"It Is The Tragedy..."

Joyce Cary, a British author who was born in 1888 and died in 1957 said “It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn’t know – and the less a man knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything.”

And how true is Joyce Cary…

At the first glimpse of the instruction “…1 section and 1 question…” I knew without having to look into the question, it would be going to be a long dreaded two hours of my life in the examination hall. There I was, regretting every moment of not reading seriously of the essay by George Orwell before the examination, merely scanning through. I was so focused on understanding the literary criticism and it did not occur to me how important to not only read all the essays in the module but to know at least at a very minimal level the background of the authors. Oh my God, I was panicking and who is George Orwell? And I seriously read E.M Forster “Two Cheers for Democracy”.

Well I was left with no choice but to give the best shot I could in my own ways. As a consolation, to begin with, before I started reading the essay I told myself, I knew the basis of criticism: Deconstruction, Reader-Response, Archetype, Feminism, Psychoanalytical, and Marxist. I should be focusing myself to one of those criticisms in writing my thesis statement and thus my writing through out.

Once decided, all that I wanted to write was the instability in thinking between the character and his judgements on having to shoot the elephant. I would love to explore the mind of the character between his repressed memory and the racial memory of the collective unconscious. The setback was I did not read the essay before the examination and wasted too much time reading and mentally responding to the essay during the examination instead of writing my answer. My own repressed memories were way too much for me to handle within that time limitation.

Well, since I could not get what I would like to write within those 2 hours, then I would have to like what I will be getting from Dr Edwin of my answer to his question.

"Rhinoceros": Stepping Out of the Box

It was very interesting to be reading Jeff Snyder’s “Good Men Make Good Rhinoceros” considering the fact that he is an attorney working in New York. Snyder is also the author of Nation of Cowards - Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control. The first thing that struck me when I read the first few paragraphs of his writing was how this great play of absurdity, “Rhinoceros” by Eugene Ionesco was even the interest of a lawyer in practice. Relating the September 11 tragedy in New York, Afghanistan war, Iraqi war and the presidential of Bush pertaining to war, Snyder felt it is worth to revisit this play with the idea of “coercive conformity of behaviour and opinion that is required to mobilize society and its resources for war”.

Synder’s writing gave me an understanding about the idea of conformity in a philosophical perspective. Concluding his writing “…how well “Rhinoceros” potrays the human condition or sheds light upon current events is best left to the reader” indeed is stimulating especially to such inexperience reader of great literary work like me.

Quotes That Ease Me

I think it is probably better to be awake, sober, and drug-free. I suspect those three conditions are probably helpful. But beyond that, I just have to feel like writing. I'm not one of these people who go to the desk every single day and writes. I wait until my head gets filled with stuff and I have to get it out of my head. -- Edward Albee

And I have become less productive… for now.

As for my writing process, I generally follow the advice I give newer writers - try not to polish up front. You have worked yourself to death. Keep going, keep going. If it's poorly written, too bad. Keep going. When you have an end, you've got something whole. Then rewrite, rewrite. Polished incomplete things wear you out. -- Alice Childress

But I have yet to arrive to my thesis statement...

I enjoyed the time I was writing. It was a fun, creative time. No one expected anything from me. I wasn't being strategic in any way. I wasn't trying to set up myself as a writer. I wasn't trying to leverage into a new career. I just wanted to write for its own sake. -- Margaret Edson

Or else what will I be doing if not for this task?

Writing is a tough job. Consider me. With my background, I can't get a play produced. I couldn't get Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang for My Father, and You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running - my three most successful plays - produced. -- Robert Anderson

Then that explains my difficulty...

It was a great struggle to get people to accept anything but kitchen-sink drama. My play didn't fit any categories. -- Arthur Miller on why his first play, The Man Who Had All the Luck failed in 1944.

Thank God!

Big Ideas and The Idea of Conformity

It was a great opportunity to be attending the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle); a professional development meeting organized by collaboration of my department, Malaysian Examinations Syndicate (MES) with University of Auckland, New Zealand. The meeting took place in Crown Princess Hotel, Kuala Lumpur from 23 to 26 January 2005 and entirely conducted by the four educational specialists flown in from University of Auckland.

Throughout the three days, Professor John Hattie, Dr Gavin Brown, Mr. Mark Burgess and Miss Andrea Mackay shared their knowledge, experiences and expertise in designing, developing and implementing the project asTTle- Solving the Problem of National Testing with the funding from New Zealand Ministry of Education.

After a very detailed overview and exposure of asTTle, explanations, sharing knowledge, experiences and so on, we are to come out with the “Big Ideas” based on what we are teaching in our schooling systems. Everybody is group together according to their subjects taught in schools, group members being the combination of MES officers and teachers that were invited. Definitely I grouped myself (and three colleagues) with the eight English language teachers and one of them began to lead the group discussion. As the discussion became heated and the group was really way out of focus, I recalled the sessions I had with Dr Fauziah, Dr Edwin, Puan Juridah, to name a few. How glad I was that I am one of their students for I became very confident to put forward my view that was very contradicting from all the eight teachers plus one of my colleagues.

