Week 4 project Planning

Topic of choice: Think about a theme you see running through your life (failure is the best lesson, love is eternal, etc). Choose a reading that you think also discusses this theme (even if it reaches different conclusions about it). Explore connections between how the theme plays out in your life, and how the theme gets played out in the reading. 

What I need to address:

• Themes of my life and how I feel they are progressing, without knowing this I will be completely unable to pick out what I want to focus on and read about and I can’t complete the project! Narrowing down a list of themes may be ideal and prevent myself from overwhelming in ideas.
• Themes in stories, stories where we follow a character may be better suited to this topic opposed to ones on more “world building,” I can not use a story that does not have character life and lessons. Stories that are more about the vegetation or the start of the world are not ideal, and are eliminated from list of options immediately. Ones where the characters develop or have relevations about life are most likely to be the stories I choose to do the project on.
• Connecting my life to the story, differing points and points of similarity. Put how the characters theme resolves and if mine resolves similar, different, or undetermined. Maybe making a Venn diagram will help with making this part easier, then I can quickly compare and contrast points to place it in the project. I can quickly add notes to it if I approach it in this manner, so it will be what I probably will use.
• Possibly how I can learn from this story or how this story appeals from the use of the theme. This is more to the benefit to myself, but I feel like it might have the ability to wrap the whole project together, and make it feel “complete,” so I like this idea. It may also benefit a reader and help them with their own issue, so it’s a little fun tidbit I’d like to add in.

Readings I may use:

• About the House Girl
• Harte
• Sawyer
• Other future stories with themes... these are some that came to mind first 
• These stories are the first three with major themes that I can quickly pick out and felt like the character work was strong. I may add more to this list when I think about some or look back at notes again.

How to answer the issues:

• Often these stories have a running moral or plot, or even a lesson to learn from the story, figuring out what each story emphasizes will help with narrowing my choices down to one I feel aligns the best
• Picking 3-5 major themes of my life out of common trope themes will help me quickly find one that will be suitable in using for the project

Literary Devices:

• Use of moralism: the idea the author wants to make us take away will be the most important part and correlates with themes in life, and often will have an outcome in the story, but not necessarily the same one that occurs in daily life
• Use of language: the language may make it easier to see how the author feels about this theme, does he/she approve of this theme, or have a biased ending or fairy tale ending to the said theme? Does the author themselves relate to this theme?