You know you're a graduate student when you fear the end of the term

My partner keeps telling me to have no fear it's almost over. Sadly, that is what I am afraid of. Not that I mourn the end of the term in and of itself, I'm just a bit concerned by the fact that its end is supposed to correspond with the end of my work. I'd really like another month on these papers.

All the same, I have to get my work done. The real loomer right now is my thesis (and I apologize to anyone who might be reading this because I'm in freewrite mode this morning). Somehow I need to tie up all my loose ends. I thought that irony might be the key. What I have is a book with two competing models of femininity (and I think that they are compared ironically) we have two interpretations of morality (which I think also correspond to those models of foment) and I think they relate to each other ironically. Then I have a model of pleasure for one of them which I think is really interesting and I'm not sure where the irony is there. It's more of a paradox really, in that the model of pleasure is a self-shattering one that I draw from Leo Bersani's The Freudian Body.

So, what do I do with the discussion of the nature of evil, whether morality is learned or innate, and whether evil is the fault of the perpetrator or the one who does not exercise a power to prevent it. My advisor points out that there is a strong, and not atypical anti-catholic, anti-eastern line in the setting of Venice and the way that the state is portrayed. I should really read the paper that was written last year as I believe that it dealt with the implications of the state in the novel. How would this play in? Perhaps irony is not the central line that I need or at least not so strict an adherence to it. I could discuss it as a cross over into satire. Kind of a "here irony becomes more blatant as the critique moves into the realm of satire.

I think I begin to see my way a bit more brightly. Now if only I can get myself into my own text today...