Okay first some background: I'm a student in the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO or IB) and this time of year, we have to write our Extended Essay (EE) on a subject of our choice, and each student gets his or her own teacher for an adviser for guidance. However it's not really "our choice," we just offer suggestions of our top three subjects, and a random teacher is selected - I picked (1) - History, (2) - English, (3) - Human Rights. Of course I got English even though I extremely desired history (history is my passion), and I got the most infamous teacher in my school as my adviser - he's known for being the most degrading, strict, never-compliment-you teacher in our school.
Anyways, we started out our relationship pretty bad - he hated all of my ideas for a research paper and I was late to meet him one time. However things picked up and we went pretty neutral and he gave pretty good advice, I'll give him that, but when I applied this advice to the writing of my paper (I decided to analyze The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas politically) he first told me that my paper sucked and that it was more of a history paper than an English paper, then he said "If you wanted to do a History essay you should have signed up for that" [which I did...] and I told him this, which only infuriated him more and he said I'm not taking his advice (even though I did) and that he was getting tired of reading my paper (or at least the half that I turned in), and said that since I'm not listening to him, he was taking his hands off, then when I inquired further about my essay direction he was just like "Sorry I'm busy," and pointed at the door indicating for me to leave, so I just said "......Sorry....." and left.
I was trying to at least please the guy a little since I have to have him for a whole year next year, but I've come to an important realization today that I guess came kind of late for my age: You cannot please everybody, and sometimes you just have to give up on them since they gave up on you. I am going to believe that my essay does suck, and I do agree it's not perfect or even great (seeing as it's a rough draft and I was just getting my ideas down), but I'm hoping I can fix it up in time for the final draft due date (sometime next year) and get a fairly high score and rub it in that guy's face.
Anyways, just for my essay's sake, does anybody have any professional critique on how to tie in politics to a novel without making it a history essay? (In other words keep it more or less an textual analysis essay).
So far I have identified key events in the text and objects which I think advocate Alexander Dumas's political belief in the separation of Church and state (in other words identifying the political elements and tying it to Dumas's time), one paragraph per event, then a paragraph at the end of this chain tying it in to Dumas's political life with document support.
Just so everybody knows, Alexander Dumas spent the majority of his life in President Napoleon's France (so not the emperor/dictator that we all know) from 1800-15, and the Bourbon Restoration (restoring of the monarchy) 1815-1830, a time period in which the church increasingly became involved in French politics, which is why I said Dumas disagreed with it. The Three Musketeers was published in 1844, and in the 1860s-70s Dumas published newspapers propagating Italian independence from church imperialism, which I also used to support my thesis.
If you read all of this you've probably lost your focus on my principle question (or at least I would) so I'll say it once more - How can I make this more of an English analysis paper and less of a history paper? Or do you agree that I am on the right track?
Anyways, we started out our relationship pretty bad - he hated all of my ideas for a research paper and I was late to meet him one time. However things picked up and we went pretty neutral and he gave pretty good advice, I'll give him that, but when I applied this advice to the writing of my paper (I decided to analyze The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas politically) he first told me that my paper sucked and that it was more of a history paper than an English paper, then he said "If you wanted to do a History essay you should have signed up for that" [which I did...] and I told him this, which only infuriated him more and he said I'm not taking his advice (even though I did) and that he was getting tired of reading my paper (or at least the half that I turned in), and said that since I'm not listening to him, he was taking his hands off, then when I inquired further about my essay direction he was just like "Sorry I'm busy," and pointed at the door indicating for me to leave, so I just said "......Sorry....." and left.
I was trying to at least please the guy a little since I have to have him for a whole year next year, but I've come to an important realization today that I guess came kind of late for my age: You cannot please everybody, and sometimes you just have to give up on them since they gave up on you. I am going to believe that my essay does suck, and I do agree it's not perfect or even great (seeing as it's a rough draft and I was just getting my ideas down), but I'm hoping I can fix it up in time for the final draft due date (sometime next year) and get a fairly high score and rub it in that guy's face.
Anyways, just for my essay's sake, does anybody have any professional critique on how to tie in politics to a novel without making it a history essay? (In other words keep it more or less an textual analysis essay).
So far I have identified key events in the text and objects which I think advocate Alexander Dumas's political belief in the separation of Church and state (in other words identifying the political elements and tying it to Dumas's time), one paragraph per event, then a paragraph at the end of this chain tying it in to Dumas's political life with document support.
Just so everybody knows, Alexander Dumas spent the majority of his life in President Napoleon's France (so not the emperor/dictator that we all know) from 1800-15, and the Bourbon Restoration (restoring of the monarchy) 1815-1830, a time period in which the church increasingly became involved in French politics, which is why I said Dumas disagreed with it. The Three Musketeers was published in 1844, and in the 1860s-70s Dumas published newspapers propagating Italian independence from church imperialism, which I also used to support my thesis.
If you read all of this you've probably lost your focus on my principle question (or at least I would) so I'll say it once more - How can I make this more of an English analysis paper and less of a history paper? Or do you agree that I am on the right track?
