Reflective Essay On Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde

Reflective Essay The first intensive writing class I took was Freshman year, English nine. I was introduced to many different styles such as research papers, persuasive papers, annotated bibliographies, lab reports and literature analysis. In the beginning, it was all new and it took me a couple papers to really grasp the concepts. Even now, those types of papers are still being recycled and perfected. Which leads to my strengths and weaknesses of these papers.
Recently, we have completed a novel analysis on the book and movie variation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Strengths I had were in the overall synthesis. There were many examples of analysis of the relationships and why the author or director may have done what they did. One example
is the identification of the domestication of Jekyll in the movie, and how it makes the audience feel more connected to Jekyll and his thought process during the transformations. Another example is the explanation of how the dark, sexual undertones of the movie detract from the plot of the book, and turning it into a story of a perverse man, rather than of a man testing the limits of science. Diction also seems to be another strength in this essay. The style of writing has a consistent flow in bringing up a topic and extensively explaining it. However, with any strength, there are weaknesses.
The main weakness in my writing is too much summary versus analysis.
There is a constant trend of filler, rather than identification of one event, and analyzing it. For example, my comparison of the difference in the beginning scenes. Most of the paragraph contains unnecessary summary. Where I went on about every detail of the church scene, instead I could have just said “instead of opening with Utterson and Enfield like in the novella, it began with Jekyll and his fiance in church service”. This was done again when discussing the sexual undertones of the movie. There was more ramble about the bar scene, rather than pure analysis of the scene. Another weakness in the paper are simple syntax and mechanics. Examples include not underlining or italicizing the title of a major work, sentence structure, and grammatical errors. As for sentence structure, my weakness with fillers play a role. For instance, the sentence “Fleming portrays Henry as not just a profound Doctor, but a family man with a fiance, and a faithful church-going Catholic.” could be condensed to, “Fleming portrays Henry as not just a profound Doctor, but as a faithful church-going Catholic, with a fiance.” As for mechanics, I have a tendency to change tenses throughout my writing. Nonetheless, these can be amended with practice and repetition, something I hope to accomplish in the near
future.
My goals for writing in this class still remain the same. I hope to perfect the styles I have already learned, and improve on my stated weaknesses. It is always encouraging to look at the progress one makes throughout years of practice. Those years of practice are the ones I hope to incorporate into my portfolio for college.