of already have a bias for essay as it is because of having to do many throughout not only elementary school but a great many in high school. People always ask me for help on their essays and I say I will help you as much as I can but I may not be the best person to ask. They at first always say but you write so much, how can you not be good at essays? And this is where I have to correct them because essays and fiction are two completely different subjects and my approaches to them are not similar in anyway.

With an essay as I have said before, it’s more restrictive and with the revision process, it’s always following the instructions of the teacher, making sure I have everything that I possibly need in the paper, look for grammar and spelling errors, then turn it in and wait for the teachers response. Where with writing fiction, I take an immense amount of time, rereading my paper, searching for ways to reword a sentence or make sure that it flows properly along with the fact that I have a broader range and less restrictive way to work. This doesn’t mean to say that I don’t take my time with essays either and that I just rush through my work. I always revise and try to see where certain things may have gone wrong but I just know for a fact that my heart isn’t really full on into the subject. How sad is that? Revising always brings good benefits whether it be an essay or a story of fiction. It’s very important to do and is always crucial to the writing process as a whole. Some people to have different ways of doing it.


Some of the revisions I plan on making in my paper are making it clear who the speaker is instead of just saying it or her. It makes it unclear to the reader and I sometimes to have the habit of doing this. I will also go through my in-text citations and make sure that they are correct. I wasn’t sure how to do lines from a poem so I wasn’t sure whether to include the word “lines” before the number or numbers so I’m glad it was brought to my attention. When typing out more than one line to a poem, to put a backslash so that it’s know that it’s still a part of what I’m quoting but so that the lines do not run together into a big blob. Casual language, yes this is a problem of mine because I am so used to just writing fiction now that it comes naturally to me when writing anything else so I will definitely change that so that it is a school appropriate essay. The last thing, and I really do hate when I do this, is going off topic. Where I’m trying to make it sound cohesive but ends up going off topic anyways. It’s still a work in progress but I will achieve it!

Passage from Frankenstein

"A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic structure, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch. the filthy daemon to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? (Shelley, 48).

I thought it funny because before this line came up, I thought that it might have been the monster that killed his brother. Which then I thought, what a clever but sad way to use irony. And then this line came up and I thought, well what do you know? I might actually be right. I feel that this is important to the novel since it shows how human error can bring to light the mysteries of a tragedy. Unfortunately in Victor’s case, it would be the death of his brother. His own mad creation could have killed his brother. This would then cause not only mental damage but emotional damage beyond repair. To think that he might be the cause of his death and possibly others could eat him up from the inside out and could possibly lead to suicide. I will be sad and happy if I’m actually right in my assumption. This also brings the importance of how things may happen for a reason and it becomes a chain of events that can only be stopped by undoing the original thought, which in this case, the only person that would be able to end this would be Victor himself. Though he may be very reluctant to do so since he fears the monster that he has created and all the research that he put into it at the cost of his own life expense, but then that could be the even trade off if done correctly. To repent for the life of unknown lives that could have been lost to this creature, Victor can give his own to trying to put an end to his creation and keep it from ever hurting another human being.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Frankenstein

Draft of Poem Essay

Analysis of Lady Lazarus

Lady Lazarus is a poem that seems to confuse many readers the first go around of reading it. Since there are so many forms of imagery in this poem, one may read a line, but then become confused when they read the next. So then, you must re-read it again and again, at least 4 or 5 times should do it, to fully comprehend and get a clear image of what’s being said. Everyone will have their own interpretation of the images they see, so here’s what I found in reading this poem 4 to 5 times.

In the fourth and fifth line, it says, “A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade” (Plath, 4-5). By first glance, one may see that the person in this poem may have been Jewish and locked away in a Nazi concentration camp. But then to move onto stanza nine, it says, “What million filaments, The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see” (Plath, 25-27). This may confuse readers because then one might think that the lady is not in a concentration camp but in a circus show and is known as the freak of the show. And then throughout the rest of the poem, your mind is stuck on the circus act and how this might outrage the lady and inflict on her emotions that are being denied the right to show themselves and speak up. The lady wants to die and let that be the end of her nightmare, but “they” bring her back and put her back on display for all to see.

She calls herself, “The big strip tease” (Plath, 29). As she is being put on display against her will. Then what also makes it seem like a circus show are these next couple of lines, “For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart—— It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood” (Plath, 58-63). Saying that there is a charge for these items brings forth even stronger within my mind the image of a warped and twisted circus with this lady being the main attraction. What also gets me with these two stanzas are that I picture the lady being wrapped head to toe in bandages sort mummy like if you will. To have slits for eyes, like a cats, and have scars old and new all over her body that you would see where bandages are falling apart at certain spots on her body. All in all, a form of monster that’s still human in some sense but plays the role of being half dead and half alive.

