Module C Big DOC
CORE READINGS 10 MARK REFLECTION 1.
2.
3.
4.
Link to Mod C
Link to Stimulus
One or more (three) techniques. 1xComplex 2xSimple
Evaluate your own writing.
8 MARK REFLECTION 1. Link to a style of writing from Mod C
2. Link ONE techniques (complex)
3. Evaluate your writing
Kate Tempest
The text is about inviting the audience to think! Perfect for Discursive reflections. She doesn’t TELL you
what to do, but makes you think about environment and about why we are here. The universe started billions of years ago, are we really go to ruin the earth in just 100 years? Stye is free verse performance poetry.
The text uses the imagery of space and vacuum to build atmosphere, then uses the personification of
earth to show that the earth is our mother. But, its children, us, are abusing its environment. As such, she
uses powerful pathos and ethos combined with rhetorical questions to demand and question why we are
here on this earth.
The text’s purpose is create critical thinking and confrontation, forcing readers to think about their circumstances and their world.
George Orwell
The text is about the decay of language in both academics and in politics Orwell is afraid that vague writing has made language difficult to access, and as a result, people know less about their world. This is really
emphasised with WWII as a back drop, where vague political reporting has made mass killings into “relocation of population” and diminished the very idea of the free press. Style is a persuasive essay.
The text uses plenty of anecdotes with quoted examples to show that people are deliberately being vague
so that they can prevent lesser educated people from reading academia, or to stroke their own ego. It then
uses metaphors like “euphemisms fall like soft snow on facts” to show that vague language erodes the
truth, and the impact of reality. Finally, Orwell uses his own ethos and examples to show that we should
strive to write clearly.
The text’s purpose is to preserve democracy and free critical thinking by urging people to write clearly and
without euphemisms.
Geraldine Brooks
The text is about writing and why we write. Brooks gives lots of examples of her early career and says that
experience in lots of fields such as her work as a war-reporter has given her writing lots of real-life experience to draw on. She emphasises imaginative sympathy, such as writing about women by looking at historical records. Finally, she says that writing reveals hidden history, and a good book is like a torch
dropped in to a well of darkness. Emotions therefore, and empathy, is what we need to write. Style is LECTURE, so highly informative but also didactic.
The text uses personal anecdotes to show her early career. She then uses anecdotes of things like
women’s past, or the plague village as metaphors and analogies for people with powerful emotional sympathies. The main technique is her extended metaphor of writing as a torch in a dark well, lighting up the
rungs. Finally, she uses the imagery and analogy that emotions are like furniture in a room, you can arrange it anyway you like but human emotions don’t change.
The text’s purpose is to tell you that to write, you need to draw on your own experiences and then use
emotional sympathy to create fiction from non-fiction.
Margaret Atwood – Spotty Handed Villainesses
The text is about the use of women in fiction to change the social representation of women in real life. She
says that women are too long seen in fiction as whores or angels, therefore, society has this stereotype
because we learn these lessons from novels, movies, etc. Style is semi-formal humorous speech, good for
Discursive.
The text therefore uses personal anecdotes of her experience with her daughter “a story is where something must happen”, and then she draws incredible amounts of allusion to intertextual authors like Morrison, Shakespeare, Huxley, Hardy etc to prove that a great book can also have ‘bad’ women in it. Finally,
she says in an extended metaphor that women who act badly are a way to open a new door to literature,
making the whole representation of women better.
The text’s purpose is urge readers to become writers who compose multi-faceted female characters because in real life, women are not angels or whores, they are multi-faceted people.
Gwen Harwood – Father and Child
The text is about two poems where the loss of innocence corresponds with a journey through experience.
The first poem is about a girl who steals a gun to kill an owl, loosing her naivety and prematurely gaining
maturity. The second text is a daughter struggling to find a way to accept her father’s old age, ultimately
failing. The style is Diptych Poetry with a hint of Romanticism.
