How do I frame my WL 1 Topic?

[ABC123456]

My teacher basically had all of us pick a motif and two books to compare and contrast with that motif. How can I mold this into a proper topic? I didn't think about this until now. All I have is basically Motif-Book-Book. So Strength of Women-Like Water for Chocolate-House of Spirits. Can it be something like, "The Portrayal of the Strength of Women in LWFC and HOS" or does it have to be more in-depth, etc. than that?

[Austin Glau]

That sounds good, but then make sure to compare and contrast the use of Strength in women rather than the potrayal of it, because that could be taken as how the book uses the motif's interpreted by you rather than author's take on it. I can't really give any guiders scince I never read Like Water for Chocolate, but it sounds like you are going in the right direction. I think that, as a part of your thesis statement, is deep enough as long as you provide proper argument and analysis.

[sweetnsimple786]

I find it helpful to include what about the motif it is you'll be talking about. What about the portrayal of women? You don't want to talk about all of the women, either, so maybe you're looking at the traditional woman or modern or whatever. I haven't read HoS, so I can't comment there. So you can argue that the women are presented in a particular way OR you can argue that the authors do ________ to create the effect you're noticing. Does that make sense?

[ABC123456]

One of the things I can name on the top of my head is Clara and her silence and the effect it has on Esteban. As in silence is stronger than the spoken word. Another point is how Allende portrayed women's strength during the revolution.

In LWFC I found that Esquivel portrays women of power with masculine characteristics, in a way like promoting feminism.

Would it be unwise to talk about more than one main character? Like you said, I know I can't talk about all the women, but it's okay if I talk about one character, and then say also, it is seen in this character/instance blah blah?

Also I was reading over the assessment criteria, and I was wondering for Section A: Selection of the Aspect and its Treatment, what "personal response" means. What are they looking for here? Is the "aspect" our topic?

I'm sorry if this is a lot, I'm just really confused. The assessment criteria seems really vague sometimes.

[sweetnsimple786]

If I'm not mistaken, they're looking to see if you're engaged with your topic, that you're not bored out of your mind about the topic and that you've picked something you find worth looking into. that's my best guess haha

You could do two characters as long as you're concise as a writer. I couldn't do it because I can't get to the point more often than not An example is if you were to compare Tita and Rosaura and argue that one character is a foil for the other character. That's not a comparison of two texts though. I hope you get the idea though.

You probably want the portrayal to be similar in some aspect. My teacher said to mainly compare for WL1. So yeah, you can talk about how a character portrayal leads to other things in the plot/characters or how it evokes something in the readers.