Jayda Le

Greg McClure

Writing 39B

22 March 2017

Horror

From the start of Writing 39B I was extremely confused how horror could possibly have

any rhetoric in literature or movies. On the first day of class I was introduced to rhetoric and

rhetorical situation and how authors intentionally use certain rhetorical devices to convey their

message to their audience. Immediately, I was introduced to how horror has symbolic meaning

through analyzing Trent Reznor and Johnny Cashs video. The videos and lyrics set a platform

about how certain images and diction indicates the true meaning of horror. Horror is a symbolism

of insecurities and regrets that the author is trying to convey. My first assignment was a little

difficult because I have not been writing for a while, but also because I was unsure how to

approach the prompt. I was unsure if my analyzation was correct because both the videos had

vast meaning, which made it very difficult to for me to complete the essay. Of course, I pushed

through the prompt and was relieved, but I was not happy about my product. I was especially

happy that I was assigned to revise the prompt because it allowed me to explore my own writing

style and not feel constricted by certain rules that I previously learned from other professors.

One of the most important prompts that helped me through my writing process was the

two sentence horror stories. Analyzing and breaking apart the sentences to discover the deeper

meaning in the text forced me to do that in my essays. I intentionally chose certain words that

enhanced my rhetoric in my essays. My rhetorical analysis paper revolved around the idea how

feminism is present in I am Legend, by Richard Matheson, and how he is attempting to convey

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that the old society was extremely against women in power. Comparing my rough draft to my

finals draft demonstrated how much my writing has evolved in such a short span of time. After

receiving constructive criticism from my peers and professor I was able construct my essay more

clearly. Through Nol Carroll and Carol J. Clovers excerpts about horror and final girl theory it

helped me support my argument about how women were inferior to men. Clovers final girl

theory supported the concept that women play active roles in the society and that is why in most

horror films the female will survive her killer and actually attempt to kill the monster. Through

my rhetorical analysis essay I displayed how Robert Neville is the true monster because he is

destructive because of women. His whole existence revolves around two important women in his

lives that were taken by the plague and he was unable to cope with the idea that they were gone,

so he in turn became the monster. The rhetorical analysis essay gave me the push to explore

writing styles and get out my comfort zone because I constantly felt restricted in my previous

writing and literature classes. Tropes are extremely important aspects to any type of literature or

film because it foreshadows and symbolizes what is going to occur next. One of the tropes that

helped me analyze the I am Legend text was Good all Along because in the end Neville was

more of a threat to the vampires than the vampires were to him.

One of the most important aspects of writing 39b is peer review because it gave me

insight on how my peers were writing and exploring their style of writing. I was able to

manipulate my own writing to create a better style for the rhetorical analysis paper because from

the beginning I was uncomfortable with the genre of horror. Personally, I am not a huge fanatic

about horror because the constant adrenaline from cringing parts of a story makes me feel

uneasy, but getting out of my comfort zone and analyzing horror broaden my skills. When I

received feedback from my professor I was astonished on how poorly I did to execute my
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message, but I realized that I needed to be open to an outside perspective. In the end, I

completely changed my essay because I needed to focus more on how exactly feminism was

fused with the genre of horror instead of the history of feminism.

The rhetoric in practice project was the film that I produced with my group and it focused

on the horror of school. The metaphor is relatable to students that attend college and it combines

the genre of horror to symbolize the insecurities student must endure while struggling their way

through college. This project demonstrated that rhetoric is prevalent not only in literature, but

also in films. The first process of the project was determining what our metaphor was going to be

and how to incorporate certain tropes to effectively convey our message to our audience. The

most difficult part was creating the script because writing each scene was exceedingly tedious

since they had to be very descriptive. Filming was even more difficult because the setting and

mood had to be set by the way we acted in our movie. My group met up numerous times just to

change the script because the story line would conflict with the metaphor, or it was difficult to

demonstrate a certain symbol in our film. Just finding the time to film with one another was

exhausting because we all had opposite schedules, which made it hard to film. The very first

night we filmed for over five hours and almost completed our whole film that night, but of

course we had obstacles that halted us from completing it entirely. We were out until four in the

morning filming, but the process was interesting. Our goal was to demonstrate how rhetoric can

be displayed in films through images, dictions, and etc. The final peer review for our script was

helpful because we were given constructive criticism to clean up our script to make it more clear

to the audience.

The whole purpose of building an ePortfolio by creating a website is extremely pertinent

because skills are acquired to represent rhetoric from the start of the home page. Before I even
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attended the first lecture I was afraid because I read the syllabus and how we had a create our

own website, which seemed terrifying at first. As the class progressed throughout the quarter, I

realized that writing is just an art form that people used to express themselves. Being able to

display my progress of each of my projects from rough draft to final drafts allows me to see how

much my writing has evolved. The purpose of the ePortfolio is to display the evolvement of my

writing process and how much I have grown. I believe that writing 39b has challenged me every

time I was in lecture to the very last day, but I also know there is room for improvement. Writing

has always been one of my weaker subjects in school, so I enjoy the challenge when it is

presented because then gives me the chance to mature in my writing.

My views and writing skills have grown immensely, but I always love to be challenged,

which this class did to me. I had to learn to get out of my comfort zone and explore multiple

writing styles. Horror is vast and is extremely descriptive, which most people do not know

because they are on the other side of the book or movie screen. The symbolism of horror has

broadened my perspective about how anything pertaining to horror is not just about becoming

scared, but from insecurities that the author is trying to convey to his/her audience. I can say now

that horror is bit more attractive to me because I can fully analyze what is the true meaning of

what the producer or author is trying to convey. Whether it be that school drives students crazy

or individuals being aware of their surroundings, horror will always have a rhetorical meaning.

Writing 39b has been a terrific class that has evolved my writing and I cannot wait to dive into

my future classes where I can use the skills that I acquired in this class to set a platform for my

myself. Writing is essential in the world because is a significant tool to communicate in everyday

life and throughout the world.

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