10/4/18 - Theme, Synthesis, and Summer Reading Essays

Today in class, we focused on some information that is important going into our essays on our summer reading and the film that it was adapted into. We started with a question meant to help clarify what the expectations of the essay are by putting it into our own words: "In this essay, I will be able to..." This question was answered within our groups for a few minutes before we came together to share our thoughts. Finley was the first to share, mentioning that we must construct a proper thesis for our claims for our paper. Another point was made about using mise-en-scene to have a deeper analysis of the film component, and Will brought up the need to compare and contrast our chosen books and films. We went further into this expectation as a class, asking what components we can analyze. Below is an excerpt from my notes showing what we talked about as a class:

• Components we can analyze
• Plot
  
• Dialogue (Same or different?)
• Do similarities or differences in dialogue show significant craft changes in how characters are used?
• Foreshadowing differences (Symbols vs. MES)
• How do the book and film handle foreshadowing differently? Whereas a book might use symbolism to hint at future events, a film may use visual situational irony
• Level of detail
• LOTR example
• The first twenty minutes of the film cover about the first 150 pages of the novel to cover the extremely detailed background of Middle Earth. Examples like this can show how the filmmakers wanted to keep to the source material, or like A.O. Scott said in our excerpt yesterday, veer away from it.
• Themes
• Reminder that we MUST deal with theme for at least one paragraph
• Theme can change with craft changes. In other words, a theme from the book might be tweaked as it is adapted to better fit other changes made by the filmmakers. Therefore, it is important to fully read your book to be able to create your own themes instead of just assuming that they will be the same between mediums.

After discussing these elements, we reread the expectations in the prompt to better understand them having our own interpretations in mind. After this, we talked more about synthesis, and how it can be used to get us started on our essays. First, we had to define synthesis - it is to combine two or more ideas together. This is extremely relevant to our essays, as we have to take two ideas (the BOOK and the FILM) and fuse them to create something NEW - our papers. This is why outside sources cannot be used; it will only hinder our ability to create NEW claims to back up. After establishing this, we used this idea to see where we can start to compare and contrast our texts. Mr. Rivers recommended starting with theme if we are stuck. Creating thematic assertions can help us better understand how our texts are similar or different and can help us have more ideas about what to write about exactly. After this, we detailed another kind of comparison - Scene vs. Scene or Choice vs. Choice. This analysis focuses on one shared scene from the texts, and how differences or similarities in each have a narrative effect. However, with this, it can be easy to create a shallow analysis by focusing too much on the scene AS A WHOLE instead of BY ITS PARTS. Mr. Rivers even mentioned with this that he would prefer a deep analysis of a certain element or elements instead of a shallow analysis so it would be wise to keep that in mind. At the end of the day, we are explaining or arguing about the craft of adaptation. If we are arguing, keep in mind that this is solely objective analysis, so if one text is better than the other, then it is about objective storytelling, not subjective opinion about the texts. With this, Mr. Rivers allowed us some time to start drafting our essays and met with students to see how they are progressing with their books, and where their heads are at regarding their ideas.

So how does all of this apply past our classroom? Well, when you think about it, when we express our thoughts about certain ideas that we think of, do we focus on a single idea or source? Not normally - we have multiple ideas and sources that we pull from. We are using synthesis every time we use multiple sources to create or back up one claim. Pulling multiple ideas together at one time to create a whole new idea is something that all of us have and will do in our lives, and so now realizing that we are doing, we may now be able to consciously create better instances of synthesis as we interact with others and create ideas of our own.

As a final note, Mr. Rivers has reminded everybody that our first Be Reel Blogs are due on October 18th, so keep that in mind as you write your essays. Happy drafting!