The Futility of things...

Have you ever sat down to do something, actually did it for a couple of hours and felt that you wasted your time? Welcome to my life when it comes to writing research papers. In my Modern British Literature class, I have to write a 10-15 page (don't you love the parameters of that?) research paper showing how 3 or more of the books or short stories we have read this semester tie together. Much as I love finding connecting themes in different styles and types of literature (please note the sarcasm here), doing it for 3 or more works and in at least 10 pages is excrutiating.

I decided that I would love to write my paper on the post-colonialism aspect of E.M. Forster's novel "A Passage to India." For those who have not read this, it is a really good novel, but it made me very angry at the way the Indian's in the novel are treated; basically as sub-class citizens. Post-colonialism is a type of literary theory where you look at novels, or any work, written by the 'white man' from the eye's of the citizens of any of the English colonies, or by reading any work written by these same citizens. Doing this for one novel is hard enough, but then to know that I have to incorporate more into it? For crying out loud...

Well, I have some research time today (thanks to my wonderful teacher who thinks that we need a full week of spring break and so she scheduled research time for our class today) and so I came home to research for this other class. I have been sitting at my computer for 2 hours searching for any articles about post colonialism, E.M. Forster, Jean Rhys, Virginia Wolfe, George Orwell or H.G. Wells. These are the authors of the stories that I am tying together. They all, in some way or another, either through story or character have some tie to India or the English colonies. I have had absolutely no luck. So, what do I do? I turn to my blog and write a post about my frustrations.

For any of you who have had English classes and have any ideas or suggestions that could possibly, in some way or form, help me out, it would be absolutely wonderful! If you are just looking for something to read and want the names of the novels by the above authors, I can help you out there. I would give a voice or warning though that Virginia Wolfe was not exactly an enjoyable read. Her novel, 'Mrs. Dalloway' contains absolutely no chapters and is very disjointed (cunningly of course) in how it is put together. When I asked my professor if all of her works were written like this, he said yes, which added to the enjoyment of reading her. I think in my mind it just confirms that I may have to be hard pressed to pick any of her works up again...no matter that there are many people that absolutely love her work.