why i chose The Chrysanthemums

For the position paper assignment, I chose to use John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums as the text to be examined. I actually have this passion of doing Pygmalion and Educating Rita. I had been comparing these two plays since I was in first year at MPTI. It seems I have a thing for identity issues. However, when Dr Edwin told us that we can’t use the same text we did in position paper for our research paper, I had to think twice. Because I don’t want to loose the chance of commenting about both the plays again together, I opt for a different story which was The Chrysanthemums by John Steinbeck. At first, I’ve forgotten the existence of this story (terrible me)…so, I went on flipping through the pages of Kennedy and Gioia’s Literature An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry and Drama. That is when I come across this story and at that moment I remembered on how I really enjoyed this story. I like this particular Steinbeck’s story because of the feminism issue in it. I think I really like story with the feminist zest in it. It’s interesting and also made me aware of the women’s position in the world since the time I’m not even born yet. The symbolism of the chrysanthemums itself is also unique as I never heard a man comparing women to this type of flowers as often they do with roses. Nevertheless, the chrysanthemum is a perfect symbol of Elisa Allen. She is yet a strong woman at will but how strong she is, there is still that soft part in her. Just like the chrysanthemums, it has the biggest and hardest stalks of all flowers but it is just a flower…not a log or a pine…just a delicate little flower. Personally, even though this story took place in the early 1930’s but the issue rose is still relevant today. Not many women in the world can achieve the same position as man in any aspect. And if they do manage, women will always be paid lesser than their male counterparts. Maybe men had forgotten the reason of women’s existence that they tend to suppressed the women. Yes, women are the daughters and mothers to men but still they deserve to be treated with equal amount of respect too…being mothers doesn’t mean staying at home and do the chores only. Yes, there are things which are better left to the men but that doesn’t mean women have no rights to leave the pots and pans and start working with pen and papers…

malaysian celebration!!

Dr. Edwin had assigned us with this task of describing about the celebrations held in Malaysia. And when its celebration, it means public holidays and all celebrated things based on he religion practises and culture too.

At first, Dr. Edwin asked us to list down all the celebration that crossed our mind. Well, at that point, my pocket calendar helped me a lot. Later, we all had it written on the board. The, it struck my mind there were tonnes of other celebrations celebrated in Malaysia which I never known before. We were all assigned different celebrations and we had to do a bit of research and a complete write up of it. I did on Isra’ Mikraj together with Aida and Suhaizie. Dr. Edwin said that this information will be compiled into a book for student references at school. Imagine my name at the back of a book…cool!!

Emm…to me, I think Dr. Edwin’s effort of compiling this is a good idea especially when there are students like me who hardly know other people’s culture (not that I didn’t try though). Malaysia is known for its multicultural society thus it would be a shame if foreigners know more about our culture than us. Thus, introducing such text for students especially during primary level is a good way to teach students to respect one another and create “Muhibbah”. When we manage to create the respect in our students, we can hope that there wouldn’t be any of our students getting involved or starting racial conflicts like what happened on May 13.

when reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography

Dr Edwin assigned us to read the autobiograhy of Nelson Mandela's and i feel the tense he’s going through at that time. To me, besides his personal problems, this leader is dedicated in freeing his people. I believe what he said in his autobiography because he didn’t use phrase such as “I think…” or “I believe…” as these phrases might cause readers to feel some biasness in the statement he provides.
Looking at this man’s effort makes me think; are there still leaders like this? Who are not corrupted? I mean Mandela is not a saint either but he was good enough not to accept the offer of long pants the jail officer gave him. If he did, he will be a hypocrite which to me a lot of leaders in the world know are…most leaders nowadays always say things that don’t meant…as example, Bush’s government are saying to the world they are trying to gain peace in the world but at the same time they are the ones starting wars, where’s the peace in that I wonder.
Writing an autobiography whether its written by ourselves or someone else is always an interesting way to share our experience and if it is not altered in any way, readers will have a glimpse of what really happens to us. Especially when it comes to celebrities, everyone wants to know about their lives but usually what we get in the news or tabloid are usually exaggerated from the real thing. Thus, autobiographies are a good way to be honest (in a way). As for autobiography like Mandela’s, there are a lot that we can learn from it. Besides understanding what his life as a person, we can also learn what he went through and learn form it so it won’t happen again in the future.

pygmalion vs educating rita

Both the character of Eliza Doolittle in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and Willy Russell’s Educating Rita, are women who comes from different eras but have the same aim; to change their social status and they choose to do it through education. They felt by having education, they are able to rise one step ahead of their present strata in life however, their dreams of being educated at the end results in their lost of identity. Both these women also faced the difficulties as other women all over the world when they want to have education. As we know fiction is a reflection of reality and in reality, the earliest push for Victorian women to become educated was because they were mothers of men and eventually teachers of men (Solomon xviii). It was not until the twentieth century that women began to desire knowledge for themselves as individuals. That is why both these plays were written later in the 1900’s. If we compare these plays with Jane Austin’s novels, we can see what education meant during that time; for the sake of finding a good husband from a wealthy family and hardly for themselves. This is why I’m fond of writing about these plays for my research paper. I wanted to elaborate further on the idea of education and women because as a woman, I do feel that we should have the equal rights in gaining education too!!! Education is not just about getting a good job, if I was a housewife; I want to be an educated one also; not just know the latest gossip in the neighbourhood but also the current issues that happens around me. Another interesting issue about these plays is the irrelevant reasons both the main characters wanted education…Rita only wanted to be educated so she knows what are the right books to read, right plays to watch and right clothes to wear and Eliza only want to speak more ‘genteel’ so she can work in a florist shop. So shallow there needs for education. That is why I want to show students through these plays that they should have significant reason in gaining education or else they are just wasting their parents’ money.

