Reflective Essay Rough Draft

Charlie Mungovan
English 102
4/28/09
Reflective Essay Rough Draft
Starting the English 102 course was a very intimidating landmark in my first year of college. Like most students I had heard the rumors that we would need to develop a ten page research paper. When I say we had to develop a research paper I feel that is exactly what happened because over the course of the semester my research paper formed through the novels from class, online blogs, comments on my work, and class discussions. The reason a ten page research paper seemed so intimidating was because I never realized how helpful all work I had put in would be when I actually sat down to start my research paper. During the first few weeks of class we learned that our research paper would be about something involving technology and whether its rapid progression was a good or bad thing. I knew right away the direction that I wanted to take my research paper and just hoped that the books we read would flow with the topic I wanted to discuss.
Growing up I had always wondered why my entire family had always said how lucky we were to live in America. That’s not to say I don’t love my country, I do, but ever since I was a kid I can remember thinking that these people who lead us could get away with whatever they wanted and no one would ever know. This childhood suspicion was taken to a whole other level when the Iraq war started. I can remember my dad saying things like how we can get away with this we are not the world police or how could they invade Iraq when they still haven’t found any evidence of nuclear weapons? There was nothing I could think at sixteen years old after the war had been going on for three years, but to agree with him. The problem for me was how directly the conflict affected my life. My two best friends were brothers and had joined the military because their family couldn’t afford to send them to college. It was at this point in my life that I felt a strange resentment towards the leaders of our country because it made me wonder if Jake or Josh had died at nineteen and twenty years old; what would they have died for? These were my two best friends and to think of them dieing for our country without a clear reason just seemed wrong, not heroic. So when I was given the chance to research something like the Iraq War and the power of technology and manipulation in our government I felt it might give me some answers to why our leaders feel people like Jake and Josh should risk their lives for our country or it would only confirm my uncertainties.
The stories we were assigned in class would prove to show a significant relevance towards things like the Iraq War and recent relations with Iran, but I didn’t happen all at once. When we read the texts I had already somewhat of an idea about the direction I wanted to start my research, but knowing what I was hoping to research helped me to convey ideas in stories like Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle early on in the semester. On Tuesday, February 17th we had to turn in a blog online about the first stories we had read and it was at that this time I first pulled away the “real world message” form one of our novels that I had wanted to find. I said in my blog “I really like the Bokononist religion in the story (Cat’s Cradle) because it made me feel like Vonnegut was comparing it to our own government which let me focus on the interesting idea of our democracy being a sham.” This idea about the Bokononist religion was the basis of an essay we had to turn in later because I really liked the way Vonnegut questioned government control. I said in an essay from February, “The most important thing I took away from The Cat’s Cradle was the fraud behind the Bokononist religion. The people of San Lorenzo believe in the Bokononist religion even though it is punishable by death to support it or take part in any of the religious activities. The citizens of San Lorenzo are unaware that two men came across their island and invented the religion to create order among the people. Bokonon wasn’t a deity; he was simply a man who was trying to create order on the island. The man who came to the island with Bokonon was the opposite of Bokonon’s role and lead as a dictator. The people of the island only took part in the religious activities and supported Bokonon because it was illegal. When John figures out that the Bokononist religion is fake was when I really started to connect the story into my own life. I felt that Vonnegut was trying to compare the island of San Lorenzo to the United States. The island was supposed to be a democracy yet it was ruled by a dictator who had all the people on the island convinced they were free. I believe that Vonnegut uses the Bokononist religion to make readers question what they believe in. Is the United States really a democracy? How would a soldier know if he were dieing for democracy when he gave his life for The United States? These questions could seem controversial to some people, but really how much do we honestly know about what’s happening in our government? The United States is supposed to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but how does someone know when they are really free? “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” This quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe helps show the point Vonnegut is trying to get across with governments and their beliefs. People don’t have to be free or have a democracy as long as they can be convinced they are free.”
