This essay posed perhaps the most difficult set of questions and necessary critical thinking so far. Ironically enough, it was the essay I was most excited about from the beginning–it was finally a chance for me to present completely original ideas about a text while still working with scholarly sources and meaningful research. I wanted to take a look at Caliban’s place within The Tempest in conversation with the critics Paul Brown and Deborah Willis, who entirely disagreed with each other on why or why not Caliban was a colonial threat within the plot. As I decided they both were convincing, and felt they were both right about some points and wrong about others, I set out with the challenge to make sense of why I felt that way, and how I thought they might be able to compromise.
That resulted in an absolutely explosive process of outlining, collecting evidence, and rereading the scholars’ arguments, until I came to a conclusion: Yes, Caliban is a threat to colonial order as Brown describes, and yes, Caliban is a sympathetic character as Willis describes, but he is not an actual physical threat, and he is not reduced to a pitiable comic relief because he is sympathetic. So, in my essay, I attempted to prove that Caliban’s sympathy-inducing tendencies actually made him threatening to Prospero’s mission of pleasing the audience in a new way considered by neither scholar.
This process was nothing short of hectic, as I’ve alluded to. I was so excited about this premise that I quickly breezed through an outline, using my new and improved method of looking through all available evidence before planning my paragraphs or articulating a claim. I thought I had it all figured out nice and neatly from the get-go, but as is often the case with critical writing, it did not end up being so simple once I actually put my fingers to the keys in a shiny new Word document. As I went along, I started to realize I had missed components of what Brown and Willis were articulating, and I had to rework my entire outline in the middle of drafting in order to accommodate my new findings. So, even though this essay was the one I was most enthusiastic about, and the most creative of the bunch, it was an extraordinary struggle to try and juggle two scholarly opinions, close readings, and my argument without losing bits and pieces along the way.
I also had some doubts about my organization structure, as I had previously gotten into trouble with my second essay for trying to contextualize my argumentative paragraphs within the paragraph itself, leading to a lot of information jammed into one place. Originally, I decided that since these sources were argumentative as well, it made a decent amount of sense to put them within my argument, but I was still unsure even as I finished my first draft.
Therefore, before I even got to the peer review stage, I ended up making a change. My doubts about my organizational decisions were growing, and I decided I wanted to give my scholarly sources some breathing room and place them in their own paragraph so that I wouldn’t have to face that in a peer or instructor review down the line. I had to start trusting that my reader could connect dots on their own without me over-explaining my context in every single paragraph. So, I ended up rearranging my argumentative paragraphs to account for the loss of scholarly summation, and this resulted in a paper I felt was a lot less jumbled. My head hurt a lot less when reading it, and I didn’t have that funny knot in my chest that told me my paper was an absolute mess. Which was good.
This led to my second draft, which granted me a rather relieving peer review. I was given the triumphant news that my essay made sense in terms of its claim and ideas, and was then given a series of suggestions on how to further improve my organization within the body paragraphs themselves. This was extremely helpful because I have no talent for picking out those nuances myself. My peer gave me suggestions on sentences to reword, points to clarify, and ideas to move around within the paragraph for clarity, and following her revision strategies erased a lot of lingering doubts I had about this essay. Everything felt more direct and focused, finally, and I no longer feared re-organizing as an effective strategy.
I was of course a bit nervous submitting the essay that had been the most taxing so far, but nevertheless, handed in my third draft fairly quickly. Unfortunately, in my instructor’s review, I ended up having one of my main fears confirmed: I hadn’t correctly identified Brown’s argument, even after revising it. However, I was given a very simple way to fix this issue: to add onto Brown’s argument as an extension rather than try to oppose it, and ultimately, to remove much of my engagement with Brown during the essay to begin with. That way, I wouldn’t have to get all tangled up in his argument in the first place, just address it and respond to it in my problem frame and move on. From there, my instructor’s other concern was that I was still referring too much to the scholarly work within my argument paragraphs–a problem for me since I had spent a lot of time trying to get that under control. But still, despite my attempts at paring down the critical conversation, my argument was still a little muddy. I was told to step out of the scholars’ shadow–and so I did, removing almost all my reference to their works. I engaged Brown and Willis in my problem framing and talked about Willis in an argument/response paragraph, but from there, I largely abandoned them and let my own work shine. Thankfully, the rest of my argument seemed to work, and offer new and creative insights.
Because these were such easy fixes, I didn’t bother submitting it for further feedback, and was ready for my fourth draft to go in my presentation portfolio. As I felt this essay had an original idea and an effective use of critical conversation on a larger level that none of my other papers have, I knew I had to give it one of the four presentation slots.