Reflection on Rhetorical Analysis

" Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets." Joeseph Conrad,Heart of Darkness
 
I was not able to learn as much about my writing process from this paper as I had hoped to because the process of writing the paper took on many of the qualities of Marlow's search for Kurtz from Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness. The paper started as a normal writing assignment, I had done several rhetorical analyses similar to this one before and had found them to be very easy to complete. I thought that this paper would be no problem at all.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/brtsergio/60213977

The trouble began when I had 3 midterms, and big engineering project, and a math test in the week before the draft was due.  This left me very little time to work on the draft which caused me to write the entire ting on a Saturday night. This wasn't a problem at first, my ideas seemed to make sense and and the paragraphs came together nicely. Then, I started to get tired; my ideas became bizarre, my thoughts discernible only to me, and the lights of my laptop swam before my eyes. but, tired as I was, I decided to continue writing until the paper was finished, and so created the Kurtz of my paper writing experience.

 After meeting with Dr. Bell on Monday to discuss my paper, I realized just how , misguided, cluttered, and warped my paper had become. But, underneath all of these detractors and flaws, I saw greatness. Some of the ideas I had placed in my paper struck me as very good, maybe even brilliant, but they needed to extracted from the muddled morass of grammatical errors and run on sentences that was my paper. So began my trip up the river to find the greatness that I knew must be there. I would spend hours focusing on idea, or sometimes even a single sentence, slowly trying to flush out the good ideas from the nonsense. Every time I was able to successfully do this, a sense of glee and vindication filled me; my draft hadn't been bad, it had only been misunderstood, I would soon be able to show myself and the world this, all I need to do is clarify another sentence or two...........

And so it went until the deadline for the paper. I now realize that I probably would have been better off tearing down my paper and completely rewriting many parts of it instead of going up the river and into a rhetorical heart of darkness. The only other thing I was able to learn from this experience was that minuscule differences in word choice and meaning can have a big effect on the meaning of a paper.

Rhetorical Analysis Draft Link/Feedback

this is the link to my draft
 

 I commented on Davis's and Micheal's drafts

I asked one of my friends to read and analyze my draft. He said that he thought many of the ideas in the draft were good, but that my sentences were too long and sometimes hard to understand. He also recommended that I go over my word choice and make sure that that I was saying exactly what I meant.

Link to Outline and Thesis

This is the link to my outline and thesis

Prewriting Activities

This is a link to my prewiritng document.

I chose to use an inference/observation chart for the prewriting for this paper because this type of prewriting allows me to keep a small and well organized list of things I noticed about HONY that I can use to write my paper. It also allows me to easily see how different observations might relate to each other or different inferences that I have made about previous parts of the blog. I also would have included an outline in the prewriting, I have always considered outlines to be prewriting, but for this assignment, the outline is separate from the prewriting.

Personal Response

I have chosen to write my rhetorical analysis about HONY. I chose to write on this text because the stories that people have have always interested me and HONY is basically one giant collection of these stories. By writing about HONY, I will be able to examine some of these stories and analyze them in a way that I never would if I did not choose to write about HONY. Writing about HONY will also give me the opportunity to examine and educate myself about some elements of photography, which is something I have always wanted to do, but I have never gotten around to it. This assignment gives me a reason to finally get around to this.

https://pixabay.com/en/manhattan-new-york-ny-nyc-268282/

My response to HONY was not an emotional one, but rather one of fascination. To me, reading the stories posted on the blog and viewing the pictures that go with them to be incredibly interesting; every time I saw a new picture or story, it made me want to continue looking at the blog and made me wonder what incredible story I could see on the next page. The variety of the people who were photographed and the various stories they told mad me think of the project as a type of min census; a way to take cross section of the diverse population of New York City that accurately represents the different types of people living in the city without having to talk to every person in the city.