I didn’t know it at the time but the idea about the Bokononist religion from the Cat’s Cradle would later end up influencing my entire topic for my research paper. However I chose not to include this passage from the essay or anything about the Bokononist religion in my research paper because I felt like it was more of an outline that helped guide me to my controlling purpose about the dangers in creating new technology, a massive gap in intelligence among Americans and their leaders, and the threat of trusting our leaders with this powerful intelligence and technology. During a class discussion towards the end of the semester I was fortunate enough to have my research paper rough draft passed out in class, along with some of my blogs. What I noticed when classmates started commenting on it was how most of my blogs talked about the bokononist religion and how I had said it was the most important thing I came away from Cat’s Cradle with, but never included it in my research paper rough draft. The Bokononist religion section of Cat’s Cradle truly was the most important passage from anything we read because it showed me that I would be able to draw meanings from the novels we read and sufficiently relate them to something like democracy and the Iraq War, which was one of my major concerns I had about my topic. The reason I chose not to include the bokonism section of Cat’s Cradle in my research paper, but felt it was important to reflect on it, was because in order to explain to a reader what a fake religion called Bokononism was and how it affected the main character John took up way too much space. It would seem in a ten page paper that I would want to take up as much space as possible, but by taking a huge chunk of my essay and explaining how I related a fake religion called bokonism to our own government would have only confused readers and may have got them off track from my controlling purpose just wondering what bokononism even was. This section of the story also helped me to explore questions like is the United States really a democracy and how much do we honestly know about what’s happening in our government? Instead of a fake religion I wanted to take the questions I had found and put them into real world examples with direct quotes form the novels we read in class that would be less hard to explain and easier for a reader to grasp. Questions like this helped keep me on track when I was researching my topic, but also as I read other stories like David Nye’s Technology Matters.
When researching my topic about dangers in creating new technology, a massive gap in intelligence among Americans and their leaders, and the threat of trusting our leaders with this powerful intelligence and technology I came across things like David Nye’s example in Technology Matters about media. Nye talked about the movie Wag The Dog, which I would later put into my research paper because the movie was about a corrupt president that used a staged was in Albania to get public support after he’s caught in a sex scandal. When Nye said in his novel “If one danger is hegemony from the private sector, the equally daunting alternative is that the media can become a central apparatus of state control,” I knew right away that this would relate directly to the ideas I came away from the Cat’s Cradle and help convey my controlling purpose to my readers. The fiction from a movie can also help show a reader that maybe the things we see in movies aren’t so far fetched after all. By using a movie instead of the bokononist religion I felt it would help a reader connect to my questions like how much do we actually know about what’s going on in our government better.
The class discussions helped direct my paper and get my general topic about government suspicion into a more specific research issue. The class itself also helped me develop my paper through their comments on my blogs. They repeatedly told me on February, 12th when commenting on a paper, that I needed to add more direct quotes from the novels we were reading to help support my ideas. I didn’t take the blogs very seriously during the class, but towards the end they came in extremely handy because when I went back to see what I had written in the past I noticed how everyone who commented was telling me to add quotes. So when I was writing my research paper I looked through my notebook and found where I had written page numbers of important quotes and added them in to help support the issues I was writing about. When I finished my research paper rough draft I couldn’t help but notice that it flowed much better than the essays I had written earlier in the semester. Overall the opinions of my classmates as well as Ms. Booker’s on my essays helped make my research paper much easier to write. When writing my research paper I wanted to get across to the reader that dominant government control can ultimately lead to fascism and become to overwhelming to retaliate against. I wanted to use real life examples from the Iraq war as well as the conflicts with Iran to raise some flags for anyone that would read my paper, but more specifically anyone who had someone close to them die or fight in Iraq. After the first conferences about our rough drafts, Ms. Booker helped show how important it was to give my readers a scholarly source for my real life examples. I had used quotes from places like USA Today, but after I began researching articles through the library database I realized how valuable a scholarly source actually was to my research paper. Instead of using quotes that were in very layman terms I was able to use ones that were superbly educated and well researched. By taking a scholarly source and using it to back up my ideas that I took from the stories we read in class, I was able to show a much stronger support for my theme and end up with what I felt was a polished and refined research paper.