Portfolio Analysis: My Seneca Village By Marilyn Nelson

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Both of the pieces included in this portfolio are inspired by my outside reading book, My Seneca Village by Marilyn Nelson. While not much is known about Seneca Village, Nelson creates her own image of Seneca Village based on the information she has gathered. I decided to replicate the process with “Breaking Free,” where I try to answer why the Columbia student ran away with the information that I can gather in the news. While I was not able to gather much information, I used my own experience and thoughts to reflect the inner thoughts of the girl. Nelson prefaces her work with an introduction about Seneca Village that will give readers enough knowledge to understand the time period. Unlike Nelson, I did not preface “Breaking Free” because …show more content…

However, the piece resembled a diary entry that explains one’s frustrations instead of a poem that reflect the individual's inner thought. As a result, I decided to change the format complete so that readers could understand the critique that the narrator has of the institution and ultimately of herself in the establishment. For example, I framed the first stanza with “Trapped inside an institution that/ is meant to produce, cultivate, and breed society’s greatest” because I wanted readers to understand that society labels the institution as an elite school, yet the reputation that the establishment holds does not necessarily translate into the lives of the students enrolled. In fact, I emphasize “produce, cultivate, and breed” to reduce students’ autonomy to one of abused cattle that are whipped into shape by farmers. My first two stanza critiques two statements that most institution would claim by providing a counterexample from the narrator's perspective. In addition, I written the last two stanzas like a stream of consciousness, which best depicted the narrator's frustration. For example, the narrator expresses her impatience and resentment by trivializing a diploma to a “8x11 paper” that does not guarantee a “9 to 5” job. These last to two stanza are meant to build momentum for when the narrator decides to run

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