What interest me was suddenly there I was, “Berenger”, the protagonist in Rhinoceros, the one who does not want to conform to the others and become a rhinoceros. As reviewed by Sarah E. Grant in “Look! It’s “Rhinoceros”- A Stampede of the Absurd”, “Rhinoceros’ examines the element of the ridiculous found in an array of characters reacting to one another as they, one by one, turn into rhinoceros. It does not surprised me when one by one, every body agrees the “Big Ideas” as proposed by few of us with the stubborn exception of me. I was very sure that the biggest idea of teaching English to our children is entirely meant for them to be able to communicate effectively as that is language meant for and not filling in the blanks, notes expansion, writing composition etc. Well, I did not fight further for I was the only one with a different view but proposed our differing views to be put forward to the expert to be resolved.

At this point, I can fully understand the difficulty of Berenger who does not want to conform and becomes a rhinoceros for he thinks being human is superior to being an animal. I did not conform for I know and I know well, and I have broadened my knowledge in various areas of ESL in Malaysian context the day I became a TESL student in UPM. I need not conform though the majority shared the same view. It is okay to be one lonely person, maintaining my “Big Ideas” to agreeing with the wrong ideas. After all, it’s a discussion and some one has to make the correct decision! I will not want to be the one who ignore the rhinoceros running the schools.

Again, I want to thank all my lecturers for through them I became more confident personally and professionally. To me, the lessons of Rhinoceros can be interpreted in various successful ways, as the way I see the “Big Ideas” during the asTTle meeting.

Not that I want to be bold but one should have faith in what one belief rather than become a blind or ignorance follower.

Hmmmmm, my thesis is coming, I guess... faith, belief, blind, ignorance, follower... Life is an experiment...

Forget Now and Smile Later

Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad- Christina Rosetti, British Poet (1830-1874)

Ha ha ha... Finally I managed to have this photo published in my blog. At the very beginning of creating this blog (a very big applaud for Dr Edwin and thank you very much for introducing this blog thing), I have been trying to get my photo published but was never succeed.

All the while I have been telling myself to really have my photos published every time I log in. Well, here it is my first smile... I can now "forget and smile" at the time of difficulty, trying to get my photo posted and published.

Thank you to Hello and Picasa, softwares that enable people like me who are not that IT savvy, to send and publish pictures to my blog thus sharing them with other blog readers.

Mind you, at this point of moment, of course, I am very thrill to send more- putting to benefit my new acquired skill.

The Tough Gets Going

Yesterday, there I was attending the tutorial after quite some time "excusing" myself from being present and of course I have to admit, for a specific reason. I have to get the dates for both the group as well as the individual presentations that require evaluation by the tutor, Puan Nora. Failing to do this I will be contributing to my own failure in getting the attributed marks.

Now that I have got the dates scheduled, I set my mind to prioritise in accomplishing my tasks (completing the assignments) just as I did when I was in previous semester. I guess the previous semester was the best in terms of achievement throughout my study. Well, the grades I got prior to that semester did frightened me off. Unfortunately, I am very uptight throughout this semester for this is the busiest time of my work schedule.

Alas, today, I was very handicapped to work further on my assignments for my PC was infected with virus. I spent half of my day attending to it but to no avail, finally seeking help from my colleagues to rectify the problem. We were left with no choice but to format the PC which means I need to secure all my data beforehand especially those important documents including the ones that I downloaded for my research papers.

Well, with the PC down, at the very least I managed to seriously go through all the assignments given, once and for all. All information pertaining to assignments due date and requirements, examinations etc are carefully organised and marked on the calendar for easy references.

There is the saying, you win some, and you lose some. I was not able to work on my PC, but at least I managed to get myself totally organised for this final semester. By the way, my friend Zaini, one phrase to explain her spirit in terms of having her blog regularly maintained, "when the going gets tough, the tough gets going".. She is one tough lady...

How Curious Can One Be?

I am going to use brainstorming, one of the five useful pre-writing strategies in my attempt to generate and clarify my ideas on the drama Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco.

I began with listing out the famous quotes by Eugene Ionesco, a Romanian-born French playwright, taken from http://www.allgreatquotes.com/.

Life is an abnormal business
Jean, in The Rhinoceros

There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer.
The Rhinoceros

You can only predict things after they have happened.
The Rhinoceros.

I have watched Rhinoceros on stage, Eugene Ionesco’s great play about conformity. Jeff Snyder in his writing “Good Men Make Good Rhinoceroses” relates the theme of Rhinoceros with the September 11 tragedy as well as the Iraq war. He also explains Ionesco’s Rhinoceros was prompted by Ionesco’s reflections on the German people’s transformation into Nazis.