Sex-Trafficking outline

Outline

• “Human sex-trafficking, referred to as modern day’s slave trade, has become a  billion dollar industry.”
• Introduces sex-trafficking as an issue
• thesis claims that Nolot’s use of reenactments and cinematography shows readers how much of a problem it is.
• “When describing the lives of victims to human sex-trafficking, Nolot dramatically appeals to his viewer’s emotions, for he displays images of these victims being used and labeled as material or capital objects.”
• “runways”
• victims caged and treated like dogs
• “Nolot also appeals to his viewer's emotions in another scenario by including commentary from clinical psychologist and executive director for prostitution research and education, Melissa Farley.”
• another claim that victims are treated like dogs
• “Unlike a typical written text, Nolot's video text is also able to incorporate cinematography effects to appeal to the reader’s emotion in furthering the conceptual idea of the power complex.”
• small screen framing used to serve as a metaphor for the soul crushing effects of the trafficking and being dominated.
• “In addition to the narrowing rectangular image, Nolot also incorporates the image of a narrowing circle to act as a metaphor for a tunnel.”
• effect used as a metaphor for the fading of the light (hope) at the end of the tunnel
• “Brazenness is the driving force for the documentary because it allows Nolot to create an empathic emotional response in his viewers.”
• Shows brutality and poor treatment of the victims.
• Re-humanizes the victims at the end.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_California_outline.svg

A strong paragraph from the essay was the last paragraph of the essay, it was the most analytical paragraph in the essay and was the clearest and most convincing evidence in the essay o support the thesis. A weak paragraph was the third body paragraph, it was basically a restatement of the previous paragraph, and in my opinion, was unnecessary to the piece. All of the topic sentences directly referenced parts of thesis. The write picks out specific points and parts of the film that support their argument and then proceed to analyze them in the context of their thesis.

Observations/Inferences for HONY

Observations	Inferences
Photos began in New York but have branched out	The project transcended the idea of capturing snapshots of the people of New and has expanded to capture the lives of people all over the world
All of the photos are portraits	Portraits allow the author to frame the picture in any way he wants and allows the tone to be easily manipulated
Project was originally started as a hobby	The speaker is very passionate about what he does and isn’t in it for fame and money
Originally started on social media	The author wanted his work to be widely available to a variety of people and also wanted it to be easy to find and access
Tone of the photos are varied	This shows that the author wishes to portray different people in different ways in order to make the audience see what he wants them to see. It also reflects the varied nature of the people of the world.
Some photos have stories that are associated with them	the author is trying to use these stories to supplement what his photographs say about the people he is writing about.

What interests me most about the Humans of New York project is how it tells the story of a wide variety of people from around the world. As I see it, people are essentially just a collection of stories and past experiences; the Humans of New York project shares the stories of people, which is essentially allowing the anyone who views the project to gain an, important, although limited, understanding of who the subjects are. This in turn creates a snapshot of the world; almost a mini census of the world's population.

HONY SOAPSTone

Brandon Stanton, a photographer, started Humans of New York as a way to show people who followed his social media accounts the stories that every person has. He takes portraits of various people who he meets and then recounts some of their stories. This project started out as a hobby for him, but quickly evolved into a way that people could see a snapshot of society and learn about what makes the ordinary people who populate the world so special. The stories of the people who are photographed are varied in content and tone; some are stories of incredible endurance, some are joyful, and some are tales of sadness; but because of his project, Stanton has been able to share these stories with the world and has increased people's understanding of what happens in the world.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/davidcwong/14322978496

Like a Girl SOAPSTone

In the Like a Girl Superbowl commercial, Lauren Greenfield directs a commercial aimed at changing how people think of girls in society. The commercial aired during the Superbowl, which traditionally has large male audience, and begins by asking boys,men, and grown women to "run like a girl". This starts as a seemingly lighthearted parody, but the tone dramatically shifts from silly to deadly serious when young girls are asked to do the same thing. Instead of running in a ridiculous way, the young girls ran as hard as they could. This was followed by Greenfield questioning the participants about why they chose to represent running like a girl the way they did. This hammers home the point Greenfield is trying to make; that girls are just as capable as men and that saying that someone does something "like a girl" is not an insult, but rather a compliment.

http://circuitox.com/like-a-girl-de-always-se-alza-con-el-premio-emmy-2015-a-mejor-comercial-del-ano/

QRG Word Cluster