The text uses extended metaphors as a main technique - both for the killing of the owl and the fruits of
the temporal (time). The intertextual allusions to Athena (owl, goddess of wisdom) as well as to King Lear
is also prevalent. The smaller metaphors or symbols are things like seasons (Pathetic Fallacy) and the
journey “we take this journey” which infers inevitable change.
The text’s purpose is convey the inevitability of change, of innocence to experience, and of the transient
(changing) Nature of people between youth, adulthood and old age.
Nam Le
The text is about META FICTION. This is a story about a guy writing a story. Le doesn’t want to write ethnic stories but he is out of ideas. In responding to his love and hate bond with father, he uses his life story
of the My Lai massacre. The father asks him not to tell it, but he insists that it is a good one. In the end, the
story is about his father burning his original story.
The text uses the irony of the META FICTION, wherein the story becomes a Eulogy (for remembering a
dead person) The imagery and metaphor focus on Nam wanting to be a cool American writer (house,
typewriter, tree outside, alcohol, white girl friend) and his father as the ethnic metaphor (cold, bad English, distant, weird). The dramatic irony is the reveal that the story we hear in the flash back anecdote is
NOT the story he wrote, but the one you are reading right now.
The text’s purpose is to show that initially, we are blinded by our own pride and prejudices. We cannot see
the love and honour and sacrifice of our parents as a result. Only with time and old age, sometimes too
late, do we realise that fact. .Through the act of writing and reading, we gain renewed perspectives and
understanding of ourselves and others.
Franz Kafka
The text is about the transformation of loved ones (who contribute to family) into parasites that are hated
by all and therefore transformed into a vermin. The other transformation is of Grete who was innocent and
now become cynical and pragmatic. The text is scary because it’s actually about old age in a Modern society. The style is Modernism plus Impressionism.
The text uses the conceit or the extended metaphor of the vermin that Gregor transforms into as a symbol of people losing love and becoming baggage. The metamorphosis is itself a metaphor for change. The
impressionism is based on the notion of you not unknowing that the text represents old age, and when
you finish reading it, you feel uneasy and disturbed. When you realise, the text has its biggest impact.
The text’s purpose is criticism of a modernist, pragmatic society where people are valued based on their
economic output.
Zadie Smith
The text is about the process of writing, and most importantly it is about a reflexive understanding of the
psychology of composition. Smith, a Post-Colonial writer creates her lecture around the notion of sharing
her fears, hopes, dreams and struggles with you the listener / reader. The process of writing, she says is
one of introspection, but also it’s one about will power, not giving up, and yet it’s also about letting your
work go.
The text uses lots of personal anecdotes which create a strong connection with the audience. It then uses
historical allusion and anecdotes of famous authors who also went through their own tough processes.
Her tone is semi-formal and often humorous, good for Discursive, and she doesn’t tell you what to do,
but prompt you to think. Finally, her speech has faint elements of pathos such as her pride, her fears her
joy, ethos in her own credential, and logos in her analogies and arguments.
The text’s purpose is provide a thinking platform for students who are interested in publishing and writing.
http://irmadriessen.nl/publicaties/that-crafty-feeling-zadie-smith/
Discursive
Persuasive
Narrative
1. Start with an personal anecdote
from a Non-Fiction source. This can
be your self or this can be someone
else. It should ideally be thought
provoking. Bonus if humorous.
1. Start with anything you like, but you
have to very quickly establish the 5
Ws.
What, Where, When, Who, Why are
basic elements of Persuasive. This is also
a form of Sign-Posting as it shows your
audience what to expect.
Orientation - This is the motivation of
your character and why they act. It includes who they are, where they are,
what they are, and then the contextual
choice of your narrative setting. If you
cannot craft a convincing setting, do not
chose creative as your form.
2. Short sweet context with hyper
dense content to show you know
your stuff. Be careful as this is infodumping facts, not opinions.
