Example Paragraph for Explanatory (Reflective) Essay
I mentioned on my cover sheet that my thesis needed revision, which was not really very specific. The reason that it needed some revision was that my original thesis was far too vague for the analysis assignment, and turned into a summary of the three shows. Here’s what I mean; my original thesis looked like this: “Farscape, Earth 2, and Sliders are all very interesting attempts to show the problems with exploration, and in doing so, show society’s problems as a whole.” Some of my first comments on this thesis were, “why was it interesting?” and “which society problems?” I had never really answered this and because I didn’t, the paper just wasn’t as (if you’ll pardon the repetition) interesting as it could have been. My first instinct was to scrap the topic, but Mr. Winslow said that I should keep going but go further. He suggested reading Orientalism by Edward Said to get ideas to revise my thesis. It really did help; from Said I learned about the concept that the colonizer and colonized cannot help but effect each other. This really helped explain John Crichton’s problem in Farscape; he literally gets changed while changing the part of the universe that he’s in. This helped me develop this new thesis: “Science fiction TV shows that emphasize exploration typically address a post-colonial anxiety that attempts to recognize the complex culture clash between peoples when they meet; namely, the more foreign and strange the ‘colony’ the more changed the explorer becomes – even to the point of the explorer becoming completely isolated and stranded due to the journey.” This is the final version of the thesis, but it does two things differently: it addresses what the societal problem is, namely post-colonial anxiety, and lastly, it identifies the human problem of being so removed from home that it’s really lost. The reason this “improves” the paper is that it’s more argumentative (creating good debate with the reader) and in that it focuses the direction of each paragraph since I have to show how each theme shows the estrangement of the character spiritually from home.