Essay Assignment
Write a 6-page research paper that develops a thesis about the forces that impede Shin Dong-hyuk from achieving psychological freedom. Consider PTSD, Stockholm Syndrome, and the book Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman (see page 181 in the book).
When we talk about psychological freedom, we have to understand the opposite, mental slavery.
Mental slavery is based on at least two things:
Pleasure, the brain's pleasure centers, which can create addictive behavior.
Trauma, which can result in avoidance behavior.
This research paper should present a thesis that is specific, manageable, provable, and contestable—in other words, the thesis should offer a clear position, stand, or opinion that will be proven with research. You should analyze and prove your thesis using examples and quotes from a variety of sources.
You need to research and cite from at least five sources. You must use at least 3 different types of sources.
At least one source must be from an ECC library database.
At least one source must be a book, anthology or textbook.
At least one source must be from a credible website, appropriate for academic use.
The paper should not over-rely on one main source for most of the information. Rather, it should use multiple sources and synthesize the information found in them.
This paper will be approximately 5-7 pages in length, not including the Works Cited page, which is also required. This means at least 5 full pages of text. The Works Cited page does NOT count towards length requirement.
You must use MLA format for the document, in-text citations, and Works Cited page.
You must integrate quotations and paraphrases using signal phrases and analysis or commentary.
You must sustain your argument, use transitions effectively, and use correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused
How does the dehumanization process happen to Shin and the other prisoners? And how will this process affect him for all his days?
One. Strip a man of all his belongings, including clothes is powerful symbolically because his complete nakedness represents complete helplessness and powerlessness to both himself and the guards. In prison, they guards strip the prisoners of their clothes in the sense that they make them wear worthless rags, sometimes frozen with urine.
Two. The guards will humiliate the prisoners, explaining that they are losers who can only redeem themselves by fulfilling their duties.
Three. Impose strict rules, which must be rigidly enforced to keep a sharp dividing line between the powerful and the powerless: There are rituals of “respect” that must be maintained lest the prisoners suffer the guards’ wrath.
Four. The dehumanization can only occur in mutual interdependence and cooperation: a cruel symbiosis between guards and prisoners.
Five. The prisoners mean nothing in the face of the guards’ power. The guards make the prisoners perform humiliating tasks, which are really exercises in self-abnegation.
Six. The guards strip the male prisoners of their masculinity by the odious work, which are a reminder of who has all the power and who must be obedient.
Seven. Disobedience to the group will lead to being shunned, ostracized, demonized, and worse, killed.
Eight. The guards make the prisoners perform tedious acts that remind the students that they are insignificant, less human and more animal.
Nine. Reinforce power by assigning arbitrary, meaningless tasks and gratuitous acts of humiliation.
Ten. Ignore people. You dehumanize people by ignoring them. You show them that they are "nothing." Read the horror novel The Ignored based on the author's real experience in a business environment.
Shin's Past Will Haunt Him:
Distrust Is "Normal"
We read that Shin was "not torn from civilization." Hell was his home, his "normal."Eating rats and frogs is necessary for surival. Everyone is rewarded for snitching on each other. As a result, he is paranoid, even now that he is free. He trusts hardly anyone, thinking they will sell him out.
No Self-Worth Was Imprinted
Shin was essentially the result of "slave breeding" and he was born to die in the worst slave camp of all, where no one can be "redeemed."
No Such Thing as Family, Only Competition
Shin has no family bonds. Everyone, including his mother, is competition for food.
How to Write a Thesis Statement for a College Research Paper
The Six Questions Should Should Ask When Developing Your Thesis:
1. Is the topic conducive for an argumentative or analytical thesis? An argument gives reasons for your position. An analysis gives causes behind a phenomenon that is being examined.
2. Can I break down my thesis into parts, reasons, causes? Parts, reasons, causes are all called mapping components.
3. Does my thesis answer a meaningful, compelling question?
4. Do I have the honesty and integrity to change my thesis if evidence compels me to do so?
5. Can I state my thesis in a single sentence?
6. Does my professor like my thesis statement?
Thesis Exercise:
Thesis Approach: Shin Is Or Is Not Free Or Is a Bit of Both
Write a 6-page research paper that develops a thesis about the forces that impede Shin Dong-hyuk from achieving psychological freedom. Consider PTSD, Stockholm Syndrome, and the book Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman (see page 181 in the book).
Too General
Shin is free in the world but not free in his mind and spirit.
While Shin has escaped the horrors of North Korea, he is still not a free man.
Shin's life shines with freedom.
More Specific with the Mapping Components
While trying to navigate in the free world, Shin finds himself imprisoned by undying demons of PTSD, which include paranoia, depression, avoidance, memory triggers, survivor guilt, and insomnia.
Essay Structure for Above:
Page 1. Summarize the book
Page 2. Develop a thesis that analyzes the alienation, depression, anti-social impulses, distrust, and other forces that define Shin's mental "slavery" and his inability to be fully free.
Pages 2-6. Body paragraphs will develop your mapping components.
Page 7. Works Cited page.
Another, perhaps better thesis:
While Shin is clearly still shackled to the demons of his past, rendering him a mental slave in many ways, there is much in his life today that points to his freedom. We see in a recent Anderson Cooper interview that he has the self-awareness to see himself as "an animal evolving into a human." We see that he has turned his suffering into meaning by raising awareness about humanitarian crises from both today and the past. We also see that Shin, like all of us, is someone who doesn't have absolute freedom but for who freedom is a process.
Structure for above thesis:
Page 1. Summarize book.
Page 2. Thesis
Pages 3-4. Show the demons that afflict Shin's freedom and make him a slave.
Pages 5-6. Show the behaviors that evidence Shin's march toward freedom.
Page 7. Works Cited page.
List of Common Verbs Used in Signal Phrases
|
Acknowledges |
Contends |
Observes |
Sample Paragraph Using Signal Phrases (I underlined signal phrases)
Often when we think we are in heaven we are actually in hell and when think we’re in hell we are actually in heaven. Or in the words of my English Professor Jeff McMahon, “When we think we are rising in life we are actually falling and when we think we are falling we are actually rising.” These words aptly fit the tormented soul Shin Dong-hyuk whose life remains shackled by guilt, dissolution, and depression. As McMahon observes in his college blog The Breakthrough Writer, “Yes, Shin is a slave, but he is also immersed in a struggle to help others, which points to his freedom.” It is over-simplistic, McMahon argues, to pin Shin a free or imprisoned man. As McMahon puts it, “Shin is a messy tangle of contradictions, both freer than most of us and more enslaved. To simplify his condition is to diminish his suffering to pointless absurdity.”
In a typed, double-spaced quiz, answer the following questions in two or three complete sentences and use examples from the book. Quiz is graded on content, grammar, and diction (correct and precise language choice). Again, no rewrites so make sure you proofread your quiz.
One. Describe in detail the dark secret that proves to be the cause of Shin's incapacitating guilt?
Two. Whether you agree or not, explain the idea that Shin's behavior, like everyone else's in Camp 14, was based on a radically different moral code than people who do not struggle to survive in a North Korean prison camp and that this different moral code compels us to judge Shin differently from those of us who live in the free world.
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