Poker Face
The following paragraph talks about “todays” and “tomorrows”, and the preceding chiasmus places the emphasis on what might be called the “yesterdays.”
Category: Grammar
All of these materials are objects that are keeping Maryam Ipe alive, therefore Tilo’s rage is shown as detrimental to their relationship.
Rule: When using a conjunctive adverb (therefore, however, nevertheless, consequently, moreover, etc.) to connect two independent clauses in the same sentence, you must use a semicolon, not a comma.
Correction: “…Maryam Ipe alive; therefore, Tilo’s rage…”
Biplab uses the loss of the parakeets to add to the desolate nature of the town he lives in and his surroundings, which he continues to narrow to his desolate apartment; but he ends his description of the empty apartment by talking about the absence of a person, which is supposed to make the reader unconsciously connect the two ideas of the missing parakeets and Biplab’s missing Tilo.
Category: Grammar
Rule: When using a coordinating conjunction to connect two independent clauses in the same sentence, you must use a comma, not a semicolon.
Correction: “…to his desolate apartment, but he ends his description…”
It develops an argument of there being political meaning in the genre of children’s grammar books.
Category: Polish/Professionalism
Problem: “It develops an argument of there being”—wordy/indirect
Correction: It argues that there is political meaning in the genre of a children’s grammar books.
Within the struggle for Kashmir, the definition of martyrdom is altered to support a political agenda.
Category: Polish/Professionalism
Problem: Passive Voice
Correction: Within the struggle for Kashmir, the Kashmiri resistance against Indian occupation alters the definition of martyrdom to support its political agenda.
By putting this practice in the book, the text argues that these are common occurrences in Kashmir. Kashmir is in a bad state because of the Indian occupancy, and this leads to tough times.
Category: Polish/Professionalism
Problem: The tone of “bad state” and “tough times” is too informal for the subject matter.
Correction: Under the Indian occupancy, Kashmiris are continually exposed to physical and psychological violence.
Freud, S. “Mourning and Melancholia,” In: J. Strachey, Ed., The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14), Hogarth Press, London,
1953.
Rule: Citation is not in accordance with MLA guidelines.
Correction:
Freud, Sigmund. "Mourning and Melancholia." The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, edited and translated by James Strachey, Hogarth Press, London, 1953, pp. 237-258.
Biplab uses words and phrases like “[m]y senses were heightened and blunted at the same time,” “[h]allucinations,” and “[d]ream sequence” (Roy 210). His narration is now full of descriptions that conflict and warp reality.
Category: Rhetorical Efficacy
Problem: As a description, “words and phrases” is neither informational nor rhetorical.
Recommendation: Use the surface-level description in the second sentence to introduce the evidence in the first sentence.
Biplab uses the metaphor of the parakeets to display the depth of his emotion and how his feelings were not just platonic but romantic toward Tilo.
Category: Logical Consistency
Problem: Biplab isn’t consciously deploying metaphor. If there is a metaphoric quality to the parakeets, this is produced through how the text juxtaposes Biplab’s thoughts.
Recommendation: When analyzing rhetorical effects, maintain distance between the text and its characters.
In Gowhar Fazili’s interview with Kashmiri police officer Riyaz, Riyaz states his opinion that Kashmiris should value their relative freedom now rather than striving for more and militarizing against the occupation.
Category: Polish/Professionalism
Problem: “states his opinion”—wordy
Correction: Replace “states his opinion” with “opines” or “asserts”
The novel explores a region known as Kashmir—an ever-changing land whose borders ebb and flow from the waves of bloody conflict. Those who participate in this conflict are the ones who control this land and the ones who desire freedom from oppression—India and Kashmiri freedom fighters, respectively. With this endless strife, death reigns supreme—collecting countless bodies—and these deaths are no exceptions.
Category: Authority
Problem: Dashes emphasize, but if they are overused, then the effect is diluted.
Recommendation: Identify what is most deserving of emphasis and restrict dash use accordingly.
Describing the winter landscape and then immediately referring to the violent turmoil connects these two thoughts, which creates an effect of a detached, regular hopelessness that very quickly characterizes the narrator.
Category: Grammar
Rule: In order for a sentence to be complete, it must have a grammatical subject.
Correction: In describing the winter landscape and then immediately referring to the violent turmoil of the political climate, the narrator connects these two thoughts and, thus, characterizes himself as detached and hopeless.
To contemplate the reason Biplab is presented this way, we must compare the purpose of his utter certainty and the context in which it is employed. To do so, we will look at the role of knowledge and its use as a tool for power. We read that "throwing a man's own bio-data at him was sometimes enough to change the course of his life" (Roy 304). The fear of being watched or noticed by someone within the intelligence agency was prevalent, mostly because all it took for the intelligence agency to make someone disappear was suspicion.
Category: Rhetorical Efficacy
Problem: Because the quote lacks context, the reader struggles to understand the explication following it.
Recommendation: Contextualize the quote and develop a more specific explication of it.
This is signified to the reader when Biplab talks about his failed “experiment” with the red cement floor. The word “experiment” means that he planned on a certain outcome. He wanted a red cement floor with a “deep, soft shine, like those graceful old houses down South.”
