Sophie's Reflection on Literary Analysis 2

• Informal, online, or multimedia sources

Informal sources gave me the original idea for my entire paper. I found the idea about climate change and The Handmaid's Tale in a blog post, and I was able to build on that through using other sources and critical approaches. In my paper, I used a lot of different blogs about The Handmaid's Tale and environmentalism; they had some great quotes and ideas that I really built my paper around. Additionally, I used the idea of the Hulu series about The Handmaid's Tale to gain a different/illustrated perspective than I had just from reading the book. 

• Literary theory

I did not know that ecocriticism was a critical theory, but when I found out about it, I immediately knew that I wanted to learn more. As a political science major, I'm super interested in environmental issues, and I think that viewing a text through an ecocritical lens can reveal some important insights that would not be obvious otherwise. On the other hand, though, ecocriticism was not the easiest theory to blend with formal analysis since it does not exactly lend itself to form, at least in The Handmaid's Tale. Once you start looking at a text through an ecocritical lens, though, environmental ideas seem to appear everywhere.

• Writing Process

I found reading my draft out loud to be very helpful in catching errors, restructuring organization, and aiding flow. I also thought that this time, I was a lot stronger in my drafting process than I usually am. Usually, I just write a draft and make minimal changes before submitting. This time, I reorganized my paper many times before submitting, trying to make sure it was the best possible organization. I feel that I could get stronger in knowing exactly what I am trying to argue and being more focused rather than using all of the information available.