Reflection of RA, Essay Example

I found this project to be much more difficult than I expected it to be. I do not have much experience with rhetorical analysis, and I think I ended up analyzing the book in a way that missed the main point of the project requirements. I can see that I made several significant mistakes in how I approached this project, and I probably made these mistakes because I did not fully understand the requirements. Even though the responsibility for this falls on me, I can at least look at the things I wrote and the responses I received and know that I now have a better understanding of what rhetorical analysis is about. As I reflect on this project, I can see three primary mistakes I made in how I approached it. The first was that I spent too much time summarizing the book when I should have been analyzing it, the second is that I did not stay focused on the way Orwell tried to reach his audience, and the third mistake is that I used ideas in this that would have been better for my RIP project instead of my RA project. These mistakes have hopefully given me a chance to learn some new things that I can use in the future.

The criticisms and comments that I spent too much time summarizing are definitely fair and accurate. What I was trying to do in some of those parts where I summarized too much was actually get to the points that Orwell was trying to make in those sections. For example, when I described Winston Smith’s apartment and how he and his neighbors lived, my point was not just to describe those settings. I was trying to examine how Orwell painted a picture that was very bleak and depressing, and how that bleakness and darkness was the same for every single person. To me, one of Orwell’s main concerns about totalitarianism is how a supremely powerful government like the one led by Big Brother uses its power and control to make everyone conform to the same standards, and how individuality and imagination are suppressed. So I tried my best to explain how Orwell was able to use very descriptive and detailed language to pain a picture of a very dull and ugly world, and to also explain how it was not just the main character that was stuck in this ugly world, but it was everyone. There were no rich people, no poor people, no happy people, and no sad people. Everyone was just exactly the same, and trapped in a world where they had no freedom to be anything else.

One of the biggest reactions I have had to reading 1984 is how it makes me think of all the things that Orwell described in this book, and how so many of his ideas remind me of things in the modern world. And what I notice every time I think about this is how Orwell thought it would be so hard for the government to force people into giving up their privacy, and how in the real weorld people are happy to give up their privacy. Unfortunately I spent too much time thinking about this, and I ended up basing a lot of my rhetorical analysis on comparing things Orwell wrote to things that are happening in the world today. And even if some of my ideas might have been good, they were not always appropriate for this project. I think in some ways I was letting the RA project and the RIP project ideas I had get mixed together, and I did not focus o the RA project as closely as I could have. That is a lesson I will be able to learn from in the future.

After thinking of the mistakes I made, I am still happy with some of the ideas I had. Orwell was trying to paint a scary vision of the future to an audience that had just gone through World War II, and the Soviet Union under Stalin was growing larger and more powerful. In a way, the world of Big Brother was the world that could have happened if the Soviets had taken over all of Europe and England. Unfortunately I do not think I did as well as I could about getting some of my points across. I hope that the things I learned from this will help me the next time I have to analyze a work of literature, and help me do a more thorough job.