Lobsters discussion

While participating in the “Lobsters” discussion this week, I heard some ideas that hadn’t occurred to me while reading the poem. Many people spoke of the lobsters being a metaphor to death, which is true but also a very easy connection to make. Then, people started to bring up how humans are like lobsters and somebody said that we could look at the lobsters and think that they are doing nothing but that if some big creature looked into our classroom, they would just see us sitting at desks, and to them it would look like we are doing nothing. This was a very interesting connection made, at least, to me.

That idea really helped me connect to the idea that the lobsters represented humans in a symbolic theme. These and a few other ideas helped me make the connection between humans and the lobsters in the poem. Comparing the lobster to humans hadn’t even occurred to me as a real powerful symbol, until I heard people back it up in the discussion. It helped me identify a deeper meaning than “the lobsters are a metaphor for death.” Thank you to the students who helped show me how very different things can become the same in meaning, if not in image.

Theme paragraphs

               Through listening to my class present their Oly paragraphs, I think that there were three key things that were messed up the most. The first key to writing a “good” Oly paragraph starts with the topic sentence. A thoughtful subject and something to be proven must be in your topic sentence, don’t just make a statement. The second key to writing a good paper is the concrete details. Concrete details must back up what the topic sentence sets out to prove, or at least back up your topic sentence, even if it isn’t trying to prove something.  Also, all of your C.D. should have a general focus on one subject and have an even “spread” between them from the book, play, ect. You don’t want your C.D. from pages 10-14, because this doesn’t show a good understanding of the novel or if you even read the book. The final key to writing a good Oly paragraph is using well thought-out commentary it is important that your commentary shows that you understand the C.D. and the rest of the story. Always make sure that you don’t make a mistake frequently made in my class: commentary that is mostly plot summary. Most of the paragraphs I heard, however, did not mess up on these majorly; they just needed to work on one or two of one of their concrete details or commentary. It helps to remember that  the commentary backs up the concrete details that, in turn, back up the topic sentence.

                My topic sentence was one of my weakest points of the paragraph, as for it was more of a statement, and didn’t set out to prove anything. If I had adjusted my topic sentence, the concrete details would have reinforced it excellently because my concrete details did support what my topic sentence had stated. The only other major thing wrong with my paragraph was that the concrete details didn’t have a good “spread.” Other than that, they would have worked fine, despite not being completely spread out, if they had been on a more related subject, but two of concrete details were about the court case and the remaining about Calpurnia’s church. Next time I go to write an Oly paragraph, through others and my own mistakes, I will know what to think about and spend some more time working on.