Poem stating “My Side Of The Story” by Adam Bagdasarian

The Poem is stating both external and internal conflict. Because the major conflict is about antagonist(which is her father and her brother) vs the protagonist(herself). All the things before paragraph 2 was the peaceful exposition until the main character’s brother enters the room. According to paragraph 2, the text says: “he looked over my shoulder at the signatures, went into the bathroom for a few seconds, came out, went to his own desk, unraveled an entire roll of Scotch tape and stuck it on my head.” which shows an external conflict about her brother putting scotch tape on her head (man vs man.) This conflict is something that the protagonist can’t change by herself. And the poem shows this types of conflict by adding words/sentence like “when my brother,” “unraveled,” “scotch tape and stuck it on my head.” (in line1-4 in the poem) that explains the conflict and adding the action of the antagonist to show how it was impacting the main character to became a conflict in the story.

Another evidence from the text is at paragraph 35, when the antagonist, which is her dad got angry and stuck the scotch tape on the main characters head again: “Here!” my father said. “Here’s what we do with Scotch tape!” And with that he pulled the whole wad off my head, along with fifty or sixty of my hairs. “You don’t…” Whap! “…ever…” Whap! “…come in…” Whap! Whap! “…here…” Whap! “…without knocking! Do you hear me?” Silence. Whap! “Do you hear…” Which also proves an external conflict by having the antagonist beating the protagonist (also a man vs man.)  The poem shows this conflict by adding words like “My father,” “With out knocking,” “His anger in motion,” “Whap!,” in line 9-10, 12-13 of the poem which explains who caused this conflicts, what did the antagonist do, and why did the antagonist do this,  I also deliberately added a speech word “Whap!” to show what they do and impact the main character to make this an external conflict.

Besides, the poem also expressed an internal conflict in the story. In paragraph 13-15, the main character was very confused whether to tell of what did her brother did or not because she’s nervous of her dad getting angry: (from the text➡️) “For a moment I considered telling him that I smelled smoke or saw someone stealing his car, but I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t tell the truth, either. In fact, for a moment, I couldn’t speak. “What the hell are you doing?” my father said. I started to say, “I was sitting at my desk minding my own business, when—” and I stopped. I stopped because I knew instinctively that Scotch tape on my head was not enough, not nearly enough to warrant my wild, unannounced entrance into this room. And I add the sentence “I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t tell the truth” into my poem to show that the main character was fighting with herself internally at that moment.

Graphic Design:

At the same time, I also added some  designs when creating the background for my poem. I used a crying girl drawn in oil painting to express the protagonist in the story, and I used tape stickers in Canva to stick on her eyes. Although the original text used to be her father and brother wrapped it on her head, but I wanted to use the tape on her eyes to satire her father, that he could not see whether the protagonist’s brother was wrong first or not, but only saw the her mistakes, so I chose to use the tape to block the eyes. (⬅️This makes a hint for the poem’s conflict.) I also enlarged many important words in my Poem to highlight its importance. In order not to block my background, I also adjusted the position of the words.