Rhetorical and Academic Analysis Essay
This project is a culmination of the work you’ve done in this class, and so this time, you will approach a text from the position of both rhetor and academic—you will produce content that you will then analyze rhetorically.
Assignment
This project has two parts—the creative text (the project) and the accompanying essay.
As rhetor, you will produce a creative text that connects what you have learned about Mrs Dalloway and the conventions of stream of consciousness. You have one choice for the format of this assignment:
1. Write a short story (3-5 pages) using some of the conventions of steam of consciousness that Woolf employs in Dalloway.
As academic, you write an accompanying an essay that describes your creative and revision process, analyzes the rhetorical choices you made, and assesses your success at meeting your goals in this project. The essay should build on your work in the RA essay and demonstrate your understanding of your chosen genre and your understanding of the texts/ideas you’ve studied throughout the quarter. How well you’ve incorporated the class’s ideas into your project should be explicitly discussed here.
So there are two separate pieces of work.
Instructor:
Course:
Date:
Rhetorical and Academic Analysis Essay
Part One: Rhetorical Analysis Essay
Virginia Wolf through her work entitled Mrs. Dollaway illustrates the flow of events during and after World War I where many people are struggling to reconstruct and restructure their lives after massive destructions of property and lives. The story portrays numerous historical and linguistic understanding on the part of the author who uses writing tools at her disposal to come up with the story that illustrates the flow of events using fictional characters to depict real issues (Black 23). The author has scored highly in realism perspectives in that she has tried to cover the events and stories in her book in a manner that reflects the true occurrences of events surrounding the war in a manner that is accurate and true.
She is determined through this book to cover the events and lives of people in contemporary society in a manner that none of the other authors before her achieved. The use of humor and exaggerations is limited in this work to pave the way for realism that shall enable the readers to access the facts in their original context. The book has various themes depicting social issues affecting people thus qualifying it to be a people centered book. According to Berman (12), a book meant to address social issues in society must have at least one theme dedicated to covering the plight of the society to cater for the formulation of the relevant counter-strategies.
She manages to come up with “modern novel” in the sense that she introduces the realism as the new technique that authors have to be conversant with to help in upgrading their works. She explores the inner and private lives of her characters in a manner that helps to put detailed information to the disposal of the readers. A character like Clarissa is depicted as being at the fulcrum of this novel in the sense that the entire plot of the story revolves around her (Black 25). This novel helps Woolf to achieve her target of revealing to the esteemed readers various events that took place during the period she was undertaking her writing activities. She concentrates on the activities that occur during and after the world war to reveal the actual flow of activities as per those two distinct periods.
Woolf was determined to write a novel that flows freely thus she decided to dwell on the thoughts of Clarissa to achieve this goal. There are numerous conversations involving Clarissa that forms a significant part of this novel thus helping the author to achieve her initial plan. The author uses the main characters and other supporting characters to reveal and highlight the main and other related themes in the entire novel (Kletonic 45).
The introduction of characters like Septimus helps her to bring out the theme of mental illness that has become the norm after the war. Septimus is an individual that served in the British army during this war with much dedication as was expected of him. He is later diagnosed by a leading psychiatrist and psychotherapist who confirm that he is suffering from a mental illness that requires much medical attention and care. The psychotherapist in question is Sir William Bradshaw, who is dedicated to ensuring that his client returns to his normal mental condition (Berman 17). The illness makes Septimus lose the sense on how various things are done in normal life thus warranting the need for extensive medical care from a qualified and experienced physician. Such an illness depicts how futile the war is on those soldiers who participate in it without comprehending the mental consequences.
The author has achieved much in terms of theme and plot development by employing the flashback technique, which the critics point out for helping to complicate the entire novel. The flashback stands out to be a technique that Woolf has used to dig deeper into the history of the world war where the narrations of the characters helps the readers to understand properly (Berman 18). The author has done a commendable job digging deeper into the lives of the characters to reveal the consequences that war had on the society at large.
Part Two: Academic Analysis Essay
The rhetorical analysis essay above is meant to help the readers to comprehend and understand the plot and the themes as expected of them. The paper develops from the previous analysis that had been carried ou...