I am a person who grew up with the inane desire to be different from others. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I find distinct pleasure in pursuing risks, as petty as that might sound. Without the excitement of distinction I easily find myself bored, and I mostly cringe at the idea of regurgitating the same ideas others have expressed, no matter how genuine and compelling they might be. These traits that define me have unsurprisingly become the foundation of how I write: I write as if I am observing Las Meninas, a painting drawn by Diego Valaquez in 1656. I carefully examine the awkward faces of the characters presented, attempt to look at the work from an alternate point of view, at times from different angles (sometimes from the back, contradictory to the common idea of observing from the front), or delve as deeply as possible at the hopes of unearthing a well held secret. That being said, my attempts at trying to be unique and quirky often came out to be “sometimes too big,, sometimes too narrow, sometimes just plain bizarre.” (My Writing Story) Often , I would either have an idea that was not contrasting to the fundamentals, but just plain wrong, and if logically sound, dreadfully lacking coherence. My journey as a writer during this semester was used systematically to amend the problems I originally had, and in turn allowed me to think with much more depth and breadth.
Haruki Murakami’s After Dark was the first novel I had to read for this class, and as my class had begun budding with discussions on the complexities of the characters, the contrast between the realistic setting of the Japanese night and Eri’s room, and the significance of each of the events that happened in a chronological manner, I found much more interest in the seemingly omniscient eye that seemed to gloom over all of the scenes presented in the book, an abnormality that to me seemed to make little sense in its existence. With this unsubstantiated hunch, I had written my first essay at an attempt to demonstrate how differently I thought from everyone else, and, to be expected, the first draft was a wreck, which Ms. Brayko even once said to have had “jumbled opinions, that seem to be at times even contradictory”. As much as I had fancied my previous concepts, it didn’t surprise me that the reception for my first essay was far from stellar, so I attempted to take another path in my writing. After realizing that Takahashi must have either lied to Mari or his fellow band mates sometime over the course of the novel, I came to wonder the genuineness of the interactions between the characters. After all, it just seemed improbable that Komugi, a supposed high school graduate would have an intricate understanding of the philosophical thought of Kant. Based on those much more arguable circumstances, I
wrote the second draft of my first essay, my peers expressing doubts on my theory. They questioned the legitimacy of my interpretation due to the fact that it contradicted everything my class had discussed about the novels, but said in a restrained manner that my argument was intriguing. These sentiments brought me much joy as a writer and stood as one of the most significant triumphs I had experienced while doing AP Literature.
After the completion of After Dark, I was given yet another task that challenged my style of writing and exposition to literature. After Dark was a complete novel that was fully developed with room for countless number of assumptions. The text dealt with in Essay number 3 was different in that regard as I was asked to write an analysis on a paragraph from the short story The Yellow Wall Paper. As The Yellow Wall Paper was a short story written to demonstrate the horrors of the resting cure common during the 19th century, I found it nearly impossible to find a true alternate interpretation within the work, but my desire to roll the dice of chance was still etched within me. This desire came to be manifested within the method which I used to analyze the various symbolisms that were found within the short story as I described how “The narrator attempts to struggle against her well-meaning husband... fails, and becomes insane from the revelation...” (Essay 3 Draft 2) The fundamental ideas that I had described within the essay was fairly orthodox in my interpretation, but my systematic method of separating the struggles of the protagonist into three parts (husband, society, despair) allowed me to put my own perspectives into the various motives represented within the novella. Ultimately, I came to learn from this essay that, while it was certainly helpful to have different points of views, I could find alternate interpretations by looking at the same angle as everyone else. After all, the analysis of Las Meninas always begins from the angle which the picture presents: from the front.
The supposed culmination of everything I had leant during AP Literature came with Essay 6 which gave me the liberty to write about how the author used diction, symbolisms, motives, and plot devices to characterize one of the protagonists within the novel Frankenstein. As I was under the presumption that a good majority of my class mates were going to discuss Frankenstein in book 1, I chose to discuss how Shelley humanized the hideous monster through various usages of diction and symbolisms. I found much pleasure in writing this particular essay as I experimented with the usage of context to describe the impact of Shelley’s descriptions in addition to my alternate interpretation of plot devices and symbolisms. However, attempting to combine everything I have learnt to use proficiently over the course of the semester in one paper proved too much for me to swallow in too short an amount of time. Ultimately, I was unsuccessful in convincing my peers on the legitimacy of my ideas. As much as I loved the prospects of coming with new ideas and demonstrating the difference between my peers and I, I discovered the underlying reason why people did not favor the prospective of taking the path of alternate interpretations. In order to convince a crowd with an idea that they had never considered, or at times have distinctively disagreed, the speaker was always obligated to do a correspondingly larger amount of research and analysis to create a compelling argument. This revelation, however, does not impede me from continuing my path full of thorns as I realize that I find so much joy and enjoyment in this approach of work, and I plan to refine my sense of logic, coherence, and writing during the next semester.
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