After getting verbal feedback from my teacher, I understood the areas of improvement that would help push my understanding of the novel to a greater degree. The feedback provided presented potential improvement in the organization and clarity of my points. Structuring my essay helped me organize my thoughts in a point, evidence, analysis format, which was not clearly shown in my initial essay submission. Similarly, I decided to alter my thesis statement in order to narrow down my thoughts to a specific area and the use of symbolism, which allowed me to develop my thinking and my evaluation of the symbols more thoroughly and in-depth. I understood that I could include Marxist and most importantly postcolonial perspectives into my essay to provide a greater understanding of the historical meaning and importance of staying in the norms and keeping the values of Japanese tradition in the modern-day. Some potentially provoking questions for Post-colonialist theory would be:
- Does this text present an unequal relationship between colonizer and colonized, and/or between one cultural or ethnic group and another?
- How does the text represent aspects of colonial or cultural repression?
- Does this text present the struggle of the colonized to reclaim social or cultural power or identity either during a period of colonialism or in the post-colonial period? What obstacles does the text suggest might stand in the way of this process?