Context: Conflict - Personal Reflective. Critical feedback is appreciated! (:

[natdogg]

Prompt: Whilst conflict is inevitably painful, it can also lead to positive change.

Text: Every man in this village is a liar - Megan Stack



“Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to tell you a bit of a story tonight. It’s a story about life’s journeys, and like all good stories, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So to start with, if you come on a bit of a journey with me, we’ll go back in time, back a generation, and to a faraway land, where two different families, with very different cultures, have somewhat similar stories.”

I smiled, playing back the recording of my brother’s speech as the groom of the wedding, reminiscent of the beautiful occasion which took place just over a year ago. As his speech went on, I indeed felt myself warp backwards through time, triggering me to remember that life, especially R[my brother – removed for privacy reasons]’s, G[his wife – removed for privacy reasons]’s, and their parents’, was not always as beautiful or joyous as their wedding day.

Both their parents are first generation immigrants, R’s from China, G’s from Sri Lanka. Both sets of parents were children of underprivileged, rural farmers who worked on the fields from sunrise to sunset, living on meagre amounts of food all for the sake of being able to send them to school. Both sets of parents grew up enveloped by their distinct cultural and traditional values, isolated from everything aside from their school, home, and culture. Due to the sacrifices made by their families to send them to school, both sides of parents could not afford to waste their education, and consequently they all graduated at the top of their year, all of them receiving scholarships to complete further study at Monash University, leaving behind their school and home, but not their culture.

“Now if we fast forward a few years, somehow the two families both moved to the same little suburb in suburban Melbourne, by some stroke of luck.”

After moving to Melbourne, both families bore children on the same year, and sent their children to the same primary school. I still recall R’s cheeky smile, telling the guests of his first memory of G – their year 2 excursion to Safeway, where they came equal first in the store’s drawing competition. But it wasn’t until they were reacquainted in year 12 that they fell in love, which was when things started to go sour.

When my parents heard my brother was dating a Sri Lankan girl, they were livid, to say the least. I’m sure it was the same in G’s family as well, as both sets of parents grew up under very traditional principles and circumstances, resulting in them having very conservative beliefs. My mother would verbally disapprove of R and G’s relationship, often saying that “Chinese people are taught filial piety and are well educated and obedient, whereas Sri Lankan people are rude, brash, and ignorant of morals”. When I was younger, I used to just believe whatever my mum told me, but when I overheard an argument over the phone between G and her mother, who expressed an uncannily similar opinion, I realised that it wasn’t just a simple case of who was lying and who was telling the truth, both of them believed with great conviction that they were speaking the truth. Perhaps it was due to their cultural differences, them not being able to speak English well, and thus resulting in an inability to communicate, their ignorance of eachother’s circumstances despite having almost identical stories and conditions, or their obstinate yet not incomprehensible refusal of allowing their child, who they, like their parents did for them, sacrificed everything in order to ensure that he or she would be able to live a comfortable life unlike their own, to marry someone of a different race with different ideological beliefs to their own, but it was obvious to the observer that they, in a sense, were both speaking their own ‘truths’.

There’s a quote by famous American film producer, Robert Evans: “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.” I think this rings true with every argument, with every war. Both my parents and G’s parents honestly believed that they were in the right, that they spent their entire lives working to make their children’s lives easier, and thus had a right to condemn this relationship. But if they just stepped back, if they just opened the walls of obstinacy, I’m certain they would both see that they were exactly the same. They share the same story, they share the same situation, only under a different name. Ours, Wang, theirs, Mathanasenarajah.

This ‘war’ played out in the microcosm of our two families is not dissimilar to the war in the Middle East, where ideological differences of ‘parents’, or leaders, affect and disturb the lives of their ‘children’, or followers. In Megan Stack’s memoir, Every Man in this Village is a Liar, this form of ‘conflict’ is paralleled in the civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias. As Ahmed describes: “If you say Ali Al Sistani is bad, they want to kill you, but if you ask them why they follow him, they can’t answer.” If both sides focused less on their blind beliefs, and “[found] a balance” between the two ideologies, then I’m sure both parties would be more open-minded and empathetic, ultimately moving one step closer to resolving their ‘war’. But this is a lot to ask for.

