position paper: the five points

Novel:
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Thesis Statement:
Estella represents Miss Havisham’s revenge towards men.

Supporting points:

Miss Havisham’s bad experience made her despise men.
• She was left by her fiancé, Compeyson on her wedding day.
• Lead to her action of living in seclusion and stayed as an old woman who was stuck in the past.
• When she adopted Estella, she automatically dragged her to be stuck in the same dull life.

“…blind devotion, unquestioning self-humiliation, utter submission, trust and belief against yourself and against the whole world, giving up your whole heart and soul to the smiter – as I did!” (Chapter 29, page 221).


Estella was purposely raised and trained to break men’s heart.
• She does whatever Miss Havisham asked her to do regardless of her own feelings and needs.

Miss Havisham said“If she tears your heart to pieces – and as it gets older and stronger it will ear deeper – love her, love her, love her! Hear me Pip! I adopted her to be loved, I brought her up and educated her to be loved.” (Chapter 29, page 221)

Herbert said “That girl’s hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak vengeance on all the male sex.”
(Chapter 22, page 162).

Estella doesn’t see Pip as her possible future husband, but as victim.
• Her relationship with Pip is just another chapter of Miss Havisham’s plan to achieve her motives.
• Estella intentionally treated Pip coldly because she did not care much about his feelings.

Pip was “…so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry-”
(Chapter 8, page 590)

According to Estella, “I have no heart, no sympathy, no feeling.”
(Chapter 26, page 220)

Estella did not marry Drummle out of love.
• The marriage was merely another connection she has with the high class society, compared to her lower status if she married Pip.
• She suffers a miserable life when she chose to marry the cruel Drummle who treated her harshly.
• Finally she learnt to rely and trust her inner feelings.

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching… I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape”. (Chapter 59, page 442)

Estella and Miss Havisham chose to spend their life fixated on vengeance that Estella forgot how to love.

• Miss Havisham destroyed her ability to express emotion and interact normally with the world.
• She was unable to express love even towards Miss Havisham.

“I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me” (Chapter 38, page 281)

5 Ways to Use Manga And Other Graphic Novels In The Classroom

A lot of us love to read cartoon strips, comic and manga, plus nowadays we can easily download them from the net or buy them in any bookstore. And guess what? Today teachers can utilize this genre in classroom teaching especially literature, as proposed by Adam Sexton, there are five fun ways to use them in the classroom.

1. Examine the relationship between words and images on any page of a manga or graphic novel.
a. What information is conveyed to the reader strictly by means of an image or images? (The ways in which characters and settings look, for example, and the things characters do in those settings: the story’s dramatic action)
b. What information is expressed strictly by means of words? (Characters’ speech and their thoughts – vs. their feelings, which we can often see in their facial expressions and body language)

2. Choose one scene from a manga or graphic novel adaptation of another work. (Recommended: the famous balcony scene from the Wiley title Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: The Manga Edition and the text of the play it is based on.) Compare the original and the adaptation. Ask students what storytelling effects are best achieved by means of…
a. Words?
b. Pictures?
c. Words and pictures (manga/graphic novels)?
d. Motion pictures (film)?
…and why?

3. Ask students to think of three effects unique to the manga/graphic novels/comics.
(Examples: thought balloons, breaking the frame around an action-containing panel) Are there things that only books and movies can do?

4. Ask students to pick a short scene from a novel, short story, or play with which the class is familiar, and adapt it as a mini-manga. Students can pair up, with one student choosing the words to include (cutting from the text is not only allowed, it’s necessary!) and another drawing the pictures.

5. Screen a film (The Road to Perdition, Ghost World, The 300, Persepolis) adapted from a manga or graphic novel. What has been gained in the transition from one medium to another? Has anything been gained?

There you go, teachers, a new approach to literature teaching and learning. I’m sure kids love this, but I would like to remind you that viewer discretion is advised on all four films, and that you should carefully choose and adapt materials for this approach. Good luck!

Malaysian Celebration

During this lecture hour we had a brainstorming activity concerning the various festivals and celebrations we have here in Malaysia. Together we had come out with about 36 celebrations that later were categorized under cultural celebrations, religious celebrations, and others.

Interestingly, most of the festivals fell under the religious category such as Hari Raya Aidilfitri and Christmas, followed by those related to cultural practices like Lantern Festival and other events celebrated nationwide such as the National Day and Valentine’s Day. Having them written down in our list, Dr. Edwin grouped us to complete a reading passage on one celebration for each group. I worked with Nurulhazhan and Siti Fariha to come out with an article about Hari Raya Aidiladha.

We e-mailed the first draft to the class representative for compilation and after the lecturer reviewed our first draft of the article, we were asked to add more information and compose it in the form of paragraphs for each subtopic. These include the date of celebration, its origin, the nature and practices during the celebration and the greetings as well. After refining it twice we inserted some photos in between the details and complete it before submitting the full article.

From this activity, we were able to discover other celebrations that we never know existed or celebrated by certain ethnic groups from certain religious practices in Malaysia, Naw Ruz and Onam, for instance. Apart from that, I gain more knowledge about all the festivals because each of us has a copy of the celebrations as reading materials that surely comes handy for our classroom teaching in the future.