I chose to discuss The Rock of Tanios during my IOP presentation as it was by far the best, in my opinion. I discussed the influence of political, religious and superstitious fear on the people of Kfaryabda in the novel The Rock of Tanios. It is evident that their lives are deeply affected and tormented by these fears. The Sheikh is a tyrant as he uses violence and intimidation to manipulate the masses. Religious fear was also a crucial fear factor therefore making the religious leaders' power supreme. "In those days, the sky hung so low no man ever dared to stretch to his full height (Maalouf, 1)." Finally, it is only normal for the people of Kfaryabda to be highly supersitious as it is a part of their traditional culture. This explains why the rock of Tanios is to be avoided at all costs even several decades after Tanios' disappearance. I used a powerpoint presentation to present my work. My hook consisted of a drawing of a nude, dishevelled-looking man sitting on a rock. Several wolves are attempting to attack him as he sits with his back turned away from them with obvious fear in his expression. Not only was it a captivating charcoal drawing but it also captured my topic exacly. It depicted how the people were left naked and for the wolves in the face of fear. After I'd presented my topic, I asked several students to relate the my presentation to the drawing before revealing the message.
Since I'd had the opportunity to present the IOP once before my final presentation, I found myself at ease with the entire idea. I flowed through the procedure because I'd learned so much from watching my first video. I found that choosing my topic was the most challenging because I wanted to present something original. I had limited myself to The Rock of Tanios since I knew the charcoal drawing would be the perfect hook, and more importantly because I believe the novel is sheer genius. I thought of fear as my topic simply because I'd just finished reading a book by Michael Moore that tackled the use of political fear on the people of the US and somehow had thought it very relevant to the novel. After having chosen my topic, I wrote down a list of ideas that could support the idea of fear. However, I found that fear was divided into political, religious, and superstitious fear so I decided to expand on each. I assigned the most pertinent quotes to each by looking through the novel. Creating a powerpoint presentation was not difficult yet finding interesting pictures was the challenge. I felt at ease during the presentation which was just as long as required. I was satisfied with the result but I wish I'd focused less on my notes. There should have been more eye contact and less note checking. I'd like to believe that I covered the main points, and appeared convincing as well as confident in my delivery.
2 comments:
First of all, I loved the picture you accompanied your presentation with. It was very expressive and captured the true essence of your presentation: the instillation of fear. I hadn't actually thought about the importance of fear until listening to your presentation and it made a lot of sense. You had a very solid thesis.
You are right, you have had the privilege of doing 2 IOPs. So you flowed through it with complete confidence. You say that choosing an idea is the most challenging, however i found that finding the evidential support for the ideas is more difficult.
Superstition has for a long time proven to be an influencing factor in remote villages in Lebanon and still is in some areas. Your topic choice is one of the main themes of the novel. Your charcoal drawing was an excellent visual aid portrayed your topic as it is and you had an interesting and original way of coming up with your topic. To make the presentation even more attractive, you could have made historical references (as I did) to the political and religious fear in the novel, and explained them as you did in the blog (politics in America). I must say the most fascinating thing about your presentation was the confidence which will definitely help you later on.
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