Self Reflection: Critical Analysis
The most extensive portion of this essay was outside research of schizophrenia and different treatment styles from the 1800s to the 2000s. When I reflect back on my essay I see an essay that fulfills the requirements: I used six in-text citations categorized by BEAM, I echoed my clear thesis about Gogol’s point of view and metaphors throughout his short story and treatments of mental illness, and I contrasted different opinions about treatments.
The genre for this essay is a critical analysis essay because I analyzed “Diary of a Madman” which was a short story and supported my essay with outside research about mental illness. The exigence of this essay was discussing how Gogol depicts a character with schizophrenia and tying that into an exploration of treatments from the short story’s publication date (1835) to today in 2018. The purpose of this essay was to properly conduct outside research to fully analyze whether Gogol’s character not only had schizophrenia but also how mental illness has been viewed over the course of the last 3 centuries. The exigence and purpose connect to one another because both revealed society’s tendency to turn a blind eye to mental illness. Through my research I realized how awful mentally ill patients were treated, and that even in 2018 there still is gaping holes of knowledge about schizophrenia. The audience for this essay was Professor von Uhl. My stance in this essay is that the protagonist in “Diary of a Madman” has schizophrenia and treatments for schizophrenia like cognitive therapy are successful. There was a developing and strong relationship between the writer and the audience in this essay because symptoms of schizophrenia were explained and I kept going back to my thesis in each paragraph. Every excerpt from Gogol’s short story was explained so that there was no confusion. The medium of this essay was an essay on paper.
For this assignment, I achieved many Course Learning Outcomes such as properly locating research sources, developing new strategies for editing and collaborating, and implementing summary and critical analysis with argumentation. I made sure to label each source by the BEAM method, and was careful to cite each peer reviewed academic source in MLA format. I worked with new people for peer editing and gained insight on how to incorporate treatments in my essay due to reading my peer’s essays. My sources were found on Academic OneFile. I analyzed sources and made sure to introduce each quote included in my essay. Lastly, I included multiple transitions to easily jump from point to point in my essay.
This essay is different from the other two essays I have written for this class because of the outside research that I completed on my own. I had more freedom in what I was analyzing, as I was not just analyzing a work of literature. For instance, the literacy narrative was relating myself to a character with mental illness, and the expository essay was comparing a character with mental illness to another piece of literature, “Madness and Masquerade”. While this essay was similar to the previous essays in the sense that it also covered the topic of mental illness, this essay was different to the previous essays due to the fact that it discusses treatments of said mental illnesses.
Due to having a clear thesis and correct citations of outside sources, I believe my essay grade will be a B. My connections between “Diary of a Madman” and treatments for mental illness were simplistic and could have been developed further. Also, another choice (for example, literary motifs) of Gogol’s could have been examined to determine how well he depicted a character with schizophrenia. My essay has numerous outside facts that support my claim and sharpen my argument, and because of this essay I developed skills for incorporating credible research into an essay.
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