Blog Essay Reflection

Let me begin by saying, thank you all for your thoughtful and constructive comments. I really enjoyed this format, afterall, this is the year 2009, we would be remiss to not utilize all the technology available to us. If I had to make a critique of this blog I would say that we were all a little too easy on eachother. We're all adults here, I would've been pleased to see a lot more scathing critiques. That being said, let me now focus on the positives. I noticed that a lot of comments to my blog posts dealt with peoples' personal connections to the text. I think that a personal connection is always a good way to appreciate a text. When you can relate to the story or a certain character you have a great starting point from which to dive into deeper analysis. I also notice, looking back on the comments to my blog posts that many times my classmates directed my attention to aspects of the story that I had not given much attention to. For instance, in Greasy Lake, I did not really focus my attention on the symbolism of the lake and the dead body, I let them just be details in the overall story. Upon closer reading I realised that the lake was an important focal point and symbol for corruption and decadence. And the dead body was definately a symbol for the loss of innocence. One of the main advantages to this blog format was that I was able to see the humor and irony in stories that I hadn't noticed. I have this curse where when I read a story I assume it has a dismal, poignant message, sometimes a writer is just being clever and wants the reader to laugh out loud. I really value learning from other people that a story can be fun, and humorous. This helps make the unbearable heaviness of literature more bearable. Way to go gang, neato! This concludes my reflection essay.