Student Portfolio

Looking back at my paper 1, there were a few targets I had. One of my biggest ones was to explore more of the conventions of the text. I struggled to do this on the cartoon mainly because I was not too familiar with many of the techniques and was more so trying to to use techniques that I was familiar with. However, I mentioned this anyway in my texts and made it clear when I was referring to certain main techniques of the text.

Something else I wanted to work on was my nuance. Both nuance of interpretation and also various potential audiences. I managed to do the audience variation in both texts by highlighting a primary and a secondary audience. I think though I showed different interpretations, that I only ever did it vary randomly and needed to be more consistent with it.

Something I did not think about was perhaps evaluating the effectiveness of various parts of the text. For example, I could have expanded on how useful the text was at the front of the first text to illustrate the issue. I think I simply need to look at what I have stated the purpose to be and to what extent the text aligns with that.

Overall, I think I need to be more succinct as well because I spend too much time expanding in certain ideas when there is perhaps a way for me to be more precise with what I am trying to say. This will also just give me more time to focus on some ideas that I want to go deeper into. I also feel like with this extra time I could plan more because that was something I struggled with and had to start writing ASAP.

Overall, I think this exam allowed me to see where I could have improved on my time management. Also I feel like in the exam itself I developed new strategies of how to merge techniques and share evidence to avoid repeating quotes.

My targets:

• Nuance of interpretation
• Being precise and succinct
• Using textual conventions

Human Acts & Handmaid’s Tale

I think something I find as a huge linking point between the two is the idea of representation, how fiction can truly represent reality. Perhaps this idea is obvious in Human Acts which on its own is based off of real life events meaning the fiction was based off of real events, however in the Handmaid’s tale although the representation of misogyny is evidently drastic, the values held by certain characters seem to reflect what we are seeing in society now. That idea that one author is showing us what the world is and the other is representing what the world could be gives us a spectrum of how our actions and choices now will have an effect on our society in the future. I especially think it is interesting to look at the representation of the characters. Although in both stories the main characters are in harsh environments, none are portrayed to be damsels in distress. Even in Human Acts, where many characters have been tortured and hurt, we are shown their bravery and courage and made to feel proud of their choices rather than simply feeling pity. Offred is also not the typical oppressed woman that complains about the discrimination she faces, rather we get to see her critical thinking and intelligent nature as she persists in Gilead.

How do literary texts help our understanding of non literary texts?

One of the biggest ideas that I think I have gained greater appreciation for is that of who’s perspective a message is told from. In literary texts, we learn so much about how the narrative perspective influences the story. We have seen unreliable narrators such as Kathy in NLMG and various narrative perspectives in Human Acts and how these affect the way the story is told. Similarly in non literary texts such as movies, cartoons and anything visual, who’s perspective we see the situation from makes such a different to what we see and how we interpret it as readers. We could be a third party that sees a situation, or some authors give us a character’s perspective to understand the scenario better. This is something I found very interesting my exploration of cartoons in my HL essay, how we as an audience are strategically made to see a situation from someone’s POV.

More importantly, I’ve learnt the idea that the author’s intent can be so varying. With all the discussions we have done in class I have seen the unique ways that people have been able to receive an author’s work. That is something I learnt so much in my EE too where I had to research how academic experts may have interpreted the same text as me in a vary different manner. I really enjoy how both Lit and Non Lit texts have so much scope to be analysed and come to different conclusions. The literary technique of connotation has shown me how changing one specific word can make such a difference to meaning, the way in which changing the eye line composition or framing in a Non Lit text can completely change the message and intent.

Having started the novel Human Acts today I have a few key take aways, most of which are emotional in essence. The first is even coming to terms with the fact that an uprising happened in South Korea that most of the world is oblivious to. The way in which the government censored the truth and did not allow local journalists to educate their citizens about the truth appals me.

Another thing I found particularly interesting is how we compared the sadness in Human Acts to that of Handmaid’s Tale. I mentioned how in Handmaid’s Tale the sadness seemed to be more of frustration because we could see the progressive nature of Offred and Mayday, which meant we knew that there was hope. However with Human Acts, we are left with an empty feeling in our gut knowing that even the characters succumbed to their situation.

Something I find quite interesting is the various book covers for Human Acts. There is one of a bird sitting on a skeletal rib cage, the idea of someone’s spirit as a bird sitting on the hollow of their body. Another is that of legs that are open at the top with no body attached to it, almost symbolising the many that fell yet are not even identified, no owner to the path tread by the nameless legs.