Emily Diaz
Professor Tim Dalton
Individual and Society
December 01, 2018

End of The Semester Reflection
Area 1: Self as a Reader

My perspective as a reader has changed within this semester being that I went from someone who only understood the plot to an individual who sees what the theme behind various stories are trying to convey as one whole message. I initially thought this class would only talk about how society and a person correlated with one another but instead I was taught way much more. Through taking this course, my perspective on stories has gone through a change since the protagonist is now seen as someone who was created for people to have a relation too. With reading all these pieces of literature that the class conversed and analyzed, I now see that situations can be different, but this does not mean that they can not relate to one another. All the protagonists in these texts went through situations that dealt with an internal conflict and what society demanded of them to be. This class has shown me that in order to be a productive reader and thoroughly analyze what’s going on I have to use the personal issues I face as being a minority and as a female who constantly deals with judgment.
Intertextual couplings play along with this being that the readings like El Deafo and Ms. Marvel corresponded with each other and had the same message to give although they had a different plot line. The two characters are both individuals who are seen as weak minded and low confident people till they recognize that labels are just names that don’t have the ability to effect the framework of who they really are. Confidence is earned through applying thoughts to actions as seen in both texts. Another way I applied an intertextual coupling was having the ability to relate to the misfortunes these characters go through with the people around them since I have been expected to act and behave a certain way because of my gender. I know the truth behind being boxed in an environment where the aspects of being yourself take a heavy toll on the life you live. I understood thoroughly what was being said behind closed doors.

Area 2: Writing Situations

“To ask ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is a poor choice of words and leads to obfuscation rather than clarity. Why so? To phrase the question in this fashion implies that meaning is something that inheres in an object or experience – that it is a quality which is as discernible as the height of a door or the solidity of matter. That is not what meaning is like. It is not a feature of a particular thing, but rather the relationship between a perceiver and a thing, a subject and an object, and so requires both. There is no one meaning of, say, a poem, because meaning is generated by it being read and thought about by a subject.” -Steve Else
The author of this paper is telling the audience through his choice of words and their meanings that people are the ones that create their own definition of what they see or experience. He wants people to understand that life isn’t something simple like a door or a bat it is a relationship that has been established to be unique and different to every single person. Life is complex therefore it cannot be defined with one set meaning. Also trying to define something that cannot be defined will only bring about problems and confusion for the people that are trying to understand it. The story that these sentences tell is that in order for one to understand what’s around them they have to be an open-minded person and let there mind explore so that they can eventually withhold many concepts.
A stranger is the trail that they mark because the words that they say convey who they are because it’s showing the perspective that the person endures. Your choice of words and the order that you use to arrange them when constructing a sentence or statement symbolizes who you are. Through the quote that Thumpa Lahn says you may assume that the words, you use show in which direction you are going and where your head space is. Every piece of writing one makes is the landmark on their trail because it’s like a monumental milestone that shows how the author has grown and changed within time. Even by the smallest amount of words that an author uses you can see whom they have become or why they are becoming. Your word choice is a symbol for you as a person. Your word choice shows where you from, your education, and the direction that your running in.

Area 3: Language and Identity
Through reading and writing this semester I learned key factors about myself that I didn’t know before. Such as when reading I learned that when I interpret the story, I like to give it a relation that would either be found in my life or in someone else’s. When I don’t find those factors, I feel like whatever is being stated isn’t necessary nor relevant. What is found to be interesting in this dynamic is that when it comes to my point of view, I find myself in relation to others although when it comes to expressing it, I don’t get the same end result. The world is divorced from me in the way I process things and this class more than once demonstrated that to me. The reason why this statement is being made is that there were times where we discussed what we read in class, and the thoughts that came from my head were completely different from what others had said. This class gave me both isolation and relation when it came to performing these two tasks.
The world is full of different opinions, thoughts, and personalities. Due to this, an individual will experience one of these many things which are the feelings of resentment, relation, or judgment. Through your dialect and the formality of your writing, you can become isolated from others. Like in the social life when I’m outside my educational setting I talk with slang, but due to being in college majority of my time my use of words may differ from the ones around me. This often makes the ones that surround themselves around me to feel as indifferent which leads me to have this feeling of resentment. Language plays a key factor in my life and the identity that I have because it shows who I am as a person and the amount of knowledge and education that I have. Being said everyone’s use of language makes them unique to the people that are around them. Although in some scenarios it brings people close because it builds a bond between them since they have the ability to experience someone similar to them.

Work Cited Page
Steve Else (2018) What Is The Meaning Of Life?
Retrieved from: https://philosophynow.org/issues/59/What_Is_The_Meaning_Of_Life

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