LITR 4231 Early American Literature 2012 Student Midterm Samples 3. Web Highlights: Review at least 3 posts from course website's Model Assignments (4-6 paragraphs)

Rochelle LaTouche

Differing Perspectives

The three posts I read for this assignment were “The Struggle for a Voice for Minorities,” “The Indian Captivity Narrative,” and “Gaps in Creation Stories: The Search for Truth.” “The Struggle for Voice…” and “The Indian Captivity Narrative” both involved minorities but discussed different aspects. “The Struggle…” discussed minorities as a whole, while “The Indian Captivity Narrative” focused specifically on writings involving Indians capturing white Americans. Other than those two similarities, the three topics varied significantly. The one component they all had in common, though, was that they were written clearly and in an organized manner. I chose the three because the language and organization of the pieces appealed to me, and I could comprehend what they were trying to say.

The first post I read was “The Struggle for a Voice for Minorities.”  The author of the essay asserts that females and minorities are not represented fairly in today’s society; they have as much to offer as any white male writer, yet their texts are not as commonly taught in the classroom. I felt like her essay was a bit opinionated with little factual evidence. I read the texts the author was referring to, so I knew what they were about already. In her essay, the text excerpts were not elaborated on to the point where I was learning anything new, other than the author’s opinions. I thought she had good opinions; they were just a bit underdeveloped.

 One point in her essay where I thought she made a valid point was when she said “Through their [the Indians’] attempt to explain ‘the origin of the earth and its people,’ we are given an intimate glance at how they set up their society and behaved.  We can also see how their beliefs vary from ours and we can begin to draw conclusions about how our religion and belief system has evolved from then to now.”’ This was probably the most insightful piece of her essay. She analyzes the significance of the creation/origin stories and how they influence people today. Overall, from this post I learned that good opinions need good evidence to fully develop the idea.

The second post I read had to do with minorities as well, but more specifically with Indians. The research post is titled “The Indian Captivity Narrative.” The author defines the term Indian Captivity Narrative and then reveals that there are thousands of them published. I did not know that there were so many out there. I found it interesting that “the captivity narrative as a genre encompasses everything from slave narratives to UFO abductions, but the Indian captivity narrative itself is restricted to non-Indians being captured by Indians.” It amused me that UFO abductions were considered captivity narratives and not science fiction!

The author also describes Mary Jemison’s case, which is a piece I am familiar with because we had a student explain it to us in class. The author also claimed that captivity narratives were published to praise God and for economic support. I would have thought that they were published to inform people, so that is something new that I learned. Overall, the author discusses various aspects of the Indian Captivity Narrative that are interesting and relevant to ideas we have learned in class.

The last post I read is about religion and is called “Gaps in Creation Stories: The Search for Truth.” The author of this piece essentially claims that there are gaps in creation stories, hence the title. She states that “almost every religion struggles with creationism.” These struggles lead to questions such as: If nothing existed before God, then where did God come from? Had he always been there? Etc. She, then, offers the quick solution of “the only answer I'm ever going to get is: it relies on faith.” She claims that for any question we have about religion, we should recall on faith. Like the first post, I felt like this was a pretty opinionated piece. The author tells a quick story, talks about questions facing religion, and then answers these questions with “faith.” I feel like I learned about the author’s opinions and experiences. I also learned that more concrete evidence helps support an opinion better, as in the first post I read although the author claims religion has little concrete evidence.