Constant Struggle to Find Voice

¶ … constant struggle to find voice in topics that can be difficult to write about. My skill as a writer has improved greatly, as I have developed a keen eye for thesis possibilities in every work I read. In this introduction I will examine three of my own works, in all their draft forms and detail the progress I have made as a discerning reader and writer. The material encompasses three varied topics, and all are focused on different genres of writing. The differing genres helped me become a better reader as well as gain a better understanding of thesis building and reflective writing, additionally the different genres all expressed the goal of the writer as a political actor, but in completely different ways, requiring three different thematic theses. Hamlet's indecisiveness through the work and his use of evidence to support his decision, created a chronological narrative of the play. The piece on 19th century women writers required a broader set of evidence, which included both primary and secondary resources to develop a sense of the intentions of the two writers, Kincaid and Clifton and lastly the piece of writing I completed on the power of poetry as a decisive political tool also helped me to create a discerning sense of intention for thesis building and evidence gathering.

Creating work, such as the Decide or Not to Decide: That is Hamlet's Real Question I was charged with taking a work that many have written about and building ideas surrounding a central theme, i.e. Hamlet's personal crisis of unjustifiable loss and how to act upon it. In so doing I created a thesis that follows Hamlet's expression of indecisiveness, regarding his predicament. Hamlet, could have simply accepted the world, for its new turn of events and waited for the eventual death of his uncle, but that would not have made a very good story. Instead I pointed out that Hamlet's desire for justice drove his actions on a path of indecisive and then decisive action, using evidence from the work to describe Hamlet's state of mind at any given point in the work. In the essay on 19th century women, using Kincaid and Clifton, prose/poetry there is a development of a thesis of internal strife regarding gender roles and powerlessness as evidenced by the work and reflected on by secondary literature. In the final essay I discuss, I created a sense of the power of poetry, as political through an examination of two very different but political poems about observation of injustice.

The first few drafts of these essays helped me develop ideas that stood out as concrete examples of the ideas of the authors being examined from offended observers to active participants in political change. The themes of writing as a demonstrative message of injustice is clear in all the works but each draft evolved to better explain the readings and the messages they contain. I have had to work pretty hard to remove passive voice from my works as well as create a set of examples from primary and secondary sources that build on the thesis, and do not detract from it or diverge into other topic areas. There are many topics that can be discussed within each of the five works that are analyzed and summing up each into thematic representation was not always easy for me.

In the work on 19th century women writers it required me to find secondary evidence regarding an unpopular reason why women seek to author political change rather than through direct actions. The secondary evidence really built the thesis, as it reflected my feelings after reading the works. In the essay on poetry, it is clear that the author is helpless to change the events that occur, in their witnessing, but that they demand change through remembering and retelling events. The essay on Hamlet was particularly difficult, simply because the play can be difficult to read with complete understanding but the themes of narrative demand a modern interpretation for a modern reader and Hamlet's individual indecisiveness is something almost anyone can relate to.

The audience of each of these works, is clearly the professor, but it is also clear that the different essays can be read by my peers as constructive examples of thesis building and the various revisions can show the pitfalls of writing as well as the success of building evidentiary interpretations. The introduction paragraph of the poetry piece is a perfect example of this idea, as I had to remove the passive voice to build the style of my essay and make the thesis more clear to the reader. In each subsequent rewording of the essay I have demonstrate how to develop a better statement of the main theme of a work, and a whole body of works that one might not understand if they are reading the individual works independently and are looking at the intensity of events without connecting them to other examples of the thematic goal of remembrance and political narrative.

One interesting aspect of looking at all these works, in and out of their various contexts, is the fact that it gives the reader of the essays and the works a better sense of the fact that writing is frequently a very intimate political statement, and this is not something I completely grasped at the onset of the course, though it could also simply give evidence to the fact that I as a writer tend to seek out the personal political messages in writing. Either way it makes the topics interesting or I believe gives new understanding, at least for myself as to why people write and why it is important to read works by others, as a way to understand the world and the mind.