My family grew distant. After a while, my parents stopped reprimanding R, but not only that, they stopped talking to him altogether. Every time he went out, there was a mutual acknowledgement that he was going to see G, and that my parents disapproved, but nobody would speak. It was only until they were forced to break up that both families began to see the foolishness in their actions. I can still vividly recall that fateful day my family received the phone call from G’s sister. The phone was handed to R, who had just woken up, and was essentially told in a verbose and acrimonious manner, to “Stay away from G”. Ray didn’t eat, didn’t speak, didn’t leave his room that entire day, as if in protest against the iniquitous world and its prejudiced inhabitants. Of course, after the peak of the storm had subsided, they secretly began to see each other again, but when the families found out this time, they were surprisingly without criticism, without condemnation. It was as if the consequences of winning the fight had shown them the faults in their beliefs, that enforcing their faith and ideology onto others was imprudent as opposed to seeking a balance between the different sides.

Five years later, they got married.

“And I guess that brings us to the present, to today, here and now, and the end of my story, but just the beginning of ours.”

The recording cut to the final portion of the wedding, the first dance. One hand on his shoulder, one hand on her waist, the other hands clasped together in an unforgettable symbol of unity and balance. They stepped together, turned together, twirling around the room with their eyes interlocked to an acoustic version of Jason Mraz’s I won’t give up. Friends and family watched on with teary eyes and irrepressible smiles. My parents and G’s parents smiled in silent admiration of their beautiful performance. The romanticism of the bridging of differences. A modern day Romeo and Juliet.

[literally lauren]

Prompt: Whilst conflict is inevitably painful, it can also lead to positive change.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’d like to tell you a bit of a story tonight. It’s a story about life’s journeys, and like all good stories, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So to start with, if you come on a bit of a journey with me, we’ll go back in time, back a generation, and to a faraway land, where two different families, with very different cultures, have somewhat similar stories.” Cool start; I'm not too sure what the context for this speech is, and there'd be more interesting ways to begin than just 'Good evening,' so you could change things up a bit here and make the intro a little snappier, even though the emotional weight of the piece is coming from the story you recount. It's hard to give any specific recommendations without knowing something about when and where this is going on, but see if you can design a way to make this first bit more engaging.

I smiled, playing back the recording of my brother’s speech as the groom of the wedding, reminiscent of the beautiful occasion which took place just over a year ago. As his wait, so your speaker is sitting in the audience whilst someone else delivers the speech? Who? Is it his brother? speech went on, I indeed felt myself warp backwards through time, triggering me to remember that life, especially R[my brother – removed for privacy reasons]’s, G[his wife – removed for privacy reasons]’s, okay, I'm a little confused as the function of this; is this some kind of genre convention you're going for? And if so, what is it adding to the piece? If this is a real story, there's no reason why you can't just put their names here (-the assessors don't care if it's real, only that it's sufficiently realistic) and if it's fake or you don't want to write their real names for some reason, just make some up. I'm also unsure as to what form this is taing overall. So you've got this speech opening, and now you've transitioned to a reflective narrative where your speaker is a part of the audience listening to the speech and watching the wedding video, so why would he be removing names from his own inner reflection and their parents’, was not always as beautiful or joyous as their wedding day.

Both their parents are first generation immigrants, R’s from China, G’s from Sri Lanka. Both sets of parents were children of underprivileged, rural farmers who worked on the fields from sunrise to sunset, living on meagre amounts of food all for the sake of being able to send them to school. Both sets of parents unless you're making a point of your repetition (with 'both sets of parents' at the beginning of these sentences) in which case you should probably do it more than twice, I'd advice against this. There's this weird phenomena whereby repeating something twice makes it seem like you don't have another way to express your point, but repeating it three times makes it seem more deliberate and purposeful, so either structure this in a way that draws attention to the repetition (=more specifically, anaphora) or reword this so there's no repetition at all grew up enveloped by their distinct cultural and traditional values, isolated from everything aside from their school, home, and culture. Due to the sacrifices made by their families to send them to school, both sides of parents could not neither could afford to waste their education, and consequently they all graduated at the top of their year, all of them receiving scholarships to complete further study at Monash University, leaving behind their school and home, but not their culture.