2. Short sweet context with hyper
dense content to show you know
your stuff. Your facts are LOGOS
and support your perspective.
Complication - The issue or Stimulus
is the ideal complication. If you understand how the stimulus fits into
your narrative, this is no problems.
3. Perspective Positive - explore how
the problem that you raised is actually not a problem if you happen to
be on the right side of the problem.
Anecdotes, Pathos and Logos can all
be used. Avoid strongly accusatory
language and pathos should ideally
be sarcastic or self-depreciative.
3. Pathos body. You don’t have to
do part 3 or 4 in order, but do you
need to have at least one instances
of Pathos supported by a strong
multi-part technique such as Extended Metaphor, Symbols and Motifs, Anaphora of a punchline phrase,
etc.
Resolution - As a short piece, the
ending or the resolution to the complication should occur within 400
words. This is actually just a choice,
decision, a new perspective, a profound knowledge, a reaction to a
stimuli. In most cases, keep this reaction in the Non-fiction, slice-oflife, realm.
4. Perspective Negative - now explore the people who don’t benefit
and what their gripes and their reasons are. provide the SAME tech and
quotes, mirrored.
4. Logos or Ethos body created
through real or fake interview anecdotes with people who support your
argument by providing strong backing of your logic. You can also quote
made up scholars for Ethos, or make
up a personal anecdote for ethos.
CODA - This is the point of your
story which is summed up by final introspective thoughts. It should be internal, full of imagery, have rhetorical questions, and show the completion of an arc where your character
learns something.
CROSS LINK to your audience and
the context of your target audience.
Your issue etc may not be Australian
but you now need to cross link it to a
relevant context.
Conclusion! This should include You
and I and thus WE as your main inclusive techniques. Rhetorical questions are a given, as well as imploring
individuals to act on behalf of your
perspective.
TECHNICAL CHOICES are key to
story. First of all - most people have
ZERO style. Slice of Life is normal,
but you need to generally stick to a
form. Naturalist? Urbanist? Modernist? Romanticist? Post-Modern? Pick
one.
Generally speaking I always recommend ending with a sentence that
says. “What is your choice?”
As for your usual techniques, aim for
ONE consistent motif, and one extended metaphor. ONE persistent
symbol is also ideal.
Discursive
1. Start with an personal
anecdote from a Non-Fiction
source. This can be your self
or this can be someone else.
It should ideally be thought
provoking. Bonus if humorous.
Sunday. I arrive at Brisbane airport and find the entrance surrounded by a ring of passionate protestors holding sighs demanding the release of Priya and Nades, parents to two Australian-born girls
who are now being deported to Tamil.
2. Short sweet context with
hyper dense content to show
you know your stuff. Be careful as this is info-dumping
facts, not opinions.
Refugees, Boat People. Illegals. No matter which side of the fence you’re on, the concept of Asylum
seekers has plagued Australia from 2006 when John Howard made the stopping of boats a major issue in his political campaign. The news has never since stopped, and the idea has polarised Australia
into two camps. One side, headed by the Liberal National Party, insists on iron-fisted clarity of law.
The other, Greens and most Labour politicians, insist on compassion. For us punters, its all about a
spectrum of feelings that keep us torn.
3. Perspective Positive - explore how the problem that
you raised is actually not a
problem if you happen to be
on the right side of the problem. Anecdotes, Pathos and
Logos can all be used. Avoid
strongly accusatory language
and pathos should ideally be
sarcastic or self-depreciative.
As for compassion, I’ve never considered myself in-compassionate, and indeed, the idea that I would
chose to send two little girls who have never known anything but Australia is terrible. The conscience
suffers because one cannot forget that at the airport it is the residents of Biloela that are out in force.
4. Perspective Negative - now
explore the people who don’t
benefit and what their gripes
and their reasons are. provide
the SAME tech and quotes,
mirrored.
