I want accurate job and well sited

Instruction

This is your final exam. The Final centers on the Isabel Allende novel, Maya’s Notebook. I would suggest after reading the information connected to this project that you consult the textual source itself and any other applicable readings/discussions or lectures before you attempt to answer this assignment. It would also be advisable to review the MLA method of essay writing, especially the use of in-text citations as support for your work as well as the work cited page at the conclusion of your essay. Obviously, you should be using your own creativity and ability to form unique interpretations for this final exam.

Now, I’d like to repeat some previous material. Then I’ll say a few words about possible connections between the Allende work and possible links to the areas of violence, history and. power. Finally, I will offer various hints about essay writing itself, and conclude by giving the details of this final work.

Background:

Maya’s Notebook

Violence, history and power are very visible in this book. Memory and trauma also play important roles. As you may recall, this book was written by Isabel Allende, who is Chilean. It may be well to remember that she lived through very tumultuous times in Chile when General Pinochet overthrew President Allende. It is not coincidental that the Allende last name is the same in both instances. They were members of the same family and this relationship caused the author to flee Chile and go into exile. General Pinochet was known for his lack of pity concerning people comprising the opposition or espousing alternative views of reality as far as he was concerned.

To repeat some previous ideas, the Maya story focuses on a young girl’s self- survival. We read about many incidents concerning this teen age protagonist’s life. These acts involved many things, such as, incidents of drug and alcohol abuse, as well as crime and problems of parental rejection. If that were not severe enough, we find out, as the story progresses, that she is also pursued by various sectors, such as, the F.B.I., Interpol, and drug gangs. Luckily, her grandmother, who is a loving and quite innovative person, manages to send her to a faraway place called Chiloé, an island off the coast of Chile. As her stay in this place lengthens, she starts to journal. The long ago past somehow merges with the recent past. Quiet and solitude finally give her a clearer sense of what exactly her present is comprised of.

Yet, this is not just a story about a young girl, her escape from harm, and various entangling forms of violence. Within the narrative true elements of history, such as Pinochet’s regime, emerge mixing with fictional elements like her grandmother’s personal life.

This leads to one literary metaphor that is especially important to keep in mind while reading this novel. It is that of a border or boundary. In the book, Maya crosses many geographical borders from California to Chile, yet it is when she enters into some of the novel’s more complex situations that nuances of more complicated psychological and physically challenging boundary crossings surface. It is essential to recall that many times borders lead to exiles, migrations and/ or sanctuaries not just to acts of trespassing, escaping or transgressing. Also, it is worth noting the spot violence and power occupy in all this. They are not just confined to one place or time but are everywhere. They absolutely have no boundaries. Due to this fact of going and staying wherever they please, their capabilities of wreaking havoc and causing chaos and suffering are intensified.

Now let’s look at some of the other characters. We find out that one of them is connected very closely to these previously mentioned violent forces. His name is Manuel Arias and is the person Maya is staying with on the archipelago. His past is not pretty and slowly surfaces as the months go by after Maya’s arrival. Arias has survived much, having been arrested, tortured and traumatized by Pinochet after he assumed power in 1973. This leads to some of Chile’s historically darkest secrets, especially those surrounding the last moments of President Salvador Allende’s life before the Pinochet dictatorship began. The military coup on September 11, 1973 not only ousted a democratically elected president, killing him in the process, but also ushered in a murderous and repressive regime which killed many. Although many state that all was not horrible with this dictatorship because capitalism took root and buoyed up the economy, historians now say atrocities flourished and Pinochet and his military cohorts caused untold suffering and countless deaths. Only now is the country finally coming to terms with this catastrophic past and how individuals, society, and the nation itself almost drowned within those damaging dictatorial waves.