This poem seems like it would fit perfectly well, in the sense of imagery and wording that is, in a Stephen King novel. He is known for turning something that could be completely off putting to most, into something even more gruesome but in a way where it’s elegant; if that makes any sense at all. I don’t mean to say that it sounds pleasing to the ears, but that it’s not as gory, well for this poem anyways. There is a part of this poem that I do not understand and feel that it’s a bit out of place in this poem because it throws different images into the reader’s mind. These lines are the following, “A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling” (Plath, 76-78). It doesn’t seem to fit with the circus act theme that plays throughout the poem and then the images just still onto single objects, the ring, a cake made of soap and a gold filling. Where does this apply to the poem? I have no clue and it certainly throws me off whenever I go back and re-read it again.
Since I have talked much about imagery, let’s also talk about something that is underlined throughout this poem but one would not see it unless they read close enough. In some form, there is dialogue. Now of course, there are no quotations telling us that a person is indeed speaking, but this entire poem is of one lady, telling us what is happening. So in fact, the entire poem is one set of dialogue! Though in this case, it would be called a soliloquy since it is only one person speaking and it’s really to her-self that she is saying all this to. The readers are more of like an outside audience looking in at her “life”. A line that really captures this meaning of dialogue is, “And I am a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die” (Plath, 19-21). She is not only giving a slight description of herself, but is also showing the monstrous side of her by comparing herself to a cat with nine lives.

She also mentions other “monstrous” figures such as Lucifier, God, Doktor and Enemy. Doktor could very well mean the person or person’s that keep bringing her back to life and how she mentions Lucifier and God because in truth since she has been brought back from the dead, she can neither go to heaven nor hell. And her Enemy are all of the above plus the people that come to see her as the freak show. She considers them all enemies, which is why at the ending, it says, “Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air” (Plath, 82-84). This stanza here brings together just how much anger and animosity she has built up and makes one wonder if next time she is brought back from the dead, will she release hell onto the people that do so? I hope so would anyways.

Though I speak about dialogue, imagery, I believe, is the most important thing that this poem provides. With such vivid details and words that bring to the fore front of the mind images in which you have either seen before or never thought you would see in your lifetime or ever thought existed. Who of our generation would know what a “Nazi lampshade” looks like or “a right foot as a paper weight”? It’s gruesome but our minds let the information sink in and try to create what it might look like, and the outcomes will always be different for each person since each person sees things differently.

In the end though, this poem requires quite a bit of thorough reading and repetition of certain lines because you may read it once and see something but then read it again and see something completely different. As for me, this poem brought a macabre circus to mind with Lady Lazarus as its main attraction and this was done with all of the lines of imagery and descriptive words throughout the poem.


Works Cited
Plath, Sylvia Lady Lazarus, from Collected Poems, Harper Collins Publisher, 1960.
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178961

Poem I felt strongly about

The poem that I connected to the most, in a weird kind of way is Lady Lazarus by: Sylvia Plath. The first time I read this poem, I found it a bit repulsive but interesting. So I read it again and again and after the fifth or sixth time of reading it, I saw certain lines that pulled at me strongly and was wondering why. I think the only way I can explain this is by first pointing out the lines that got to me in the first place.

“Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies” (lines 28-30).

Now this stanza can be interpreted in many different ways. I certainly took it in many different ways at first, but then I saw that it connected with an emotion that I feel strongly about. I am in general a very shy person and I don’t liked to be put on the spot that often or at all really. So when a teacher would praise me for doing something right and they did it….in front of the whole class, I would shrink away and curse at the teacher under my breath. It made me feel like all eyes were on me, making me the “big strip tease” as the line says and it became embarrassing. The poem itself has a different meaning for this stanza and I think that it means that this woman would be put on in a show for all to see, like in a circus act. This next set of stanza’s explains it quite well;

“For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood” (lines 58-63).

It creates more of the circus act atmosphere, even if it is a macabre form of it. This may be why I like it. It seems like a poem that would be used in a Stephen King novel. I tend to go towards the unusual and not normally liked by people. But I think this why people like me as well, because I go for the weird and unusual. I like things that go into heavy description and create an image into my mind and make me see something that I have no prior knowledge of but know that somewhere, it exists. In this case, a woman that has nine lives and eats men.

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/178961