For this essay, I did a close reading on one of the pages from a graphic novel called The Prince and the Dressmaker in which I argued how Jen Wang, the author, uses the sculpture of a knight and a princess to give the audience an idea about how the protagonist of the novel, Sebastien, identifies himself. Throughout the novel, Wang makes sure to never explicitly put a label on his identity but using the format of a graphic novel and the narrative itself, she is able to give the audience a more holistic sense of how Sebastien identifies himself.
I think my biggest strength was how I was able to use a very short scene to write an entire essay by analyzing the positioning of the sculpture against Sebastien, the text bubbles, and his environment and using elements of a graphic novel to analyze and come up with my own interpretation. I think what I need some guidance on is how to make my essay sound more structured and coherent because as I am reading it over again, I am realizing that it sounds like I keep going back and forth with my ideas and argument instead of linearly building on ideas. I think this is because I was coming up with new ideas as I was writing and never really went back and restructured my essay so it would flow more naturally. So I just wish I could improve on organization and also make sure I am not being repetitive. What was hardest for me to write was the beginning part of the essay because that’s when I kept experiencing writer’s block and could not think of how to begin and what my thesis should be. However, once I started writing, I almost could not stop because it started to flow more openly and freely. So, next time I will try to start writing the body paragraphs first and then write the intro.