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World Lit - Death and the Maiden + A Doll's House


BraZ

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Hello, my final world literature essay is due in 1 week, the last topic that i wrote my example on was too poorly expressed, and thus my teacher advised that i change topics.

So i have therefor come to the topic of The use of empowerment and dis-empowerment and how it is observed between the character conflicts of Gerardo and Paulina Escobar from ' Death and the Maiden' in comparison to that of Nora and Torvald from 'A Dolls House'

Please aid me in defining this question if need be or offer any advice that you can, i am in desperate need as i am a little worried it is not strong enough or possibly does not have enough backing behind it.

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The use of silence in language and how it is observed between the character conflicts of Gerardo and Paulina Escobar from ' Death and the Maiden' in comparison to that of Nora and Torvald from 'A Dolls House

I didn't do justice to this topic as in all fairness i did not fully understand it. English is not a strong subject for me and literature is my weak point, so the easier the topic to do justice to the more points i feel i could achieve.

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The use of silence in language and how it is observed between the character conflicts of Gerardo and Paulina Escobar from ' Death and the Maiden' in comparison to that of Nora and Torvald from 'A Dolls House

I didn't do justice to this topic as in all fairness i did not fully understand it. English is not a strong subject for me and literature is my weak point, so the easier the topic to do justice to the more points i feel i could achieve.

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Well, you came up with it, right? So surely you must have some sort of understanding of it :). That does sound like a very good topic indeed :D.

But, if you're really just looking for good marks and making it as easy as possible for yourself, you should perhaps just go with the gender roles question. Although, since IB sees SO many gender roles approaches, I'm not sure if they still score very well. Can anybody else shed some light on this please? :)

Also, love the avatar :P

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Well it was an idea given to me by my teacher, i just shaped it a little, and seeming as i don't really have my heart fully behind the topic nor my full knowledge of how to approach it, i feel that it may just be a little risky. How could i shape this idea on the gender roles and empowerment etc. of each so it comes off a little more difficult and not so safe?

Edited by BraZ
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maybe i could simply place empowerment of women and dis-empowerment of the men, rather than specifying the characters, as for Death and the Maiden, there were 2 men that became dis-empowered.

Considering you only have 1500 words to write this topic on, I would say it's perhaps better to narrow it down to characters. Someone correct me if I'm mistaken though :P. You could say something like "Comparing and contrasting the use of X DEVICE to illustrate the duality of empowerment of women and dis-empowerment of men, as characterised by X AUTHOR and Y AUTHOR"

And then in your introduction, you could specify which characters, just to make sure you stick within the word limit.

EDIT: Also, to make it less gender roles, and more empowerment, perhaps analyse two female characters? Or two male characters? Instead of the generic female vs. male. (This might be irrelevant since I haven't read your texts)

Edited by ChikkyD
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First of all, the word 'disempowerment,' had no hyphen/dash in it, it's just one word. You might want to make sure that all the words in your main RQ are properly spelt at the very least. :)

Second of all, gender empowerment topic is synonymous in this case with yet another female oriented essay. Couple that with the fact that your texts are generically feminine ones and you're really setting yourself up for poor grades. While there is no requirement for you to come up with interesting/original topics as per the marking criteria, the reason doing that is encouraged is because it impresses the examiner and interests them to want to read your essay. Furthermore, when you pick a generic topic like gender roles and empowerment in plays like Death and the Maiden and A Doll's House, you have to realise that thousands of candidates before you have written essays on this, they have been marked over the years by these examiners, and your essay will be compared to the best of the essays with a similar RQ and texts. If it doesn't stack up, that would count against you even more.

Third, the literary device you're looking for could be anything. Dialogue, setting, characterisation, briefness of speech, pauses, and so on.

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So if i did "Comparing and contrasting the use of characterisation / dialogue to illustrate the duality of empowerment of women and disempowerment of men, as characterised by Ibsen and Dorfman" the only way to get really good marks would be so somehow make it a little different from others, or do complete justice to the essay.

Edited by BraZ
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So if i did "Comparing and contrasting the use of characterisation / dialogue to illustrate the duality of empowerment of women and disempowerment of men, as characterised by Ibsen and Dorfman" the only way to get really good marks would be so somehow make it a little different from others, or do complete justice to the essay.

Essentially yes. And you can raze the forum, but this is going to be the answer/opinion you generally receive from most of the people here. Your topic is generic, we know that, you know that. you need to make it amazing and outstanding with novel analysis to even stand a chance of impressing your examiner and that is true for any topic/essay.

Instead of trying to coax meaningless assurance from us, spend this time to reread your texts and try to find similarities and dissimilarities in theme or literary devices with them and somehow inspire yourself to go beyond the ordinary with your texts. You can do it if you put your mind to it.

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  • 1 year later...

Okay guys can someone give me a list of themes that I could pick up from the death and the maiden and also can someone give me a list of themes that can be compared and contrasted with antigone? Thanks :)

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