Reflection on Rhetorical Essay

When writing my rhetorical essay on the two images, Ms. K showed us in class; I became frustrated when trying to explain how I felt about McCoy’s political cartoon. I found it difficult to describe how annoyed I was with McCoy without feeling like I was repetitive. To prevent parts of my essay from being repetitious, I tried to look at the cartoon from the author’s perspective, but this just led to more frustration for me. My first step to understanding his view was to follow his target audience, which was mostly conservative privileged Americans. As soon as I figured out his audience, it was clear to me that he was pandering to conservative Americans who were looking for reasons to blame and demonize their political counterparts, all the while selfishly ignoring the importance of the Ruby Bridges painting.

Reflecting on my essay makes me realize that the more critical illustration was the one of Ruby Bridges and that should have been my focus, but McCoy succeeded in evoking strong emotions in his audience through controversy.

The audience of my essay is Ms. K and my peers all of whom hold a similar stance on the matter as myself. Understanding that my audience and I hold very similar views, I felt like there was no need for me to elaborate too heavily on why I thought the protesting of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of education was wrong. I thought it was important to reinforce my beliefs on how dishonest and immoral I felt McCoy’s cartoon was to my audience because our perceptions of his cartoon varied in class. I remember someone in class saying that it wasn’t fair that they were protesting against Betsy DeVos because she is a woman, I understand how they could have perceived that but I think it was important to show my peers that McCoy is using sexism to hide his true intentions in the cartoon.

Critical Research Paper Reflection

When writing my critical research paper my first step into analyzing “Super Frog Saves Tokyo” by Haruki Murakami, was to first understand the reason for Frog’s presence in the story. I found it difficult to decide whether I thought Frog and the whole earthquake crisis was real or whether it was a figment of Katagiri’s imagination. When I reread “Super Frog Saves Tokyo” I realized that Frog did not physically interact with any characters that we know of. We only know of Frog assaulting a crime boss, but after researching hallucination and depression, I realized that it was possible that Katagiri experienced auditory and visual hallucinations because of his depression. This made me distrust the information I received from the narrator. After proving that Katagiri was hallucinating throughout the story, I found it easier to support my claim that Frog was a coping mechanism for his depression and loneliness. I think it was important that I prove that Katagiri was depressed both through the literature and through outside sources.

    Through writing my Critical research paper, I accomplished the course learning outcome “Identify and apply the fundamental concepts and methods of psychoanalysis exploring the relationship between the individual and society within the scope of literature.” This paper forced me to connect fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis such as, wishful impulses and repression, and apply it to how it affected the individual (Katagiri) and his relationship with the society he lived in. Another course outcome I accomplished through my paper was “Through the study of works of literature, examine how an individual’s place in society affects their experiences, values, and choices.” In my paper, I examined how Katagiri’s position as a debt collector effected how he was viewed and treated by society. 

Reflection On Exploratory Essay

Before writing my exploratory essay, I read “The Black Cat” several times to understand it fully. I found it somewhat difficult to understand the story through a Freudian perspective, but as soon as I realized that something was missing from the story that was not clearly stated, I knew which psychoanalytic concepts were present and where they stemmed from. After reading “The Black Cat” a third time, I realized that the most significant victim of the story and the reason for the narrator’s psychical issues was his wife. I began to distrust the narrator and looked for evidence that supported my thesis; this was difficult due to the lack of information he gave about his wife. I focused on what little he said about his wife and how he reacted after killing her. I realized that when he began to change his personality, he would threaten his wife but never mentioned hurting her. Instead, he abused his pets and eventually killed Pluto.

When first writing my essay I did not want to write about repression, because I had felt that it was exhausted but ultimately found myself including it in my paper because I thought it had an essential role in the story and my thesis. When considering what I learned in class, I realized that the three concepts I was going to focus on initially do not appear on their own. They must come from some repressed emotion. I focused more on the splitting of the consciousness and how it related to the character’s change in behavior. I found it easier to understand and explain my thesis if I substituted his personalities with the two conscious mental states. I feel like this made my connection to Freud a bit clearer.

Reflection On Summary And Response Essay

When writing my summary and response essay on Sigmund Freud’s first lecture on psychoanalysis and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, I found myself continually analyzing both texts. I found Lecture I to be confusing at times but rereading it and looking for the context of what Freud was saying helped me understand and apply what Freud was conveying into my essay. What also helped me write my essay was keeping the purpose of my essay in mind. I knew the purpose of my essay was to summarize Lecture I without regurgitating what was discussed in class while also presenting my ideas.

    Understanding that Alyssa is my audience, I knew that I had to try to write about something that hadn’t been discussed in class. While we talked about doctors attitudes towards their patients, we did not talk about how Dr. Breuer treated his patient. I found it difficult to write about Breuer because of the lack of information Freud gave about him and how his attitude towards his patients, but I tried to use my interpretation of how different Dr. Breuer was compared to the doctors Freud had described.

    Writing my essay helped me engage in the Course Learning outcomes, explicitly examining how an individual’s place in society affects their experiences, values, and choices. When trying to understand Freud’s criticisms of most doctors, I realized how many doctors disregarded what their patients were saying to them, because of their place in society. Due to their knowledge of medicine, they believe that anything that contradicts what they know has to be wrong or is seen as blasphemy.

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