I remember I came across one assignments (from the Internet) requesting students to relate something about Nazi with this great play. It was not clear to me why one should be studying about Nazi in relation to Rhinoceros. Now, it makes sense to me after reading Jeff Snyder’s writing.

What began by the experience of going into theatre for the first time, stumbling into one great play (very lucky of me, indeed!), curiosity gets the mind working further, here I am, can’t get enough of my time to read all I can about Rhinoceros.

Phew! I wish I have all the time in the world!

Begin from the Beginning

I am required to write an analytic research paper on my preference literary text with the first of the guidelines given by Dr Edwin is to develop a thesis statement. The writing of thesis statements is in actuality nothing new for it has been introduced right from the very first semester through the course Expository Writing. Exploring further, to write an analytic research paper demands varieties of task that I need to follow through such as formulating the thesis, gathering, evaluating and using sources to support the ideas (which I have not given much thought yet), as well as the tedious work of documenting them.

Begin from the beginning, I think I am quite ready to work out with this first assignment, especially getting myself in place in terms of availability of time, between my personal life as a mother of six children and of course a wife and my career (we are currently in the process of packing and unpacking, moving to our new office in Putrajaya).

Well, when I said begin from the beginning; what I really meant is doing first thing first for I am training myself to write this analytic paper in a professional way. What I have to do first is to analyze the assignment to ascertain myself. Dr Edwin has established some guidelines to be followed and that my analysis is restricted to a single focus of an issue in a literary text of my choice. Taking off from this understanding, I will have to prepare a prewriting exercise like brainstorming or clustering.

Then I will proceed on developing a draft of my thesis which of course when formulating my thesis for this literature paper I will have to follow a certain guidelines. One of the writing guides I came across from a website (http://writing.coloctate.edu/) clearly spelled out four cautions when formulating a thesis statement:
· A Thesis Should Not State the Obvious
· Use Literary Terms in Thesis with Care
· A Thesis Should be Balanced
· A Thesis Can Be a Blueprint

At this point of moment, I have decided to give myself a try on an absurd drama, Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco. My preference of this “Theatre of the Absurd” mainly because it was the first live performance I seriously went to view with only the synopsis to guide me throughout my first taste of the theatre. Later, I gave a try to get myself a copy of the e-text of the play but only succeeding in getting the first and second act of it. Well, I am not dampened by the lack ness of the whole text of the play, thus began my search of as much information I can get about Rhinoceros and Eugene Ionesco as possible.

I have yet to formulate my thesis though I have managed to gather as much information about Rhinoceros and Eugene Ionesco. The opportunity to view the play last December has triggered an interest in me to explore further the term “Theatre of the Absurd”. The “Theatre of the Absurd” is a term coined by Martin Esslin who wrote two of the most influential books dealing with the post-war theatre, Brecht: A Choice of Evils (1959) and Theatre of the Absurd (1962). In “Introduction to "Absurd Drama"” (Penguin Books, 1965) Esslin probed, “What then is the convention of drama that has now acquired the label of the Theatre of the Absurd?”

Well, I guess I have to go. I have yet to read further the article Absurd Drama by Martin Esslin and what better time to read than now?

Man is Born to Live

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life and that was said by Boris Pasternak, a Russian author who was born in 1890 till his death in 1960.

"Senafas Takbir Akhir" directed by Zulkifli Ali, a Malay drama aired over TV3 last Saturday had my family and I glued to the television even during the commercial break. Throughout the drama all ten of us (my husband, our six children, my two nieces and me myself) responded in various emotional condition as we watched with great interest to the fate that befallen the hero, a tragic hero, Zamarol.

Zamarol, who otherwise lives a very normal family life, faces a series of misfortune the day his wife was raped and murdered in their house. Interestingly, the murder was never the main plot or even the sub plot of the drama. There was only a brief mentioning pertaining to the murderer but again the focus was on the effect of the death of his wife to Zamarol and his two sons, Abang and Adik rather than the murderer per say. The death of his wife leads to a series of misfortune that befalls Zamarol to the day he himself was murdered.

Zamarol unable to cope with taking care of the daily needs of his sons and his demanding work had them both living with his mother in the village. The separation break ups the father and sons bonding, effecting the three especially the sons who now not only lost their mother but the loving care of their own father. Misfortune befalls Zamarol the third time when his mother and his youngest son, Adik died in an accident on their way back, cycling from school. At this point of the drama, the whole family of mine was already emotionally involved and was saddened by the death of both grandmother and grandson.

