Informal Source
When I was in high school we studied A Streetcar Named Desire. I remember during the time that my friend who identifies as gay mentioned the influence that the play had on him. As I was writing this paper I remembered this conversation and asked him to send me a video explaining his experience reading and interpreting the play. This is what motivated me to approach Streetcar using queer theory and to understand the message that it conveyed concerning homosexuals and their struggles. I loved being able to have this kind of personal motivation to write this paper and to be able to connect it to somewhere who had personally experienced the struggles described in the play. At first I wasn't sure how to incorporate something so personal and so informal in my paper and so I ended up using a quote from him in my conclusion. I think this was able to solidify my argument and conclude my paper on a very realistic note.
Literary Theory
There were many different theories that I felt could help me analyze this paper, but I decided to use queer theory and some historical theory to support my argument. Because my claim and my theory were so interconnected it did not feel difficult to include both in my paper. However, I did struggle to synthesize the two throughout my paper, and found that at first I was separating my theory and my other analysis in to different paragraphs. After some revision, however, I was able to incorporate both to support each on of my paragraphs and claims.
Writing Process
Revision played a large role in this paper for me, perhaps more that it usually does when I am writing a paper. When I was writing this paper, I rearranged my paragraphs multiple times, focusing on meeting a specific claim in each paragraph with enough evidence to support that claim. I also found myself going back to my thesis after writing, too change it to better fit exactly what I was arguing throughout my paper. I also loved reading my paper out loud. As I did, I noticed different parts of my paper that were repetitive or unclear and was able to edit them. Without this part of the writing process I would have missed a lot of mistakes that were corrected pretty easily. One thing that I feel I need to continue to improve in my writing process is analysis of quotes. I think it would really help to break down the purpose of the quotes that I choose to include in my paper and why they contribute to the whole of my claim.
I like how using personal connection through informal sources made you more motivated to write. It's much more engaging to have that emotional connection, and I never thought about how social experiences outside of the internet/media are still informal sources.
ReplyDeleteI like how you focused your revision on tying everything back to your original claim, and how you were able to include the personal connection to the text. Like Ariel said, having that social influence outside of the digital realm makes the paper more engaging and real to the reader.
ReplyDeleteI also need to work on my analysis of quotes! Sometimes I just throw them in there and hope that they can stand alone. I've come to start following the less is more rule since I tend to burden my papers with too many quotes.
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