I was given an assignment to write an essay connecting a quote from the Hunger Games to real life and I wanted to share it. Tell me what you think ^_^
How Despicable We Must Seem Before the opening ceremonies, Katniss meets with her stylist, Cinna, to prepare. Cinna presses a button and a fancy meal appears that consists of “Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey” (Page 65). Katniss thinks about how difficult it would be to get a meal like this in District 12 compared to the Capitol.
What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I spend the hours I now commit to combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do they do all day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new shipment of tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment? I look up and find Cinna’s eyes trained on mine. ‘How despicable we must seem to you,’ he says. (65)
Katniss doesn’t respond to Cinna’s statement, but she agrees in her head. “He’s right, though. The whole rotten lot of them is despicable” (65).
Although our world does not really consist of a Capitol and many districts, there are still some people who live more comfortably than others. For people like me who live a privileged life, life is easy. Food is readily available if I want to eat. Outside of school I don’t really have many responsibilities. I don’t have to worry about how I will survive the next day. My family has told me on many occasions to think about how lucky I am to live the way I do. In other countries, life is hard. In Africa, children starve to death as a result of famine and poverty. People my age in some countries are working more than my parents do. Katniss’s disgust for the extravagant Capitol is similar to the disgust I felt for myself when I listened to an account of one man’s visit to factories in China.
The classroom was noisy as the MUN students filed in. An assignment was due that day, but no one had done it. Everyone was hoping that the teacher, Mr. Mustard, wouldn’t collect the homework. The bell rang, Mr. Mustard walked up to the front of the class, and we all quieted down.
“Today,” he began, “I want you guys to listen to something I heard on the radio. It’s an excerpt from a program called ‘This American Life’ on NPR.”
There was a collective sigh of relief as Mr. Mustard went to his computer to start the program. No one wanted to work, so everyone was happy that we only had to listen to the radio. Mr. Mustard began in the middle of the program, and the room quieted down as we strained to hear the narrator’s voice.
I look up at the buildings, these immense buildings They are so enormous. And along the edges of each enormous building are the nets. Because right at the time that I am making this visit, there has been an epidemic of suicides at the Foxconn plant. Week after week, worker after worker has been climbing all the way up to the tops of these enormous buildings, and then throwing themselves off, killing themselves in a brutal and public manner, not thinking very much about just how bad this makes Foxconn look. Foxconn's response to month after month of suicides has been to put up these nets. (Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory)
At this point Mr. Mustard stopped the program temporarily to explain a little about the suicides and the nets. The room was dead silent. Every person was in the unfamiliar world of Chinese factories. He clicked the program back on:
The narrator talked about his conversations with the workers at the factories where hundreds of thousands of people are crammed into these buildings to manufacture the iPods and laptops that we use every day. “And I say to her, ‘You seem kind of young. How old are you?’ And she says, ‘I’m 13.’ And I say, ’13? That’s young. Is it hard to get work at Foxconn when you’re-‘She says, ‘Oh, no.’ And her friends all agree. They don’t really check ages” (Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory).
I sat at my desk, trying to imagine what it would be like to work at age 13, to sit in a factory, building iPhones, instead of sitting at a desk, learning. Child labor wasn’t news to me, especially since I was in MUN. Topics like this were given at conferences and we were exposed to world problems all the time, but knowing that a problem exists and hearing someone talk about the problem are completely different. I turned to look at my classmates and saw a sea of shocked expressions and open mouths. We listened, horrified, but couldn’t stop listening.
Do you really think Apple doesn't know? In a company obsessed with the details-- with the aluminum being milled just so, with the glass being fitted perfectly into the case-- do you really think it's credible that they don't know? Or are they just doing what we're all doing? Do they just see what they want to see? (Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory)
“He’s right,” I thought. Even though there were problems like child labor happening in factories in China, Apple didn’t seem to care. The people buying Apple’s products didn’t seem to care. I, as a consumer of these products, felt just as at fault as the companies committing these crimes. The worst part was that in a couple hours or so, when I had forgotten about what I had listened to, it wouldn’t matter to me anymore. I would just go on with my privileged life, eating and playing as much as I wanted, not caring about problems elsewhere. My mind was filled with thoughts of “What would the workers there think of my life?”
The class continued to listen in silence as the narrator continued with his story. We saw what he saw and heard what he heard: the crammed dormitories with 15 people jammed into a 12 by 12 foot room, the 1984-esque monitoring of the facilities, the stories of working with neurotoxin since it was slightly more efficient than other materials, the people fired since their ruined fingers could no longer keep up with the breakneck pace of the factory, and the people who could no longer find work because they protested conditions. As the narrator’s Chinese translator said, “It’s just that you hear stories, but you do not think it is going to be so much” (Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory).
