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Sample Final Exam submissions 2015 (2015 final exam assignment) Essay 1 Sample |
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Assignment: Describe and evaluate your learning experience, referring to texts, seminar, objectives, research, and midterm. (may incorporate or overlap with midterm essay[s])
Jeanette Smith
8 Dec 2015
Dogmatism and Doubt: My Experience with Colonial/Post-Colonial
Studies
Dogmatism has always been a term that I disdained. I always considered
myself a broad-minded individual, someone who measures both sides of every
issue. However, in this class I gradually began to realize that I was more
dogmatic that I cared to admit. As I experienced different colonial and
post-colonial texts and listened to the voices characters representing both
sides of the colonial “self” and “other” spectrum, I began to have doubts about
my supposed open-mindedness. From the start of the class, I found myself
condemning the colonizer and “siding” with the colonized.
For example, in my midterm essay “Avoiding the Blame Game,” I wrote that
I was impressed by Ryan Smith’s
2011 research post “Through and Beyond Evil,” particularly when he suggested
that “The lines are blurred between villain and victim, with the focus instead
on why characters are the way they are, and what is implied by their thoughts
and actions in relation to postcolonial studies.”
I began to reconsider my earlier presumption that Robinson Crusoe and
Marlow in Heart of Darkness were both
colonizing villains. In his post,
Ryan called my villains “men of their times, limited in their thinking and
actions, influenced, through no fault of their own, by the ages in which they
lived.”
I realized that I had been dogmatic in
my views and perhaps should reconsider how these colonizers should be perceived.
Then I read Chinua Achebe’s
article
"An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness,"
and dogmatism reared its head again. I found myself
concurring with Achebe, condemning Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness as a racist text. I
was quick to agree with him about Conrad’s “preposterous
and perverse arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the
break-up of one petty European mind” (Achebe 21).
In my class presentation, I verbalized my
agreement with the Achebe article. But during the class discussion, I began to
doubt my hasty judgment of Conrad’s text. Marlowe
was, after all, not completely critical of the natives. Didn’t he reveal his
respect for the restraint of the cannibals, and wasn’t he also critical of the
act of colonialism in the novel?
This idea was something that I had not thoroughly considered until the professor
and other students brought the ideas up during the class discussion.
Instead of being open-minded, I realized that I had embraced my dogmatism
again after reading Achebe’s article. As much as I admire Achebe, I understood
after the class discussion that his article was coming from a personal point of
view as an African - one who saw Conrad’s depictions of Africans as a personal
injury. I began to wonder if
perhaps he was embracing some dogmatism himself.
At that moment, I began to see the value of class discussions as a way
of reexamining my personal opinions. Perhaps the dialogue between readers is as
important as the dialogue between texts.
In my research essay, I contrasted the exiles of
Robinson Crusoe and
Lucy. My conclusion was, again,
somewhat dogmatic. I felt that
Crusoe’s exile left him unchanged while Lucy’s did not. After I wrote my essay,
upon further consideration of the two texts, I realized that I had placed myself
right in the middle of my own culture war between the old and new canon instead
of being a mediator between the two. My
dogmatism had returned. Since I had not read about Crusoe’s experiences after
his return to England, could I be positive that he was indeed unchanged? Did he
leave the island the same person as he arrived since he claimed upon his rescue
that he was still “an Englishman”? This is what I had originally thought. Also,
could I be positive that Lucy was on her way to a new identity? Since her story
ended by her claiming that, “I had anger, I had despair,” would she perhaps be
unable to find that new identity since she still held on to the remnants of her
painful past?
As I thought about my dogmatism and doubts, I was reminded of Valerie
Mead’s 2013 final exam essay “Everything is Not What it
Seems: Shades of Grey in my Learning Experience,” when she stated, “I
have come to the conclusion that there is no black and white, but rather a
shaded area of grey that extends to how and why people behave the way they do.”
This piece of advice would be beneficial for all readers of colonial and
post-colonial literature to remember.
I can understand class objective 3 more clearly now since I have personally experienced difficulties with colonial and postcolonial discourse in the form of my own dogmatism. Discovering that doubts can be viewed as a positive thing, a type of warning against inflexible attitudes, has been one of the most important aspects of taking this class. This important lesson will no doubt be invaluable as I encounter texts in my future graduate classes and beyond.
