REL 1300 Spring 2010, Highlights and
Lowlights of Paper 1
Do you really want to say that?
First, I'll point out some little details:
Parvati if who
clams Siva...
I eventually figured out that this means "Parvati is the one
who
calms Siva..."
...also
she
is a central importance in tantrums.
This one
is
easier to figure out "...also, she is of central
importance in tantras."
In the
beginning, there was no mythology; there was no art. There was
only
experience.
Students
often
like to take essays all the way back to the beginning, or
the dawn of
humanity, or sometimes the start of time itself. Don't do
this unless
it is essential: it often leads to grand claims that are
hard to
verify. This statement is more contentious than you might
think: is
there such a thing as raw, unconceptualized experience,
older than art?
Was Kant wrong then, when he claimed that intuitions without
concepts
are blind? There is a big philosophical issue at stake here.
I don't
say that it is wrong to suppose experience precedes art and
mythology,
only that it should not be stated as if it were a
self-evident truth,
especially when the essay does not require it.
Most
of the
time people begin to devote to a god so they can show that
they are
grateful for all the wealth and the life that they have.
The
trouble
lies in the words "Most of the time." I have no doubt
that gratitude is
an important source of religious feelings, but is it the
predominant
one? Many people have no wealth to be grateful for, lead
wretched
lives, and yet are very religious. Of course, in an
essay on Sri
Laksmi, it makes sense to focus on gratitude, including
gratitude for
one's wealth, as a source of religious devotion. The
phrase "Most of
the time ..." was probably used without much care and
attention. But
you should re-read your essays, looking out for little
details like
this, and fixing them. I notice these seemingly minor
points because I
read your essays carefully, and take every comment
seriously. You
should read your essays with at least as much care as I
do before you
hand them in.
Composition:
In general, the biggest problem with
most of these papers
was Composition - by which I mean the ability to
organise the material.
First, do pay close attention to the question. One
student wrote a good
essay about the decline of Dyaus Pitr. The trouble is,
he is a god not
a goddess, and so I cannot give credit for the paper.
Some paper simply
compiled information about some goddess, without any
indication that
there was an underlying plan.
Consider this, as a concluding paragraph:
The worship
of Durga doesn't end here. Durga is a god worshiped in
the form of a
mighty warrior goddess by many rulers for their
success in battle. "The
worship of weapons was also part of this festival many
times."
(Kinsley, 106).
The phrasing is
a little odd. Durga is a mighty warrior goddess: why
say she is a god
in the form of such a goddess? Still, the
information about Durga is
correct - but why is this the conclusion of the
essay? Surely, one of
the first things you would want to say about Durga
is that she is a
mighty warrior. Worship of the weapons should be
mentioned somewhere,
and Kinsley should certainly be cited as a source.
But why the need for
a direct quotation? There is nothing particularly
memorable about this
sentence from Kinsley's book. Use direct quotations
when the exact
words that an author used are a matter of
importance. And why should
these be the final words of your paper? The
conclusion is the
punch-line, it is where you sum up everything you
have learned. In the
body of the essay, you give the evidence - here is
where you mention
details like the worship of weapons. The conclusion
is where you state
what general lessons you have drawn.
Or consider this:
According to
my research, Durga is a well known goddess in
Bengal, India. She is
supposed to destroy all types of evil forces,
that's why she has
eighteen arms with different weapons. Her worship
is mostly made on
Tuesdays. It is said that she was born when the
energy of all the fires
mixed. She appears in the famous text the Devi Mahatmya.
Well, that's some
information you could use in preparing a
Facebook page for Durga, but
all it amounts to is a bunch of facts. Why are
these particular facts
so important that they merit a mention in the
conclusion?
Here's an analogy. In old detective films, there
would be a final scene
where the detective gathers everyone in the room,
discusses all the
clues, and then reveals who the real culprit was.
"Yeah", he says, "And
I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't
for you meddling
kids and your dog." That is a satisfying ending. But
for it to work, it
is not enough that the detective mention lots of
details - she is
demonstrating how all of these details can be used
to reveal the true
culprit.
"You see Watson, the fact that the dog did not
bark indicates
that the person who entered was familiar to him, not
a stranger."
"Astounding Holmes." That works.
"You see Watson, Lord Fauntleroy was wearing a new
hat when he was
killed." "And what do we learn from that?" "I don't
know, I just
thought it was a nice hat..." That doesn't work.
Learn from Freddy and Velma. You need to see clues,
not just random
facts, and before you start writing, you need a
plan. You need to know
what conclusion you are going to present at the end
- and then
everything in the paper should be helping you to
reach that conclusion.
A better conclusion:
I am very glad
I've been able to write this essay because I
learned a lot about
Hinduism and what its followers believe. We might
think our beliefs are
the only ones that are real. But this is certainly
wrong. In the
process of writing this essay I've learned about
the beliefs of a
culture completely different from mine. I really
thought that the value
of women in India's society was not being
recognized, but we can now
see how they praise goddesses more than any other
religion and any
other of their gods. They have plenty of reasons
for their devotion to
female divinities, they think of them as mothers,
because they know
they can be both loving and cruel, but if they
worship them correctly
there should be no fear. This is why goddesses are
so important in this
culture. Their worshipers feel safe because they
know they have someone
they could count on, someone who would listen to
them and help them in
their everyday needs.
This conclusion
isn't perfect. If I set you an essay about
Hinduism and what its
followers believe, I don't need you to tell me
at the end that you
learned a lot about Hinduism and what its
followers believe. That kind
of comment is more suitable to a high-school
paper. Nor do you need to
mention that you were learning about a different
culture: what else
would you learn about in a cross-cultural class?
But, unlike the
previous examples, it is clear that the student
has been asking, "So,
at the end of all this, what did I learn?" The
final sentences bring
together points that were established throughout
the essay - about, for
example, the role of mothers, about love,
cruelty and fear. The facts
that justify these comments have already been
stated and analysed, now
we have a concluding synthesis.
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