1: The first unit revolved around the rhetorical analysis form of writing. A rhetorical analysis essay is an essay where the author takes a general topic and breaks it down to very fine levels of detail. This is done to show why an author does something, and not to show just what they wrote. This meant that for unit 1 we had to take a cultural artifact and break it down by significant parts, and then use our analytical skills to explain why those parts are important. We did this by keeping the ideas of tropes and motifs in heavy consideration.
2: One theme that I associate with this past unit of writing is that Life always seems to come around. This is because, in my artifact, The Lion King, the main protagonist starts off with his life set up for perfection, however, he is forced to face deep lows, yet by the end of it all, he is back on top. It really shows how the highs and lows of life are inevitable, but life will always come around. Another theme I recognized from the first unit of writing is that everything is deeper than it seems. This has less to with my artifact than it has to do with rhetorical analysis writing in general. When learning how to approach writing a rhetorical analysis, I realized that you can take just about anything and really extract whatever meaning you want out of it. This is why I believe that this first unit of writing has also taught me that everything is a lot deeper than it seems.
3: I’d says the Lion King is a mixture of the genres fantasy, Children’s movie, and drama. The Lion King holds at least one trope respective to all three of those genres. For instance, A typical fantasy trope is an environment suddenly turning very nasty and dark when evil arrives. This is exemplified in the Lion King when Scar becomes ruler and the whole jungle turns dark and gloomy and has no rainfall whatsoever. Moreover, a children’s movie trope would be the very upbeat and positive songs used in children movies. The Lion King, in particular, uses “Hakuna Matata” to serve as this very upbeat and positive song. Finally, one dramatic trope used in this movie is the visual representation of one of the protagonists slowly falling to his or her death while another one screams in helplessness. This is shown when Scar pushes Mufasa off of pride rock and Mufasa slowly falls to his death and Simba is left to watch in terror.
4: The circle of life is a metaphor for how the sun will always come up. Although the day may come to an end, another day is always waiting to begin.
5: My analysis of the Lion King is heavily based off of moments in my life where I really thought things couldn’t get any better. For instance, I once had a teacher in middle school that cursed me out in front of the whole class. I really thought that from then on all my grades would be terrible from him and that I would be treated completely differently from everyone else. This was one of my first experiences with a teacher disliking me and I really just don’t know how to approach it. However literally a month later he sent out an email saying he is going back to school and we would have a new teacher for the rest of the year. It really taught me that the highs of my life can come just as fast as the lows.