Life is a Highway

Don't judge me about the title. I was feeling sentimental when I wrote it. Anyway, let’s start from the beginning. My paper began after reviewing digital dialog posts and talking with classmates. I was really intrigued by both the rhetorical and linguistic aspects of Love’s Labour’s Lost and Henry V, and I couldn’t decide which one to do. However, after doing my literary analysis, I decided that Henry was the way to go. It seemed like nearly everyone disagreed with me in thinking that Henry was an overall good guy, and to be honest, they had some really good points. The comments discouraged me, but they also helped me realize that I really did want to show that Henry is a good person. My friend also helped me realize that Henry is not as black and white as I was making him out to be.

And now I feel like this baby! :)

            Here’s the part where I go around in circles for a couple of weeks. I went from lying and attachment theory to who knows what else. Along the way, I did research, returned to the primary text, and did research again. I was even able to come up with some sort of draft. I tried to be an altruistic scholar and help out others here and there, and I was even able to get some social proof feedback, but as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. At this point, I realized that my thesis was generic and overdone. I had hit a wall. A really big wall. I had to revise my whole thesis and thought process and come up with something that I could be proud to put my name to. Ultimately, I used an idea from another class about sympathy and how it works. I claimed that sympathy is the foundation of rhetoric, and because of this, perhaps Henry’s rhetoric was not as manipulative as many claim it to be. Finally, I have a finished product. It was hard. It was rough, and there may or may not have been some tears along the way, but I learned and I tried.