Conversely, I am reminded not of the red-faced Dutton arguing for the the family to be seen as Illegals and not people, but rather something that Peter Reeves, Minister to John Howard and the inventor of Stop the Boats once said.
As a second generation migrant, I have rarely if ever thought about the notion of my own status as an
Australian. Though my parents did not have a navy passport when we arrived, and spoke no English,
I was born with one, and I’ve only ever spoken English as my primary language. The idea that I, a
person who has lived here all my life can be deported legally is a frightening one, and one that makes
me want to know the answers to some difficult questions.
When interviewed by the ABC, one supporter says that the Tamil family has been perfect neighbours,
and that “They’re just trying to live their lives, what’s the fault in that?”
When I consider the issue from the eyes of a bystander who is open to sympathy and human empathy, it’s difficult to say that something as fickle as law should be so cruel as to punish a family for
seeking what we already have in abundance - a middle class life in a great country.
Years after his policy, Reeves was confronted by the ABC, who introduced to him the brother of a
man he deported to Afghanistan, who was then murdered. When asked if he regret the decision,
Reeves stated that, ‘I do, and I feel sorry for this young man. However, you have to understand that I
am not ONE person, but a public official. My elected duty is not to feel personally about issues, but
to serve Australia and Australian national interests to the best of my abilities.”
This, I think, offers some insight into the strange cruelty of the government. The vocal minority is
critical and upset, but the government is formed from democratic voting. If so, their decision reflects
our will as Australians.
CROSS LINK to your audience and the context of your
target audience. Your issue
etc may not be Australian but
you now need to cross link it
to a relevant context.
As for the issue of the Tamil family, we cannot have the final say because we are torn between the
right of the law and the right of what is common sense human empathy.
Generally speaking I always
recommend ending with a
sentence that says. “What is
your choice?”
Perhaps, it is in the next election that our voice and our answer can truly be known. If again we vote
to strengthen our boarders, then that is the democratic will of the Australian people.
When the two cannot meet in the middle, then it is time for us to think about what we value as a
society - the rules that we put into place, or the fact that one family is asking for our mercy to have
the smallest margin of what most of us already have.
Persuasive
Universal (human rights) + Local (Tamil family, right here, right now) + Relevant (refugee crisis)
1. Start with anything you like,
but you have to very quickly
establish the 5 Ws.
What, Where, When, Who,
Why are basic elements of Persuasive. This is also a form of
Sign-Posting as it shows your
audience what to expect.
On Sunday, Two children who have never known a country called Tamil, and who has only ever
known Australia will be deported for no fault of their own. What will they think when they land, I
wonder. When they arrive at a war torn country devoid of fresh drinking water and is left outside
a motel with no home, what will they think of Australia.
It’s a cruel world that has come to punish two innocents for the humanitarian plight of their parents. It’s a screwed up system that looks away from humanity when a simple act of sympathy
will save a whole family’s future.
As the family from Biloela is deported from our shores, we need to do a bit of soul searching.
2. Short sweet context with
hyper dense content to show
you know your stuff. Your
facts are LOGOS and support your perspective.
Refugees. Boat people. CRIMINALS. ILLEGALS.
The issue of asylum seekers appears to have plagued us as Australians like a bad STD since the
time of John Howard. More and more, it seems the government is trying to out do the last government on how cruel they can be. In 2019, Australia is now the 2nd best country with the highest quality of life in the world. If so, why is this happening? What happened to a fair shake of the
sauce bottle?
3. Pathos body. You don’t
have to do part 3 or 4 in order, but do you need to have
at least one instances of Pathos supported by a strong
multi-part technique such as
Extended Metaphor,
Symbols and Motifs,
Anaphora of a punchline
phrase, etc.
Don’t look at me, and don’t look at the news. Just think that you are a child who has never
known a nation other than Australia. Just a week ago you were in year 2, attending school with
your mates. Now, you’re going to a hell hole you’ve never heard off, dragged away by angry
guards who somehow take it personally that you should be sent away. What does that teach
this young child about the world? About Australia?