As for Zamarol his fate never recovers when his superior was very angry of a miscalculation of his action over a huge amount of transaction than ends him in a very threatening situation. It is threatening because Zamarol, after the death of his mother and younger son, had made a solemn promise to his living son, Abang his only surviving family that he will never leave him again, ever. The thought that he will end up in prison of breach of trust should he not able to recover the mistaken RM350 000 transaction makes Zamarol a runaway. They both live a very hardship life to the day Zamarol runs out of money and have no means of surviving.

His decision on leaving Abang all by himself to "earn" some money is a fatal one as he "vanished" from Abang's life. The devastated Abang has no one but cried to himself, feeling so alienated and cheated by his father. Zulkifli has successfully maintained his audience throughout "Senafas Takbir Akhir" as we all became very critical, actively involving ourselves, and voicing out our opinions while watching the remaining part of the drama.

I enthusiastically became very engrossed observing the audience of this drama sitting in the comfort of our living room responding to the twist and turn of Zamarol's fate. During the commercial break nobody moved for they were very busy discussing among themselves about Zamarol and Abang, giving opinions and sympathizing on the fate that kept befalling Zamarol and Abang. Suddenly I found myself explaining to my family the literary elements of drama, telling them Zamarol is a tragic hero because of the inevitable fate that keep befalling him.

Remembering Oedipus the King that I studied last semester, it's helpful to know that Aristotle believes that art should be an "imitation" of life. It should hold a mirror up to life. It should be "truthful," or "true to life." Aristotle in elaborating what he considers the essential qualities of the tragic hero explains that "with regard to the characters there are four things to aim at":

Goodness.
They should reveal through speech and action what their moral choices are, and a "good character will be one whose choices are good." Any "class of person" may be portrayed as "good"-even women and slaves, though on the whole women are "inferior" and slaves are "utterly base."

Appropriateness.
Men can be domineering or "manly" (what does he really mean here, I wonder?), but for a woman to appear formidable would be inappropriate.

Lifelike.
He never explains this one. What do you think he means? How is "lifelike" slightly different from "appropriate" and "good"? I think he might mean "believable" or "true to life." Maybe he means the tragic hero should not be godlike, not like the mythical heroes of legend, but like real human beings.

Consistency.
Once a character is established as having certain traits, these shouldn't suddenly change.

The best tragic plot, he concludes, moves the hero from prosperity to misfortune, occasioned not by depravity, but by some great mistake he makes. Zamarol the protagonist in "Senafas Takbir Akhir" definitely always making the same mistake, the trait he carries throughout the drama, thus succumbing to the fate that befalls him.

Well, I can keep writing on and on about this experience of mine. There is so much to say about writing literature that is really to my understanding now in compared to before I made the first step to the theatre. I should have done that during that first semester but anyway it is never too late for learning as learning is life long. So much for consolation, I must say.

After skimming and scanning articles on Thesis Statements, Rhinoceros, and Research Papers last weekend, I guess I am practising one already.

All life is experiment- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, US Supreme Court Justice (1841-1935)

Life is easier to take than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable and bear the intolerable- Kathleen Norris, American author (1880-1960)

Little Violet and Big Rhino

Yesterday I went to another play, Little Violet and the Angel (LVATA) written by Philip Osment at the Actors Studio, Bangsar Shopping Centre, Kuala Lumpur. As advertised, it is really meant for children age six and above. As I entered the studio, the seats were full of children especially the "mat salleh". The play is about a baby being left in front of a couple's house by a woman one winter day. Though the baby was very welcome by the husband, unfortunately the wife does not share the same enthusiasm of taking care of the baby as their own. Throughout the play, the eagerness of the children audience was clearly visible as they laugh, "ooos" and "aaas". Surprisingly they did not make much noise but merely absorbed into the world of the actors and actresses on stage.

After watching Rhinoceros (R), I found this one is very slow in action, very much suitable for the targeted audience. The languages of both plays are entirely different in which LVATA is really comprehensible even without knowing the synopsis but for R the scripting was more complicated. I recalled the moment when the logician of R was debating about the paws of cats and the horns of rhinoceros as I sat listening to Little Violet debating with her adopted father with just a one word question, "why". A same debating situation but yet a different usage of languages entirely because in R it is between very matured adults while in LVATA, a little girl and an adult.

I have never interest myself into going to a theatre though I remembered very well Dr Rosli's and Dr Edwin's encouragement of going into at least one. After experiencing viewing two plays in two different theatres within one week, I should have taken Dr Rosli's and Dr Edwin's encouragement seriously before. I found out being physically there sitting in a theatre, watching the actors and actresses live on stage is totally a different experience. Reading a text and watching the characters in the text alive is entirely, well, very pleasing indeed, silently communicating with the performers on stage as eyes meet eyes. As I said last week, I am looking forward to view Carmen this weekend but not only Carmen but also Hannah and Hanna and Sound of the Music, to name a few that I am falling in love with. I am really hopefully hoping after these experiences, I will be able to write the position paper as well as the research paper in clearer and better understanding than what I did before.