Mullen 1

Conner Mullen

Professor Gregory McClure

Writing 39B

19 February 2017

Mid-Term Reflection: The Creative Process

While writing the RA essay, the level of thought required to provide an effective essay

was beyond my expectation. As I first glanced at the guidelines, I figured it was to analyze

another plot and provide reasoning as to why it is constructed that way. Obviously, it is the

complete opposite in regards to the structure of the essay. It required multiple sources, tone and

other rhetorical devices, and multiple word by word breakdowns in order to proficiently argue

your stance. It is extremely intimidating at first due to the heavy requirement from the rubric.

I believe I succeeded in proving evidence through multiple sources, including the book,

to prove Mathesons own life qualities were the driving force in writing I Am Legend. Ethos was

a huge step in providing credibility to the work and making it a successful piece. Using authors

such as Nol Carroll, Magistrale & Morrison, and Mathias Clasen to provide credibility certainly

helped back your stance. Also, clarifying the monster to be Neville instead of the vampires was

successful; this was especially due to Nol Carrolls process of recognizing the monster, easily

proving Neville was the monster. Reaching the deeper level of thought, I found analyzing

rhetorical devices in order to prove Mathesons view on the novel was problematic. I was almost

unable to provide why Matheson used certain tones in scenes to prove his anxieties or fears

during the Cold War. Finding specific textual references that indicate these authors points were

sometimes difficult, mostly due to the past experiences in essays of writing based on plot from an

overall standpoint.
 Mullen 2

In order to improve the essay, it would be required to reread the novel while consistently

thinking about the points being proven in this paper. Writing down parts from the text that prove

Nevilles monstrosity or even Ruths heroism would improve the essays effectiveness. From

peer reviews, I was able to form the idea that I wasnt connecting the idea of Neville being the

monster to the relation to the Cold War. Also , I found it to be helpful to reconsider every point a

student or teacher makes and decide why mine is worse or better. It was almost a sudden jump

without connection. My partners gave clear instruction to redevelop my topic sentences to

gradually lead into more relating topic sentences that smoothly connected the two central ideas.

For future work, analyzing a certain portion of the text and why it was written that way in

correlation to the author is an effective tool to prove the authors view and also relate it to their

writing. For example, in future writing classes breaking down sentences in the novel to discuss

each word and their purpose will help to visualize why the author decided to write those

sentences. This tool was brought by the two-sentence horror story analysis we did and is

essential to conceptualize a deeper understanding of the text. In conclusion, the rhetorical

analysis done throughout the essay helped to actually consider a stance and argue for it instead of

just summarizing a plot as evidence.