“Now if we fast forward a few years, somehow the two families both moved to the same little suburb in suburban Melbourne, by some stroke of luck.”

After moving to Melbourne, both families bore children on the same year, and sent their children to the same primary school. I still recall R’s cheeky smile, telling the guests of his first memory of G – their year 2 excursion to Safeway, where they came equal first in the store’s drawing competition. But it wasn’t until they were reacquainted in year 12 that they fell in love, which was when things started to go sour. Minor point, but until the end of this paragraph, you haven't actually hinted at a specific conflict. That's not a huge problem because you're allowed to build up to these big ideas, but if you leave it too late, there's a chance your assessor will start to drift, and then they'll look upon the rest of your piece more critically because they're scanning through it, trying to find a connection to the context and the prompt. It might be good to hint at this a little bit sooner to ensure your reader doesn't have to wait too long for that link to be made clear.

When my parents heard my brother was dating a Sri Lankan girl, they were livid, to say the least. I’m sure it was the same in G’s family as well, as both sets of parents grew up under very traditional principles and circumstances, resulting in them having very conservative beliefs. My mother would verbally disapprove of R and G’s relationship, often saying that because the quote here is full of fairly sophisticated language, it doesn't realistically sounds like something a person would 'often say,' ie. I don't know anyone who uses the phrase 'filial piety' so perhaps either make this slightly more colloquial, or change the sentence structure so that you're essentially describing the essence of the mother's speech without directly quoting it “Chinese people are taught filial piety and are well educated and obedient, whereas Sri Lankan people are rude, brash, and ignorant of morals”. When I was younger, I used to just believe whatever my mum told me, but when I overheard an argument over the phone between G and her mother, who expressed an uncannily similar opinion, I realised that it wasn’t just a simple case of who was lying and who was telling the truth, both of them believed with great conviction that they were speaking the truth. Perhaps it was due to their cultural differences, them not being able to speak English well, and thus resulting sentence structure is a bit messy here in an inability to communicate, their ignorance of each other’s circumstances despite having almost identical stories and conditions, or their obstinate yet not incomprehensible refusal of allowing their child, who they, like their parents did for them, sacrificed everything in order to ensure that he or she would be able to live a comfortable life unlike their own, to marry someone of a different race with different ideological beliefs to their own, but it was obvious to the observer that they, in a sense, were both speaking their own ‘truths’.<-- really long sentence here, and I'm starting to lose the thread of the discussion by the end of it, so splitting this at some point would be a good idea.

There’s a quote by famous American film producer, Robert Evans: “There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.” I think this rings true with every argument, with every war this makes it seem like you're about to zoom out and look at a different example; it's a bit odd to bring up the idea of war and then go straight back into discussing the familial conflict from before. Both my parents and G’s parents honestly believed that they were in the right, that they spent their entire lives working to make their children’s lives easier, and thus had a right to condemn this relationship. But if they just stepped back, if they just opened the walls of obstinacy, I’m certain they would both see that they were exactly the same. They share the same story, they share the same situation, only under a different name. Ours, Wang, theirs, Mathanasenarajah. <-- love this split of the names at the end, that's quite powerful, but it feels like this isn't targeting this particular prompt. There's a lot here about the notion of perspective, subjectivity, and truth/lies, but not so much pertaining to the notion of conflict being inevitably painful.

This ‘war’ played out in the microcosm of our two families is not dissimilar to the war in the Middle East, where ideological differences of ‘parents’, or leaders, affect and disturb the lives of their ‘children’, or followers. In Megan Stack’s memoir, Every Man in this Village is a Liar, this form of ‘conflict’ is paralleled in the civil war between the Sunnis and the Shias. As Ahmed describes: “If you say Ali Al Sistani is bad, they want to kill you, but if you ask them why they follow him, they can’t answer.” If you want to stick a quote in here, try and explore it in a bit more detail rather than have it do all the talking for you, so to speak. If both sides focused less on their blind beliefs, and “[found] a balance” between the two ideologies, then I’m sure both parties would be more open-minded and empathetic, ultimately moving one step closer to resolving their ‘war’. But this is a lot to ask for.

