Thanksgiving Extra Credit

I was thinking about what the most important thing I have learned so far was, and I have learned so much all around it was hard for me to pinpoint one thing. Then I found at an old book report that I had written last year and I read it over, and I found that my thesis really sucked, so my whole paper was actually pretty bad. I think that’s the most important thing I have learned so far, write a good thesis. Before this class, if a teacher asked me to write a thesis statement on something I would have no idea what it meant, to me it was "thesis = topic sentence?" which I guess isn’t that bad, but I have learned just how much more than a topic sentence a thesis is. Your thesis sets you up for you whole paper, so if your thesis is weak, then no matter how hard you try on the rest of your paper, it’s definitely not going to be as good as it could be. Although it still is really hard for me to write a good thesis, I now know what a good one looks like, and what a bad one looks like. I also know that thesis’s aren’t going to go away, probably going to need to write one in every paper I write from here on forever, so it’s going to be a good skill to have and I am really glad we are working on them now.

Lobsters

   

I think it was actually you Mrs. Gilman who brought up the Holocaust, and when you said that, it changed my whole perspective of the poem. The poem talks the whole time about these caged lobsters, who are just sitting in a cage awaiting their death. People walk by and stare at them, but nobody thinks about how cruel this process actually is. The lobsters just have to stay there in conditions they probably don’t like, with they're claws all tied up and everything.

When I first read the poem it was simply about lobsters in a grocery store, but if you go back in read it with the Holocaust in mind, it turns into a scary, very sad poem. The lobsters are doomed, they are going to die in that tank, or be taken to somebody’s home and killed there. Jewish people were taken to isolation camps and either died of starvation, or were suffocated in gas chambers. Suddenly, this poem has a way deeper meaning than just lobsters in a grocery store. The resemblance to the Holocaust is huge and I definitely think this poem was the author’s way of telling how he felt about that. It makes much more sense to why the author chose to use lobsters instead of any other animal.

5 part paragraph

In my class I thought most of the paragraphs were very well written. As a class, I think the transition sentences are what needed to be worked on the most. It was easy to not have a good transition or to skip that sentence all together. Most of the papers that were read, there was somebody saying "I think you could have used some stronger transitions." Also, sometimes commentary would turn a little bit into plot summary, so instead of giving your own opinions, people might be just restating what happened in the book. So as a class I think those are some things we could work on.

For my next paragraph I need to work on making sure everything is clear and nothing is confusing. My topic sentence lead people in one way but everything else went in a different way, so I think I need to make sure everything fits. I could also work on using better vocabulary, all my word choice was words I would use to talk, there were no words suggesting high diction, it was all very average. I could also make my transitions smoother, to help the paragraph flow more easily and have all the topics form together, but still be distinguishable.