Knowledge: 90

Focus: 88

 

The concept of transformation is the reader's mental change during and after reading a literary text. The change can also take place in the poem itself. For instance, in Carol Ann Duffy's 'Lil Red Cap,' the first stanza offers a hint of our main character's age with the phrase, "At childhood's end." As the reader goes over the poem, Lil Red Cap literally and figuratively grows up. The second stanza portrays her as a sixteen-year-old girl who develops an infatuation with a wolf. The fifth and sixth stanza, both at as her transitional phase wherein she lost her innocence, re-discovered her love for poetry and how she has grown tired of the wolf for ten years.

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The seventh stanza is the result. She kills the role and walks out of the woods as a grown and independent woman. In this poem, Carol Ann Duffy successfully shows how one can turn over a new leaf due to experience and relationships. The concept of communication is how an author-and-reader relationship is established with the use of various writing styles and structures. Often, such writing could lead to creative twists. One good example is the use of enjambment in Margaret Atwood's 'Siren Song.' To enlighten our readers, enjambment is a writing technique in where a sensical line stops without punctuation and continues in the following stanza or paragraph.

 

Thus, it creates suspense. It was effectively used in the seventh stanza of the poem. It starts with the line, "Come closer. This song" and ends with, "is a cry for help. Help me!" in the eighth stanza. Another writing technique present was the damsel-in-distress trope. It is shown in the twenty-first line and the entire eighth stanza.

 

 Also, the words, "Only, only you can, you are unique.", gives the reader a sense of heroism. Therefore, Margaret Atwood's writing style fully enraptures the reader throughout the poem and forms a hero-and-victim relationship between reader and siren. The concept of perspective somehow intertwines with transformation. However, what sets the two apart is how a literary text changes the reader's worldviews. Take, for instance, the various responses towards Janina San Miguel's iconic Binibining Pilipinas interview. Her broken English incited mostly humor but discreetly shows the Philippines' "damaged" culture.

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To the naked eye, one would view it as a blooper. However, in the eyes of an analytical person, he would see the sorry state of Philippine nationalism by the pageant's usage of English in the interview portion and the general reception towards Ms. San Miguel's answer. Overall, an observer would see an individualistic or intellectual response towards similar events. In George Orwell's 1984 dystopian novel, the protagonist Winston Smith undergoes an identity crisis to a massive extent. His character development paces slowly but surely as the reader thumbs each page.

 

In pages seven to eight, his doubtful side kicks in, and he commits his first act of rebellion: writing his thoughts down in a diary. Freedom of thought or "thoughtcrime" is a crime in his society. As the reader progresses, Winston's journalistic ideas evolve from simple to complex, and his Oldspeak grammar refines. After Winston finds allies in Julia and O'Brien, his unsure rebellious side becomes confident. Unfortunately, all of Winston's personal growth resets when he was undergoing mental and physical torture at the hands of O'Brien in the remaining of Part Three.

 

He becomes a shell of the man he was as descriptively shown on page 271. George Orwell's writing truthfully portrays the metamorphosis of a man when he is stripped of mental independence and exposed to his darkest fears.