I believe that alot of my essays still need work. The one that needs the most work is my research paper. I am having difficulties organizing my essay and figuring out my focuses. My paper is about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and i want to focus on the concept of love and what it portrays to children when they watch it. I also am thinking about talking about the feminitity that Snow White portrays. I just need help figuring out my ideas. I think at the moment my personal anaylsis essay is the strongest, i just need to add a personal story to it have an exact moment to make it alot more stronger. For my close reading essay i just want to add more context to my paper. You have all read my papers so if you have any ideas or thoughts that would help me out so much!

I think that Krakauer was very successful in his development of Into the Wild. He did a really good job of allowing the reader to create his own opinion of Chris McCandless instead of just strait up saying his own opinion for Chris. He did a very good job of showing different sides of the arguement about Chris and helped the readers gain a deeper understanding of Chris McCandless. Also his use of his own personally stories throughout the book helped further explain his personal connections with Chris. I think it is good that is not tell the ending of the book where the reader is fully exposed to Kraukers view of McCandless. This is shown in the extensive research Krauker does to try and prove that Chris was not stupid while in the wild, he knew what to eat and he would not make a careless mistake like eating the wrong berry that would cause his death, instead it was just an extrememly unfortuante accident that the plant would cause his body to starve and not turn food into usuable energy. Something that could happen to anyone. He was not stupid, just unlucky.

The primary source for my research paper is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To many people this just the first of many classic children movies. I would however like to adress the underlining messages in this movie. The main topic of my paper is focused around the different types of love portrayed in this movie and the affect it has on children and the continuous storylines of future Disney movies and other full length animations at the time. I will be adressing the concept of love in my paper my using specific scenes in the movies and how the characters work together throughout the movie. I believe this movie portrays the uncondiontal love and then the idea of true love and living a happily ever after. I think this is an important message for children to recieve while watching this movie. Children need that inspiration and that hope to dream and find their prince charming and the ability to accept people for who they are. Imagination is a part of growing up, and even though not everyone has a happily ever after, it is this hope of finding that love that gets people through life. I think my classmates should care about this because most of us of siblings, relatives, or friends who are young children, and we have all gone through childhood watching these classic disney movies and seeing the love it portrays, wanting at someone to find our own prince charming.

After going through and lookin at different examples, I have realized that my close reading paper was definetly not as strong as it could have been. I would consider this essay to be in the low/medium range. While looking back at what I wrote for this essay I realized I missed the main point of the essay, that being to include context with each epigraph. I have seen that explaining to the reader who exactly that person is that said that quote, and why they are important can make an essay so much more stronger. It makes it so the readers not just like okay, who is this person and why should i care. To make my paper stronger I need to add alot more context to it. I need to take the time to actually do some background research on each person that I used the epigraph from. This will also help make my close reading stronger because I believe it will help me find more parallels between the author and the following chapters, to have a better understanding of why Kraukuer used that passage as the epigraph.

You guys are going to have to bear with me because i just got my wisdom teeth out haha. Anways, I definitely think that Karakuers use of comparing Chris's stories to other peoples adventures makes the story stronger. I really had no idea that there were so many other people out their who had the same motives and actions as Chris. It helped to find other people to relate him to, made Chris's actions seem a little less crazy. An example of this is about Everette Russe in Chapter 9, where Sleight makes a statement that "Everett was kind of different. But him and McCandless, at least they tried to follow their dream. That's what was great about them. They tried. Not many do" (96). This just shows that many people out their did the same things that Chris did. It still makes me believe Chris doesnt deserve all the attention he has recieved since other people have gone ot on similar adevnetures.

Overall, I think pathos is the most effect when writing a paper. I believe that the emotional aspects when making an arguement, just makes the arguement stronger. It gives people the chance to relate to those emotions. I feel like for my Into the Wild Essay, the pathos was definetly helpful for my arguement. I am not saying that all three are important, because they definetly are. Logos is important just so there are facts to back up where your emotions are coming from. I think ethos is the least important depending on what kind of paper you are writing. For our essays so far, just getting facts and peoples opinions is making the papers stronger. We are not to the point where you need that credibility to make a point. However, my essay definetly needs some revising so I can make it stronger and have more facts, and possibly some credibility.

"After intially writing the essay on your opinion of Christopher McCandless, has further read in the book Into the Wild changed your opinion of McCandless or set or more so set it in stone?"

As I continue to read further and further into the book Into the Wild my views about McCandless are still the same. When I wrote my essay I thought that McCandless did not deserve all the praise that he has recieved and that he was naiive about the whole thing. I totally understand wanting to go and live off the wilderness, be one with nature. But McCandless would accept help from people, worked jobs, lived in certain places while on his trip. In I believe chapter 2 it talks about the people finding Chris and that he had been living in a bus. I think if he really wanted to experience nature he wouldn't be living inside a bus, but instead out in the wilderness. I also just can not get over the fact that Chris just stopped having contact with his family. Im really close to my family, and I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose contact with my sister for two years to finally find out that she had died. I still don't understand why he would want to do that... Im still trying to keep an open mind, so we will see if my opinion of him changes as I continue on reading.