After 30 minutes of this program, Mr. Mustard stopped the podcast and walked to the front of the room. In MUN, we learn to be better speakers. The air is usually filled with noise, but at that moment, the room was dead silent. We stayed like this for another minute before Mr. Mustard finally spoke.
“That radio show, ‘This American Life,’ had another podcast that talked about this guy who went to China.” He pressed a button on his computer and we could hear the podcast’s usual host talking:
As best as we can tell, Mike’s monologue in reality is a mix of things that actually happened when he visited China and things that he just heard about or researched, which he then pretends that he witnessed first-hand. He pretends that he just stumbled upon an array of workers who typify all kinds of harsh things somebody might face in a factory that makes iPhones and iPads. (Retraction)
I heard some people around me breathe sighs of relief. The captivating story about factories in China was no longer real to them. The mood was noticeably lighter as Mr. Mustard finished the last few minutes of class talking about how presentation is important when talking. However, I didn’t feel the same as some of my classmates. Their feelings vanished as soon as they heard that the story wasn’t entirely true, but I felt that just because the parts were taken from different sources didn’t mean the situation was different for those workers. I still felt that I was to blame for their suffering.
Just as Katniss felt disgust for the Capitol, I felt disgust for myself. In the Hunger Games, the districts suffer as the Capitol citizens enjoy their extravagant lives. In real life, people in other countries suffer as a result of people like me who like fancy electronics. Once again, I thought about how lucky I was to have a comfortable life. Hours and hours of SAT classes or tutoring were nothing compared to what other people my age endured. I pictured myself talking to factory workers just as Cinna talked to Katniss. “How despicable we must seem to you.”
I take it you are in high school. You writing is more a summation of an event. It needs more critical analysis, rather than one paragraph at the end tying it back together. You need to constantly connect.
Also, this is a really cliche topic and you would be better suited to write on a more interesting point of the book.
the introduction is well written, but i assume you came here for constructive criticism, and not just praise. your 3rd paragraph (the 2 liner) should be a part of the paragraph before it everything you have written once you start talking about the fox-conn suicides (5th paragraph to 2nd last paragraph) is simply a statement of events with some explanation. you do very little elaboration, and put in few of your own thoughts. of the 13 paragraphs on fox-conn, you make enough points to justify possibly 4 paragraphs at best, the rest is expansion which you won't be marked on (if your school is similar to mine was) the conclusion, and paragraph before it are very good.
What would i change? Compress the 13 paragraphs on fox-conn into 4 or 5, keep your intro and the conclusion the same. and include at least one more text you have studied in school which is able to relate. I'm not sure what you've read, but any number of books which are currently reviewed in high schools would do. some which come to mind are titles such as "the book thief", or even using a simple image of any 3rd world situation (I'm sure you've studied plenty in class, i know i must have seen at least 10 starving 3rd world citizens in my last semester of high school), and it would be extremely easy to dig up the article about a family surviving for 2+ months on a single cow hide.
Make sure you have one solid point per paragraph, state it, explain it, then ELABORATE with your own thoughts EVERY paragraph.
I got the top English score of my school (with a 92 raw score for the state) and earlier this week i wrote a 2000 word essay for my psychology course in 2 hours (when it was supposed to take 4-6 hours) and got a perfect score of 15/15
All the best of luck with your assignment and schooling, even without edits your essay will get 6-8/10 depending on the marker and standard of the rest of your class.
Praetorial is right, too much of his reads like summary, not a real analysis.
To add a few of my thoughts to this: 1) Seeing as this is a formal writing assignment where you analyze the meaning and significance of a quote (that's what I take "connect it to real life" to mean), you ought to present your hypothesis in your first paragraph instead of launching directly into summary and quotations. Really I'd say the problems with this start from the first sentence, which provides no exposition, but instead starts directly summarizing the story. If you can help it, the first sentence should try to grab the reader's attention. Start by telling us something like "If you wish to make a meal from scratch, you must first invent the bow and arrow" (to paraphrase Sagan) and then begin talking about the scarcity of food in the novel and how it relates to modern life BEFORE hitting us with quotations and summary. I don't know if writers and people who write as a hobby agree with this, but I don't think that the first exposition the reader has to an idea should come from a quotation.
2) "For people like me who live a privileged life, life is easy." Avoid repeating the same word too closely together, it sounds clumsy unless it serves some greater purpose in the story/essay or is particularly clever (none of which apply here).
3)"Katniss’s disgust for the extravagant Capitol is similar to the disgust I felt for myself when I listened to an account of one man’s visit to factories in China."
a) Saying you feel disgusted with yourself over something like this is a little extreme and needlessly self-deprecating. You can be disgusted with yourself when you DO something atrocious, you don't get to feel disgusted for being born in the right part of the globe. You can feel guilty, sure, but not disgusted.
b) This is a really awkward transition to explain why you feel disgusted, I'll get into this later.
