RA Paper Proposal

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Initially, I was debating on whether I should choose to talk about sadness (which is a major theme in the book) or the freewill of the characters (which I had more secondary sources in mind for)....
And so eventually, I chose to try and connect everything under SADNESS in my proposal because I felt like I would have more to talk about in a 1500-1800 word paper....
 
I initially had a difficulty understanding what the writing prompt was because I wasn't sure what my "argument" was going to be about. I couldn't really connect to the book we were reading and so I was worried that I had to base most of my details and quotes off from the book. I just tried to make the best of what I could understand (at the time) to write up this proposal. I would say that my proposal was quite sufficient in details, but they did not exactly fit under the topic of Sadness....
** Highlighted parts in this section = important ideas
Writing 39B
Paper Proposal
     In his novel, “The People of Paper”, Plascencia plays with various rhetoric and
metafictional techniques to “suscitate” his characters and erase the lines which
separated the two worlds of reality and fiction. In doing so, he literally presents us the
characters which should only exist on paper to the birth of an origami surgeon who
could actually bring people [back] to life through the use of paper. One lucid example,
would be the character named Merced De Papel, who encounters Merced and Federico
on their migration to the town of El Monte. She was introduced to us as a lady who was
created by the “retired” origami surgeon, Antonio. In connection, Plascencia blurs the
separation of what is real and fake by stating Antonio “retired” because he was replaced
by the more advanced (and realistic) practice of bioengineering. Furthermore,
Plascencia uses a unique method to describe the characters; instead of describing their
appearances and personalities, they are illustrated by the hometown and background of
where they came from.
     Through the use of metafiction, we are able to gain more insight because of the
various characters’ points-of-views we are exposed to. The use of metafiction is most
prominent when Smiley is able to “escape” beyond the pages of the book to meet
Saturn, the alias/ character that the author has created to represent himself. Much like
what people in the real world believe in, Saturn is like a “God” to these characters who
has just watched down upon them for entertainment as their life becomes filled with
sadness. As more obstacles come their way, they blame their sadness on Saturn which
is an allusion to the humans in the real world blaming God for all their worries and
frustrations in life. Frederico, a character created by Plascencia, exhibits the same free-
will that humans possess and plans a rebellion / war against Saturn because he blames
Saturn for his sad fate. It is quite possible that Plascencia created the novel as a
parable of what goes on in the real world and God’s responsibilities to care for his
creations.
     The manner in which the novel is presented is unlike that of a traditional, fiction
novel, and so, the reader’s attention is instantly pulled into the reading. The effect of
Plascencia’ s techniques causes us, as the readers, to “expect the unexpected”
because of his use of blending in the real and fictitious worlds. Anything out of the
ordinary in our world, could be viewed as valid or probable in the story. There doesn’t
need to be a reason for why something happens; it just happens. In a way, this could
induce us to believe that sadness is inevitable and there’s no way to prevent it from
eventually coming after us. However, in our world, there’s a harmony a balance in the
universe where light needs dark, dark needs light and happiness needs sadness,
sadness needs happiness. Unlike the real world, there doesn’t have to be such
harmony and balance in the universe, as variables can appear out of nowhere. Sadness
can be be managed in various ways, as we have seen in the novel. It can either be
managed by masking the emotional pain through physical pain, as we’ve seen the
characters tended to do, or by escaping from reality. In the author’s case, he chose the
latter fabrication of another world in order to dodge his own pain.
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