Narrative Essay:

September 17th, 2019

My narrative essay had two drafts, the second one being a little bit more clear with wording and better formatted than the first one. After finishing writing my first draft, I felt as though my message in my story was clear and all put down in writing, however I overlooked how confusing some words and phrases may seem. I utilized a lot of descriptive language and imagery within my essay that came to my writing as I was thinking about the moment in time that I was writing about. One of the rhetorical strategies I used in my writing was imagery. In the first paragraph, I use a lot of imagery to describe my house and in order to do this I simply thought about all the houses I have lived in and wrote down descriptions of how I saw them in my mind. “My house has always been adorned with beautiful hues, courtesy of colorful tapestries depicting Hindu epics, decorations from my grandparent’s village, and traditional Indian artwork delicately framed in oak.” and “As a child, I watched my mother come home with yellow parchment packaging filled with decor shipped from India rather than Home Goods or Pottery Barn shopping bags. I used to question why she chose to ship something all the way across the world, when she could simply drive to the Home Goods store four blocks away. ” After revising, I looked back at this paragraph and realized that the wording and structure of the sentences were not as clear and organized as I would want them. So after my edits, I took the words and phrases that I had written off the top of my mind imagining my homes, and rewritten them in a more clear and organized sentence structures. “As a child, I watched my mother come home with decor from India rather than Pottery Barn,”My peer review had given me information that allowed me to see areas where I could expand on ideas. I took the information my peer review said about my essay, and checked to see if the purpose and message they receive from my narrative is what I wanted them to say. When reading my peer review’s answer to “State the writer’s purpose for writing this text.” I saw that she encaptured the broad idea of what I wanted my peer review’s message to be. Although she did capture the main purpose, I wanted to improve on this and change my essay so that the message is even more clear so I kept this in mind while revising my essay. 

When writing my essay’s first draft, I took the idea I had for my narrative and wrote every event in my narrative with as much description and context as possible. After rereading and revising my essay, I realized that some parts could be a lot clearer and more concise with less of the “flowery” language and more writing with meaning and context to it. For example, when describing the differences between my childhood friends’ homes and my home, I would use extra wording that makes the paragraph more descriptive, but at the same time make the paragraph lose some meaning and main idea of the paragraph. When writing my essay, I wondered if I lacked or overdid the usage of rhetorical strategies in my narrative. A strategy I developed in order to better revise and draft my essay was while editing the narrative included rereading my text from the beginning and making notes on the side of where I could insert rhetorical terms or strategies with the overall writing still keeping a natural tone. Another strategy that helped me ensure my essay and thoughts were clear was to read each draft outloud to myself. Between the first and second drafts, I caught many phrases that were worded oddly such as “My dad usually questions the need to spend extra money on anything, even a little showy. But…” and revised it to something that flowed better when i read it outloud such as, “Even more curiously, my dad usually questioned the need to spend extra money on anything…” Not only did I begin reading my essay out loud to myself, but I read it outloud to a roommate. This serves as another layer of mesh that can catch any mistakes my ears would miss. 

The overall text reaches the audience’s expectation of being a “narrative” which is a connected series of events that are written in a sequential order. My narrative fits the audience’s definition of a narrative because I utilize chronological phrases such as “In middle school,” Looking back, it would have been better if I structured my essay in a way where the beginning better connects with the ending and all the middle paragraphs flow more orderly from one event to the next. Rather than just using phrases such as “In middle school,” and “When I was a kid,” it would be better to depict the time of the events with imagery or descriptions. 

Critical Lens Essay:

November 14th, 2019

How did you get started?

In order to start the critical lens essay, I began by reviewing the text Constructing Normalcy by Lennard Davis. I did this in order to review the concepts I would be writing about and also in hopes that an idea for a target text would come to me as I reread the concepts. While reading the Lennard Davis text, I began making a list of movies, books, and ideas that I thought related to the concept of normalcy and deviating from the norm. While re-looking at the Constructing Normalcy text, I also pulled up notes taken in class that broke down the different parts of the text Davis was talking about so that I could see what target texts I could relate. For example, Davis targeted the history and literature aspect of normalcy. For history, he discussed formation of the norm and mythology and for literature he discussed how the non-normative body is not the hero of the story. Keeping these points in mind, I was able to start my essay.

How did you choose your target?

I was thinking about how people that deviate from the norm are treated in society and trying to think of a context where I have seen that portrayed. I realized that this message is closely related to a simpler concept of treating people with nicely. Not demeaning a person and treating them differently because they do not conform to societal norms is a take on what Davis is saying in Constructing Normalcy. This is a message that is often taught in children’s classic books and movies to spread a message of treating people well, and I began thinking of many classic children’s books and movies that related to this. Dumbo is a movie where the main character is essentially bullied because he did not fit in to what was considered normal and I realized this has a lot to do with the normalcy bell curve and many of the concepts Davis discussed in Constructing Normalcy.  

Where was the sticking point? In other words, what difficulties did you have composing the essay?

One difficulty I had while composing the essay was trying to connect the more simple and easily explainable themes in Dumbo to the more complicated context that Lennard Davis used. Although I knew the main ideas I wanted to include and say concerning how I believed Lennard would look at the movie Dumbo, it was somewhat difficult to explain what I wanted to say with the more sophisticated ideas that Lennard uses to explain and broaden the ideas in Dumbo.

What was the easiest part of writing the essay?

The easiest part of writing this essay was finding evidence in Dumbo to show the main points written in Lennard Davis’s text. Using Dumbo as a target text was easy for me to write about because it was so rich in scenes and themes that illustrated the idea of deviating from the norm and the concepts that underlie that.

What was the focus of your revision?

The focus of my revision was including more broad detail to expand the specific instances in Dumbo I talked about. I also re-watched certain parts of the movie and looked at the subtitles to obtain more concrete quotes or phrases from Dumbo that emphasized the points I was making.