Can someone read my hopeless intro please
Prompt: ‘Medea is ultimately careless of family ties, while the men – Creon, Jason and Aegeus – are obsessively concerned with their family interests’
In the tragic play, ‘Medea’, the perception of family differs accordingly to the characters. Euripides represents the social standards of 400BC, that women are self-centered, as the female protagonist Medea, the ‘loathsome creature’, delivers unholy deeds in the name of ‘moderation’. Although Medea demonstrates some love and compassion towards her family, there is a greater cause that is controlling her thoughts. The social views and values that she follows overthrows her love for her two children to the extent that she ‘sees no joy in seeing them.’ Whilst Medea is alienated in her own desires, Euripides depicts the men as the only civilized people in the play as they demonstrate affection towards their families. Aegeus and Creon display their utmost love for their family; however, Jason’s position is questionable, as he was willing to endure Medea’s exile.
There's nothing hopeless about it. I would perhaps take issue with your interpretation at the end there, I don't think you could feasibly argue that Euripides is totally pro-men and rejects Medea's potential for caring. After all, this 'greater force' that you mention was born from her love for Jason, was it not? (<-- not rhetorical, this is a genuine debate you could have.)
Just try not to be too definitive with your readings. You don't want to fence-sit either, but you're expected to strike a balance between overly restrictive interpretations and the wishy-washy middle-ground.
My teacher prefers more external examples, but the examiners reports contains text dense context pieces. She doesn't mind if our first context essay doesn't contain much external references because we didn't have that much time but I'm pretty well-versed with the external examples so one paragraph of the text works well for me.
Speaking of teachers, what is your opinion of using books outside the set text. My teacher doesn't like us using books outside of the set text as external examples because 'students too much story-telling as a result'. Obviously I would stick to the set text in my SACS but should I consider using them later on?
As for the prompt, I think I'm misinterpreting the main idea of the prompt. This is my interpretation 'We are looking at reality/the way things are from our own narrow perspective and as a result unable to view things objectively/big picture'
The Assessor's Report does not contain the most effective, 'best' pieces. Quite often those essays will only score an 8 or 9. They're there to prove a point, which is why they're accompanied by some comments (usually) about what they've done right or wrong. Many people around the state are unable to integrate the text properly, so in an attempt to combat this, VCAA publish samples that, if anything,
over-use the text.
If you look back through previous years, you'll see them emphasise different things with almost every essay they publish. Learn what you can from them, but definitely don't use them as a be-all-and-end-all formula.
Definitely steer clear of whatever your teacher dislikes, but in the exam, any external reference is fair game. I was notorious for using literary examples, and most of my expository pieces just looked like a massive, conflated series of book reports that vaguely pertained to Conflict. In fairness, I was warned that drawing exclusively from any one discipline or area is problematic, because you open yourself up to obvious loopholes,
eg. 'here's a bunch of fictional examples of my contention!' ...yeah, but they're all fictional
'here's a bunch of historical examples from across the globe!' ... yeah, but they're not current
'here's a bunch of personal anecdotes about my experiences' ... yeah, but you're just one person.
Context is meant to be a broad area of study; you're meant to unearth some universal truths, and you can't do that properly if you restrict yourself too much. Naturally, you don't want to over-correct and cram your essay with all the varied information you can think of, but try and find some solid links that let you explore depth and breadth sufficiently.
That interpretation of the prompt seems fine to me. You should be fine to start exploring sub-arguments and see how you go; if you hit a mental roadblock then perhaps revisit your contention and modify it slightly, but you're definitely addressing the main idea. 'We can't judge ourselves, because we are ourselves' is what it boils down to. 'Are we able to objectively assess our identities/realities, or are we too wrapped up in our own heads?' 'Can we judge our own realities with the same objectivity as we judge other peoples'?'
It's quite a good prompt, actually