Plan For Final: My plan for the final essay is to combine both of my midterm essays together. I would like to build an analytical close-read essay that connects both the story of Undine, as well as Derek Walcott’s poem. I will attempt to use these two pieces to synthesize a claim relating to humans and their unwillingness to accept the ocean as a place of importance within our world. The essay may have compare and contrast elements as well as Walcott and the story of Undine share varying views throughout.
My Thesis Statement : The two passages insist that the ocean is not scenery but a partner and archive: as Walcott says, “The sea is History,” so neglecting it erases our own memory and future. Also, Fouqué’s scene, where Undine decides she “ought to regret” little as she leaves her “crystal palaces,” shows how human comfort can silence the sea and cost us belonging. Therefore, repairing our relationship means listening to marine places and the people who know them, and treating ocean care as ethical and historical repair, not an optional luxury.
I plan to conduct further research on which source I would like to connect to Walcott’s poem to strengthen the writing.
These are interesting texts to try and combine; I don’t really see how you’re going to be able to do it because they are such different types of texts. I might instead suggest that you focus on one of them and the argument that you’re pursuing and bring in a different text. In particular, I think your essay on Walcott’s poem was particularly strong, and that might be enough for a final project; you could bring in the blue humanities reading or “The Sea will Carry Us Home” or some of the other secondary readings from the semester. I don’t wanna see you get caught up in comparing and contrasting these very different texts.