What I’m Capable of
After finishing my Literacy Narrative essay, I’ve learned how to critique an image and painting without using any outside source but just using my knowledge and emotions. At first, I’m not going to lie, I was a bit worried on how I was going to construct this essay with only using my feelings, but I knew I could overcome this barrier. When I looked at the painting titled, “A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière,” that was made by Andre Brouillet, I didn’t know what to feel. I had mixed emotions which was why I had trouble with the start of this essay. After analyzing the painting, a bit more, I knew exactly what I was going to write about. My goal was to “chimney sweep” any emotions I had about this painting into my Literacy Narrative so that my audience knew my position and mentality towards the painting. Letting go all of my emotions motivated me to continue and demonstrate what it was like to be a woman and be sick in that period of time.
Constructing the introduction for this essay was a bit of a challenge. I was confused on how to state my thesis. For any writing piece that I have made in the past, my weakness has always been in creating my thesis. I’ve always thought that I wasn’t creative enough, but I knew that couldn’t be it. I guess I didn’t try hard enough, or I didn’t grasp the concept of it. I also made sure to include my feelings and emotions regarding Andre Brouillet’s painting.
For my body paragraphs, I broke it down into four sections. In the first body paragraph, I focused on the painting. I described what was happening and my observations. Following, in my second, third and fourth paragraph, I wrote about my feelings. More specially, what intrigued, disturbed and surprised me. I thought this was a great idea, so I put each feeling into separate paragraphs and went more in depth with my explanations on why I felt this way. I made sure to always refer to the painting so that I can back up my reasoning. I wanted to connect the painting to today’s world and compare the differences from back then to now. Also, I made sure to have a strong topic sentence for every paragraph so that the readers won’t get bored.
For the conclusion paragraph, I tried to incorporate what it would be like if I was the woman who’s in distress. Being a woman in that time was tough. They were seen as if they were nothing and useless, which is sad and the truth. For this paragraph, I wanted to focus on how lucky and fortunate us women are today. We have many rights and especially, the right to speak freely, which is extremely important to have.
Having the opportunity for someone like my peers to revise and critique my writing was a major benefit. Not only did one of my peers edited my work but two, which means I got double the feedback on how to improve my essay and make it better. I was encouraged to develop many strategies for reading, drafting, revising and editing. Having a peer tell me what I needed to work on was awesome. I learned new vocabulary and ways to shorten my sentences but make them strong and powerful so that I wouldn’t have to spend too much time in the drafting stage. My main goal was to grab my readers attention so that they can learn about my perspective about this painting.
