H.O.P.E

I think I was supposed to talk about my expectations on this paper quite a few weeks ago. But I have been too preoccupied with the position paper that I temporarily 'forgot' about my blog..huhhh...

Alright coming back to this, we are assisted by an Iranian tutor, Mr. Omid Akbari whom has been very helpful towards preparing us for the position paper especially to construct the best thesis statement in presenting our stand on any literary texts we have read and chosen for the project work. In fact, he has even listed down some of the short stories and poems as his suggestions to us. It may be useful for the one who really cannot make up his or her mind on which literary text he is going to work on.

Well, what I really hope in working on this paper are first and foremost, I am able to come out with a good, clear and persuasive stand in which I can simply draw readers' attention to my position paper with several argumentative points in which they can agree with. Besides that, I want the readers of my position paper to get to know other text that come from the different site of the world. We have learnt about the american and British literature and not forgetting the Malaysian literature but I have chosen a story from an African writer for my position paper.
Other than that, I reall hope that I can get some benefits from writing this kind of paper; to able to argue and persuade people at the same time. I also can learn how to be critical when reading any piece of literary work, to think beyond the surface of the text and it gives myself an opportunity to widen my horizon of knowledge especially on literature.

I love reading any literary works--- it does not a matter who write the piece of works and what cultural contexts are the works based on. As quoted from a prolific writer, Salman Rushdie, "literature has little or nothing to with one's address" which I think brings the meaning of the universality of literature to be read and loved by anyone regardless of the races, colours or nations.

...Andy Warhol is a super freak...

…Andy Warhol…

I have no idea how a person like Andy Warhol can be a prominent figure in pop arts (hey, I tell you, he is the one who comes out with such ideas…) because I think that some of his worksare redundant and repetitive. Like for example the creations of the Campbell’s soup tins are somewhat the same from time to time, only the colours are changed. Thus when Dr.Edwin shows us some of his works in sort of a documentation on Andy Warhol’s, what I can hear in the class is not the voices of amazement towards the works but the sound of laughter because some of the works can do nothing except tickle our hearts. I cannot blame myself for laughing at his works because maybe it is due to my lack of knowledge when it comes to such art like pop arts.

However there are some of the works of art that I think are beautiful and have some messages to convey to the audiences. Like, I do not remember the title but there is a picture of a woman holds a baby and it has other rapturous colours on that particular piece of work. That one is simply captivating. Overall I think that Andy Warhol is an artist that has his own uniqueness and only he knows what messages he is to bring out to his audiences from his pieces of works.

*…can’t help but I love the four-leaf clovers as it comes in many ecstatic colours…

off MLIE and Mr.Omid Akbari

I've made up my mind to have an MLIE text for the position paper and the reason is because I think that it will be more easier for me to work on soemthing which is more familiar to me in terms of the culture and traditions that are in that particular text.

I decide to use "Confinement" by a female writer, Mulaika Hijjas for this project. However, Mr.Omid Akbari seems does not really understand the text because of the unfamiliarity of him towards the text in terms of its culture which is the main idea of this text. Therefore I change my mind and resort to the other literary text which I think does not touch upon the culture of any particular races. I choose Nadine Gordimer's work; "Once Upon a Time" which does not involve with culture but political affair instead. This time, i show my very first draft to him; waiting to get his approval on my thesis statement--- ignoring how terrible my handwriting is---Mr Omid has difficulty in reading my work due to this problem.

And the result is...he approves my thesis statement but he thinks that it has to be paraphrased. Alright! But I guess that I have found my perfect text for this project paper.

* "off MLIE and Mr.Omid Akbari"--- i have to make a justification on why I put this as the title of this post. Bsaically, it is about my dilemma of choosing a text that is within my knowledge and cultural familiarity or to have another text which can be easily understood by Mr.Omid...hehe nothing much..

I am deeply moved by Devavrata's sacrifice "who had taken the most awful of all oaths to buy his father's (Shantanu) happiness." I believe if I was in his shoes I would rather die persuading my father not to marry again than having a woman like Satyavati to be his wife whom I think had such a demanding father. But, it didn't take a long time before I realized that if it happened to me, I have failed as a daughter in which I abandoned my parent's needs only to entertain my ego and to satisfy myself. Somehow this story reminds me of several failings I had done which hurt my parents' feelings. I do blame myself for all that but sometimes some of us just couldn't avoid of raising our voices when talking to our parents.

Every religions teach us to be grateful children and to give maximum care and protection to our parents. Alas, for Devavrata he had tried his best to bring Satyavati home as his father's bride and even to swear "to remain celibate and to die sonless" in which it is a "fate worse than death", in order to fulfill the fisherman's expectation to have his grandson as a king after Shantanu. When he put aside his rights as a child and an heir only to bring smile to his father, I come to a realization that the most precious relationship in this world is that of a parent and child. We must value it to the end.