presenting my position paper

its has been 2 weeks since i presented my position paper but i can still remember how scary it was to present it in front of Dr Edwin since there's already many who's work being rejected...so i did it..and thank god my work wasn't rejected. but there were some points that needs to be connected to the thesis statement. it's ironic really...i told some of my friends to refer to their thesis statement each time they finish a point but i myself didn't do it...the first thing Dr Edwin commented on my slide was NEVER to use the comic as font..i probably forgotten that this is a formal presentation thus i used comics...i would definitely remember this next time i'm doing such presentation...this presentation really taught me how to prepare myself for continuing my masters later. i've also learned that i should always differentiate which work is formal and which is not..

process of writting the position paper

Ok...approving my thesis statement stage is over and now its the writing part...for this, i definitely really a lot on the internet as this the place to find a lot of related articles...(pss..i never plagiaries ok.. just using for references) and so I found a lot of articles which some are on the same stand as me, others are against it…so doing the frustration of Elisa Allen in Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums requires me to analyze a lot on her behavior and way of presenting herself…I hadn’t have much problems in handling the text as I’ve studied it before thus there were tones of notes scribbled on my Kennedy and Goia book I’d used to read the story. as this assignment requires me to be critical with my stand and supporting arguments, I had to read the text several times. At a certain point, I think I’d already mastered the story hehe…it seems to me creating a good statement was already hard, supporting the statement requires me to triple the effort. It was even harder. It might be easy to just talk about it but when it’s written, I have to make my arguments as strong as possible to make sure the people reading my paper will also agree with what I’m saying...i wonder how hard it will be doing my research paper then??

thesis statement is hard!!huhu

basically in my understanding, position paper is a paper worth debating a topic on...thus, to make it debatable, a good topic is essential. that day, Dr Edwin asked us to prepare our topic a.k.a the thesis statement to be approved by him...yes...finding a thesis statement wasn't that hard at first until Dr. Edwin did his magic trick of dissapearing all the thesis statement we had written on the board.(it wasn't magic actually, he just erased it off) and i think on the first day we showed Dr edwin the thesis statement, i think only 2-3 people got through. the rest???have to try again...repeating the process (think-> write thesis on paper->write on board->got erased)..thank God, after the second try, mine was approved even though i had to debate on by my thesis statement should be accepted..to me, it was a hard and tiring process..the thinking part was the hardest of all...but its worth it..at least i'll know waht to expect when i continue my masters later..

plums anyone??

An interesting poem I would say this poem by William Carlos Williams “This is Just to Say”. In Now Read On, the poem was written in a paragraph and Dr Edwin had us reorganizing it according to our liking and we need to justify why we chose to have it that way. I think this is an interesting way in teaching poem and I will definitely use it in my future teaching. It lets the students be creative and not just wait for answers.

As for the poem itself, it can be literally and metaphorically connotated. I did get the other meaning behind this poem since the first time I read it. However, when Dr Edwin reveals the ‘other’ meaning, there were many ohhs and ahhs which signals the shock many of my classmates had as most were still stuck at the literal meaning of the poem- a plum thief…plum as a plum…not more not less. Maybe because the poem was put into a paragraph thus we didn’t thought of interpreting it as we automatically do when we see a poem. As a paragraph, the lines were just merely words probably found on the fridge door.

I like the way Williams describe virginity as plums. Why plums? Is it because of the squishy texture or the ripeness of the fruit that made him create such comparison? Hehe…the issue of taking away one’s possession as written in this poem is so witty… It’s like a petty crime if you want to compare it with the real issue of running away with one’s boyfriend or even daughter without permission.

It seems by using different kind of imagery, it will create different kind of mood and interpretation of the poem. If we replace the word plum or refrigerator with something else, it might have a different impact all together. In this case, even a serious issue of eloping or even rape (if you want to assume it’s written from a rapist point of view) can look so plain and funny with the image of stealing plums.

fall of icarus - the significant of the unsignificant

We know that Icarus’ fall was insignificant to anyone on that land except for his father, Daedalus…this issue of insignificantness not only evolves around the drawing but also these two poems by William Carlos Williams “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” and W.H Auden “Musee des Beaux Arts” which used the drawing as an inspiration. If in the drawing, Icarus’ fall was only located on a small fraction of the canvas, in these poems they also mentioned about him in the last few lines only…

The realisation of this made me think, why is Icarus being neglected by everyone becomes so significant. Is he the symbol of the insignificants? To me, I’ve learned from this poem that there more in this world for us to be worried about instead of fiddling with unimportant item. Just like Auden said in his poem, “Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone” . Besides that, we still need to go on with life as usual even though we might have lost something in the past. Maybe there are more expected for us in the mere future, who knows? At the same time, this poem made me reflect our society nowadays. We NEVER care about others…and that is not very nice too…sometimes, people tend to ignore the problems happening in front of them because they think it has nothing to do with them…I experienced once when a very very old aunty was standing in the Monorail and nobody care about giving her a seat…how cruel!!it reminded me of the advertisement on TV about budi bahasa…and another case when my father helped a motorcyclist and his wife who was involved in a minor accident (the guy did break his legs though) in the middle of the rain. My father offered them a ride to the hospital and my father asked the couple how long have they been there and they said they were there, in the rain, full of pain for nearly half an hour WITHOUT anyone offering them help. I was surprised, is our society that cruel? Is it when there is blood pools all over then there will be help? Sometimes the idea of ignoring others’ business is not a very good idea in certain issue…