Final Blog

For my portfolio I am including my Research paper, the Close Reading essay, and the American Lit. essay. I believe that the Close Reading essay is my strongest. I believe that I did a pretty good job in revising to make my analysis better. My argument for this paper was that Krakauer is trying to convince the reader that McCandless left on his adventure because he wanted more out of life. I believe I did a good job supporting this throughout my paper. My weakest paper is probably my American Lit. essay. I think I spend to much time discussing why Engdahl is wrong to say that American literature is isolated and insuler. I need to put more emphasis on why I think American literature is good.

Krakauer

Overall I believe that Krakauer's research definitely helped his argument. He went in depth in his researches of Chris's family life as well as his life on the road. He was able to use Chris's journal to explain his adventure's in seclusion from other people. I also believe that his research about the authors and other adventurers were positive aspects of his book. On the other hand however, I believe that by adding his own anecdotes he made the story to personal to him and loses credibility. Also his analyses of the different quotes seemed pretty biased towards the end of the book which also took away from his credibility. For the most part I believe his research was pretty strong.

April 2

My primary source for this research essay is the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I am using this source to talk about its influence on the civil rights movement. Although it is set in the later years of the great depression and isn't about the movement itself, it was published in 1960 towards the beginning of the movment. In the U.S. today we have an African American president for the first time. That would never have happened if it hadn't been for the civil rights movement; the rallies, the boycotts, the books. I believe that racism and segregation are wrong and I believe that in To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee agrees.

Group B Prompt

For my reasearch essay i decided to choose the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The novel was written in the 60s about a town in the 30s. It is a tale about a lawyer who is defending an African American who is accused of murder. This story goes into detail about the treatment of the African Americans of the town. I believe that this book played a big part in the improvement of treatment of minorities. Other books helped in the civil rights movement but i believe that this novel had the biggest impact.

Group A blog prompt

After going over the sample essays in class today I decided that my Close Reading essay is about a middle-low. While examining the other close readings, we decided that in one essay the analysis was pretty good but scarce. In the other essay we discussed that they did an ok job actually close reading but lacked some analysis. While referring to my close reading essay, I can see that I need to work on my close reading skills some more. I feel like I just quoted it, said what it meant and then moved on. I feel that if I work more on my analysis I will have a better, and more interesting paper that will be more intriguing to the reader.

Blog 6

I believe that the stories that Krakauer included about other adventurers hindered Krakauer's storytelling. He is writing with the purpose to praise Christopher McCandless, for his idealism throughout his adventure. I believe that by incorporating these other stories help support the 'naysayers'. He admits that these adventurers were a little off their rocker, yet he claims that Chris is not crazy. I believe that by comparing McCandless to these adventurers kind of indicates that he might not have been all there.

Blog 3

When I first wrote my essay, I thought that Christopher McCandless was foolish and that it was his fault that he died. After reading further into Jon Krakauer's book, I still believe that to be true. He was a hopeless romantic, and it ended up being his kiss of death. The people Chris met on his journey believed that he was a smart good kid, so some readers believe that this shows that McCandless was a good guy. However, if you look at the people whose lives were changed by Chris; a couple who traveled and sold items at flea markets, an 80 year old lonely man, and Westerberg who ended up going to prison; I can't help but question these remarks that Chris was a smart, good guy. After further reading of Into The Wild my opinion that Chris McCandless is foolish has strengthened.