Another character who echoes many of these thoughts is Nidia Vidal, Maya’s grandmother. She states at the beginning of the book that “there are moments when a person has no control over their life, things happen, that’s all.” (4) Nidia expressed this thought to her granddaughter when she was boarding the plane to Chiloé to escape possible harm. This departure was an exile of sorts due to the great danger Maya was in. It also reflected an underlying theme of fate and free will. Nidia thought control was merely an illusion, and people generally had to cope with events as they appeared, many times almost without warning in their lives. Was this because of the twin ideas of violence and power?

Writing Process

Now I would like to give you a few tips about the writing process itself. This is an essay, so you must give it a title. Final Exam is not a title. The title should correspond to the main idea of your work. Whatever the title is, that is what you should be writing about. Since this is an analytical essay, analyze do not summarize. If you do overly summarize, you will lose a generous amount of points for this error. I expect that you will use numerous in text citations for this essay from the book. Look again on the MLA site for the correct format.

Please reflect on your own thoughts after having read this novel as well as the areas we have already discussed about it. You are using this novel as a support for an analysis about violence and power. Please reread the lectures and the thoughts I have offered over the semester. Obviously, since the course indicates these two elements, they should be included in some way.

Remember that in an essay, you will be developing your own thesis statement and defending it with numerous quotes from the original text and other sources of your own choosing. Since an essay contains an introduction, body, and conclusion, each having a specific purpose to fulfill, make sure your essay’s structure demonstrates a good grammatical command, cohesive organization and a coherent development plan referring back to your originally stated thesis. Go back to https://owl.english.purdue.edu if you have problems in writing your assignment. I have also posted some information about the writing of an analytical essay.

Once again, please pay attention to your thesis statement. Remember that it is positioned at the end of the first paragraph and is the roadmap for the rest of your essay. Again, do not summarize the book, analyze it. Pick out the textual places you want to employ as supports according to your essay’s main idea.

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Final Exam:

So finally, here is the assignment. In a 5-7 page essay, analyze Maya’s Notebook through the lens of violence and power. Remember these two forces may be many things; so, there are many ways you can potentially write about them in this essay.

Probably we should start by defining the words: violence and power. Power is the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events; while, violence is physical force intended to hurt, damage or kill something or someone. Think about the potential turbulence and destruction linked to these two words when added to the context of the book. Then try to relate how these words were shown in different ways in the story’s scenes, characters and/or episodes. Although Maya’s Notebook was “fictional”, it was also rooted in a disturbing sense of historical past and present time actuality.

Here are some navigational points you may choose to consider as part of your analysis if you wish: violence and power’s relation to place, political situations, family, social disorder, youth, instability on societal, national and individual levels, gender, conflict and suffering, etc. These are only hints or clues. Use them if you want or replace them with others of your own choosing.

In any case, you are going to examine the novel closely to see how the aspects of violence and power have been reflected in Allende’s work. Whether you center your thoughts on the main characters or offer a commentary on history and certain people’s places within it, the challenge of this final exam is to analyze. Since the direct information connected to your ideas may be missing, what does this resulting absence tell? Is this connected to why the main characters’ trauma is so deep? You may want to investigate how traumatic experiences are linked with the historical, social and psychological worlds of violence and power. Although these issues or situations are difficult to analyze, be creative and try to offer your own interpretation. As the course description states, “crimes of violence and power may point to deeper issues where solutions cannot be found or situations are just too complex to unravel.”

I quoted from this book in the first part of the Final Exam discussion, the part when Nidia talks about the randomness of certain episodes in life. She reiterates how “there are moments when a person has no control over their life- things happen, that’s all.” (4) Obviously your analysis should go beyond that page but it could reflect the accumulated information within the entire book as concerns violence and power and this notion that “things [just] happen,” and people to a certain extent just get caught up in the confusion and chaos.

Be creative but be focused. Make sure your grammar and essay organization are precise. There will be no time for a revision on this work. Remember it is a final exam.

Good luck and if you have general questions about this final exam, please send me an email. This final is being sent out on December 9th, 2018 and should be returned to me by December 26th, 2018. Unfortunately, there can be no extensions for this assignment because I must post the grades right after that date.