4. Logos or Ethos body created through real or fake interview anecdotes with people who support your argument by providing strong
backing of your logic. You
can also quote made up
scholars for Ethos, or make
up a personal anecdote for
ethos.
Take Minister Dutton, who has informed us that the rule of law is above human compassion and
that if we bend this rule, there will be chaos! People will die! That the boarder will collapse! I
think Mr Dutton has forgotten the incident where he allowed two attractive, white, wealthy
middle class french girls to stay despite their expired visa and their ILLEGAL, CRIMINAL status.
Conclusion! This should include You and I and thus WE
as your main inclusive techniques. Rhetorical questions
are a given, as well as imploring individuals to act on behalf of your perspective.
I think that we should all take a step back and look at what we have become as the citizens of
the second best country in the world.
When we think about the Tamil family, we have to remember that Biloela, a small Queensland
town, had turned out to demand the return of their neighbour. These refugees have long since
become a fabric of the community. With two kids, paid taxes, and a home, how can they be deported without someone suffering insomnia for making that decision? Why is this cruelty more
important than the humanity?
Are we second best because of our beaches, our love of beer and bikinis? Or are we a great
country because of our multiculturalism, our inclusiveness, and our sense of egalitarianism and
mateship?
Maybe, this can be the turning point where we become the best country in the world.
Reflection
1. Stimulus // My persuasive article “The Right to Happiness” aims to position and reshape my target audience of my peers and the general public to support compassion for refugees.
2. Link to Mod C (Atwood) // Much in the same manner that Atwood’s lectured challenged the status quo
of female representation in literature, I chose to challenge the status quo of cruelty towards Asylum
seekers. Informed by her use of pathos, logos and ethos, I have also constructed a persuasive text to validate my claim.
3. 3x PEELS // Much in the same way that Atwood invites our empathy through her anecdotes about her
daughter, I have chose to use anecdotes about the two little girls being deported to create pathos. My
second persona address “XXXXX” and my inference to our wanton cruelty “XXXX” thus generate great
empathy and a sense of guilt in my audience. /// Likewise, my use of logos such as in “YYYYY” has created irony through undermining the opposition of Minister Dutton’s claim, creating hypocrisy and a
sense of injustice in his disparate treatment of the Au Pair, French Girls against two Australian-born innocents. // Finally my rhetorical questions such as “PPPP” and my inclusive language “JJJJ” emphasis the
loss of our Australian love of Egalitarianism.
4. Together, my text “The Right to Happiness” aims to position my audience to side with my views on Asylum seekers. I have used Module C’s Atwood core text to inform my style and composition in positioning
myself and my audience.
Narrative
Orientation - This is the motivation of your
character and why they act. It includes who
they are, where they are, what the are, and
then the contextual choice of your narrative
setting. If you cannot craft a convincing setting, do not chose creative as your form.
Complication - The issue or Stimulus is
the ideal complication. If you understand how the stimulus fits into your
narrative, this is no problems.
Resolution - As a short piece, the ending or the resolution to the complication should occur within 400 words.
This is actually just a choice, decision,
a new perspective, a profound
knowledge, a reaction to a stimuli. In
most cases, keep this reaction in the
Non-fiction, slice-of-life, realm.
CODA - This is the point of your story
which is summed up by final introspective thoughts. It should be internal, full
of imagery, have rhetorical questions,
and show the completion of an arc
where your character learns something.
TECHNICAL CHOICES are key to
story. First of all - most people have
ZERO style. Slice of Life is normal, but
you need to generally stick to a form.
Naturalist? Urbanist? Modernist? Romanticist? Post-Modern? Pick one.
As for your usual techniques, aim for
ONE consistent motif, and one extended metaphor. ONE persistent
symbol is also ideal.
5. Link
(300 words)