My family grew distant. After a while, my parents stopped reprimanding R, but not only that, okay, so the reason this sounds odd to me is because you've got two points here: that the parents stop reprimanding R, and that they stopped talking to him. But because you've got this 'not only that' conjunction, it makes it seem like your second point is an extension of your first. When you say the parents stop reprimanding him, it feels like that's a positive consequence, but then you have the fact that they're not talking at all, which is undoubtedly a negative thing. It'd be kind of like saying 'I'm failing maths, and on top of that, I'm doing really well at school' - that second point is grammatically linked, but on an idea-level, it doesn't make much sense they stopped talking to him altogether. Every time he went out, there was a mutual acknowledgement that he was going to see G, and that my parents disapproved, but nobody would speak. It was only until they were forced to break up that both families began to see the foolishness in their actions. I can still vividly recall that fateful day my family received the phone call from G’s sister. The phone was handed to R, who had just woken up, and was essentially told in a verbose and acrimonious manner, to “Stay away from G”. Ray didn’t eat, didn’t speak, didn’t leave his room that entire day, as if in protest against the iniquitous world and its prejudiced inhabitants. Of course, after the peak of the storm had subsided, they secretly began to see each other again, but when the families found out this time, they were surprisingly without criticism, without condemnation. It was as if the consequences of winning the fight had shown them the faults in their beliefs, interesting point, but what is the conflict here? You mention that they were forced to break up, but what precipitated this event? This seems like the major turning point in your piece, at yet I'm not entirely sure what the motivations of the families are in this case that enforcing their faith and ideology onto others was imprudent as opposed to seeking a balance between the different sides.

Five years later, they got married.

“And I guess that brings us to the present, to today, here and now, and the end of my story, but just the beginning of ours.”
And what is 'today' exactly? What is this beginning that R(?) is talking about here?
The recording cut to the final portion of the wedding, the first dance. One hand on his shoulder, one hand on her waist, the other hands clasped together in an unforgettable symbol of unity and balance. They stepped together, turned together, twirling around the room with their eyes interlocked to an acoustic version of Jason Mraz’s I won’t give up. Friends and family watched on with teary eyes and irrepressible smiles. My parents and G’s parents smiled in silent admiration of their beautiful performance. The romanticism of the bridging of differences. A modern day Romeo and Juliet. Okay, I get that you're talking about the family feud elements of Romeo and Juliet here, but calling these people the equivalent of Romeo and Juliet is a bit weird seeing as they famously and tragically die at the end The comparison isn't quite apt if you're trying to depict this as a happy ending.

Rather interesting plot you've got going on here, and I like how the reflective voice traces the journey of this relationship, but there are a couple of things I'm not sure about.

Firstly, in terms of form, are you writing a reflective narrative? That would be my best guess, but I'm not 100% sure because of the interwoven speech and the fact that the names are initialised/redacted. In a SAC, this wouldn't be a problem because you could simply explain this in your Statement of Intention/ Written Explanation, but looking ahead to the exam, you won't have that opportunity and so you need to construct the kind of pieces that don't require an explanation to understand.

Secondly, it seemed like your primary focus was on the racial/prejudicial conflict that existed between these two families, and how the relationship of R and G united them, but this isn't strictly speaking relevant to the prompt. I can't find a specific point in your piece where you're examining the notion of conflict being painful, let alone inevitably painful. There was that moment where you talk about R's reaction to being forced to break up, but that seemed like an offshoot of that conflict rather than a direct product of it. Basically, what is the primary conflict here? You can have secondary and tertiary ones that add depth to your story, but you need a driving force of a main complication so you're able to unpack the prompt more closely.

That's probably the primary issue here - the links to the prompt are kind of tenuous, and as interesting as some of the ideas you've raised may be, if they're not made relevant, you might be in trouble, so you'll need to reframe them or perhaps go back to the prompt itself and explore some other avenues that are more closely linked to the topic. At the moment, even the key words are a bit too far divorced from the piece, and so you haven't been able to explore the 'core' of the prompt, being its primary message (i.e. that the consequences of conflict are ultimately positive even if the process itself is arduous and difficult.)

There's a lot of potential in this storyline, and I think the writing voice does suit you well, and if you're able to tidy up these concerns with the structure and argumentation, things should be fine