4) "As best as we can tell, Mike’s monologue..." Who the hell is Mike? Is he Mr. Mustard? The NPR host? If he's any of these people and not some new person, why do you suddenly change how you refer to him? It's not clear who's talking about what here.
5) I can't tell if the formatting screwed up when you copy-pasted this from word, but a lot of sections seem to be either long segments of paraphrasing, or direct quotations without actual quotation marks, which is just confusing to read.
and now
6) The big one. The goal of this assignment was to connect a quote from "The Hunger Games" to real life, not your life and misplaced feelings of disgust in particular. Now, I don't mean to offend; I'm glad you tried to put a more personal emotional spin on this, but honestly I think the writing would have been a lot stronger overall if it more directly compared the situation expressed in the quotation to the plight of Chinese factory workers instead of filtering it though an egocentric lens. Also, drawing a meaningful comparison between two worlds (one real, one fictional) involves more than just describing one, then describing the other one, and then trying to remind us in one paragraph that they're somehow connected. You have to be making comparisons between each relevant aspect of the two subjects. From this piece of writing, I'm only convinced that these two situations are related only because YOU heard the stories told about them.
EDIT: To add to that last paragraph there, must like every decision you make in SC2 must have thought behind it, every sentence and theme you choose to bring up in a piece of writing should either accomplish a goal given in the assignment, or some other goal you choose for yourself and make clear to your audience. In this case, I as the audience was told that your goal was to connect a quote from "The Hunger Games" to real life, and what I got was a quotation from the novel, followed suddenly by you proclaiming your feelings of disgust AT YOURSELF, to a story about Chinese factory workers and more disgust at yourself, and one final paragraph that brought up "The Hunger Games" again.
We were all teenagers once, and I admit it was very easy to contextualize everything in terms of how it makes you feel, but real life doesn't always have to tie back to "my life." In this case it hurt the writing because you did it (present everything in terms of you) without making it a stated goal first. When something like this comes up and it doesn't happen to synergize amazingly with the writing better, it makes it look lazy and thoughtless.
If you are in high school, this is really good nice job! (even if you aren't, it's still an interesting read!) If it is a supposed to be a traditional essay, I would suggest "officially" adding a strong thesis. Slipping in something like: "this essay will argue that our current geopolitical structure manifests the same inequality and injustice portrayed in the Hunger Games" would help tie things down. My only other suggestion is to reorganize your paragraphs.
Don't be disheartened by the criticism in this thread. It is very, very easy to pick apart a piece of writing. I guarantee you that anyone would receive similar treatment - it's not just you, by any means. For each individual, an essay could be "better" based simply on personal preferences regarding style, structure and content. It's much harder to actually write.
Your essay addresses an important contemporary issue. Using the specific example of Foxconn workers was really nice, and I especially like your closing paragraph I suspect that this is exactly what the teacher was hoping to read.
On April 17 2012 14:35 Xxio wrote: If you are in high school, this is really good nice job! (even if you aren't, it's still an interesting read!) If it is a supposed to be a traditional essay, I would suggest "officially" adding a strong thesis. Slipping in something like: "this essay will argue that our current geopolitical structure manifests the same inequality and injustice portrayed in the Hunger Games" would help tie things down. My only other suggestion is to reorganize your paragraphs.
Bolded part would actually lose you marks in an English class, for an essay in any other subject it is fine
On April 17 2012 14:35 Xxio wrote: If you are in high school, this is really good nice job! (even if you aren't, it's still an interesting read!) If it is a supposed to be a traditional essay, I would suggest "officially" adding a strong thesis. Slipping in something like: "this essay will argue that our current geopolitical structure manifests the same inequality and injustice portrayed in the Hunger Games" would help tie things down. My only other suggestion is to reorganize your paragraphs.
Don't be disheartened by the criticism in this thread. It is very, very easy to pick apart a piece of writing. I guarantee you that anyone would receive similar treatment - it's not just you, by any means. For each individual, an essay could be "better" based simply on personal preferences regarding style, structure and content. It's much harder to actually write.
Your essay addresses an important contemporary issue. Using the specific example of Foxconn workers was really nice, and I especially like your closing paragraph I suspect that this is exactly what the teacher was hoping to read.
Well, seeing as the majority of the criticism here was mine, I'd like to say that if iMbc here is brave enough to post this essay on the internet for people to critique, he or she is ready to receive criticism and become a better writer for it. Yes it's easy to pick apart a piece of writing, but that doesn't make the picking-apart process any less meaningful or important for the writer at which it's directed.
If you want to encourage iMbc, go ahead, but I don't think downplaying criticism in the same breath is helpful. I'm not a writer myself, if encouragement is more important than critique, so be it. However, my take on criticism and life in general is that even if something is easier, it's not less worthwhile based solely on whatever scale of difficulty you're using. Without criticism, without something to fight and struggle against, there's no growth.
EPT
nice job! (even if you aren't, it's still an interesting read!)