Category: Logical Consistency
Problem: By definition, an experiment cannot have a fixed outcome.
Recommendation: Reframe “experiment” as indicating foiled desire.
With the lens of individual grieving in mind, I would like to integrate Sigmund Freud's essay "Mourning and Melancholia" to enhance my argument. In his essay, Freud writes "This demand arouses understandable opposition...This opposition can be so intense that a turning away from reality takes place and a clinging to the object through the medium of a hallucinatory wishful psychosis" (Freud 243). In his quote, Freud discusses the complex mourning process and the challenge individuals may have in letting go of a loved, lost object. He states that people resist the abandonment of a libidinal position, even after the disappearance of the lost object. This stems from immense emotional attachment to those that they lose...This directly correlates with and enhances my claims from earlier in my argument regarding individual internalized loss and the complexities the mourner experiences.
Category: Authority
Problem: How the outside scholar is integrated does not advance the argument. Also, the quote+explication is redundant.
Recommendation: Use Freud, instead, as the analytic frame of the earlier argument.
This begs the question: what has happened between when Biplab did this renovation and now? It isn’t outlandish to suggest that he has lost something more than their floor renovation.
Category: Authority
Problem: “It isn’t outlandish” is a litotes that sets the bar low for a claim’s viability and, therefore, unnecessarily introduces skepticism into the argument.
Recommendation: Positively reframe the claim.
Category: Authority
Problem: "One can apply" frames the scholar being integrated as merely one option among many, thus making the author appear uncertain about their choice.
Recommendation: Get rid of the last sentence and incorporate Seth Moglen into the penultimate sentence: "...she must undergo what the literary scholar Seth Moglen has theorized as 'social mourning'" (Moglen 155).
We see the unsettling nature of the abandoned apartment through the eyes of Biplab: "It seems to contain the geometry of motion, the shape of all that has happened and everything that is still to come" (147). This directly cultivates humans' lasting and substantial impact on those who love them after their absence. This perception of the room provides an unsettling feeling to readers, as the apartment incorporates the shape of the past, present and future.
Category: Rhetorical Efficacy
Problem: Skips from evidence--->claim without providing analysis.
Recommendation: To ensure you are close reading the quotes you incorporate, always immediately start analyzing the words themselves.
In eliminating the youth, India impedes both current and future resistance. Often, young Kashmiri men, many of whom are sons or husbands, disappear. What remains in their wake is an immense grief that consumes these men’s mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. The bullet that killed Miss Jebeen’s mother first hit her daughter and then plunged into her heart. For mothers who have felt the loss of a child, it is unfeasible to fully reconcile the ensuing grief.
Therefore, Begum Arifa Yeswi's heart had already been shattered before the bullet pierced her. In
“The Politics of Mourning,” Ather Zia describes a condition that she refers to as “hopeful
melancholia” (Zia 38). Unlike traditional melancholia where an individual is unable to replace
the lost object since it is unknown, an individual who suffers from hopeful melancholia is aware
of what they lost.
Category: Authority/Audience
Problem: In the absence of context, Ather Zia appears out of nowhere.
Recommendation: Provide a short explanation of how this scholar's work is relevant to the argument (i.e., Ather Zia, an anthropologist who studies grieving patterns in Kashmiri women whose loved ones have been disappeared by the Indian occupation,..."
While the bullet wound is likened to a "cheerful summer rose," Roy also notes the way some of the "petals" had landed on her white burial shroud. The rose emphasizes the peaceful, almost pastoral nature of Miss Jebeen's youth, while the "petals" spreading onto her white shroud embody a kind of staining.
Category: Polish/Professionalism
Problem: Euphemisms need to be spelled out for the reader.
Recommendation: Explicitly state that the petals are drops of blood.
Since any child in Kashmir could potentially witness a story like “The Old Man & His Son,” these questions seeks to analyze and understand the complexity of the scenario being presented and illustrate the incapability for Kashmiri children to fully comprehend the reality of the violence they witness daily by being virtually unanswerable by young children.
Category: Rhetorical Efficacy
Problem: Unclear coordination of the two claims.
Recommendation: Split into two sentences, and begin the second sentence with a transitional phrase that captures the relationship between the two claims. For example, “…understand the complexity of the scenario being presented. Yet, at the same time…”
This liminality is the crux of the torture that those afflicted by their loved ones “disappearing” go through: they do not have the comfort of knowing if their loved ones are alive or dead, and this aspect of “disappearing” holds tremendous and devastating consequences to those under its influence. Yet, through the figure of “Commander Gulrez,” Musa and Gul-Kak Abroo “disappear” themselves and, thus, strategically enter into this liminal state of existence and non-existence, through which they are able to “die” and “live” multiple times. This gives them more power to combat against their Indian oppressors.
Category: Logical Consistency
Problem: While Musa uses Biplab’s misrecognition of Gul-Kak Abroo to “disappear” himself, Gul-Kak Abroo does not elect to disappear. He is brutally murdered.
Recommendation: Adjust the claim to account for Gul-Kak’s non-elective sacrifice