Reflective Essay

There are many points in my essays on Neufield as well as Kalman that I would like to revise. I will be revising different things from the purpose of the papers, the audience, and also certain choice I have made on the direct choices from the original essays themselves.

            In Kalman’s essay I chose to really focus on the message of slowing down out fast paced life as well as instilling these values of eating healthier within our children. “That today we as a society have built up this image that all meals have to be extravagant or at a fast food place to be enjoyable. Though Back to the Land, she shows us that simple is sometime better and the time it takes to make theses meals and sit down and just simply enjoy them is what life is all about.” (991145318 1). In this portion of my paper I was trying to show how the image how we are to live life is perceived by society as a whole and also by Kalman. With the many different points that Kalman brings awareness to in her paper I chose to focus on the overall goal of living a more slower paces fulfilling lifestyle as well as how she incorporates children and families into her essay though text and images. “People are rushing to get from place to place instead of taking the time to enjoy things that are really important like home cooked meals and the family time associated with them” (991145318 1). This sentence is meant to help the readers relate to themselves by thinking if this sentence pertains to them or not.

            Another part my paper on Kalmans essay that was important to me to write about was the children and family. “Families are also suffering with the fast food that is taking over. Families are no longer cooking together, eating together, or even just appreciating the food that the farmers are growing for them. In missing out on family eating together they are also lacking in some activities that really help the family bond together like preparing the table and cleaning up afterwards” (991145318 2-3). This portion of my paper is shown to help me readers really grasp the significance of a family actually acting as a family in everything that they do. In writing this paper my audience is for all ages, in hoping that everyone who reads strives to make a change at home. Whether the change is coming from a parent that decides that they should be cooking at home and enjoying everything they can within the family unit or a child that brings home these values to the parent. With the children being aware of the ever growing fast society as stated in my essay “teaching children is vital to keeping society moving towards a healthier future”, (119945318 3) this is extremely important message for them.

Another essay that I want to review is the Neufield essay. I was not very aware of all the hardship that happened to those who lived in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. Neufield essay helped bring light to this for me. Thus for I wanted to help others who were unaware understand the significance of the event for people affect as well as their emotions.  My audience for this piece was all ages. And for my audience I chose not to use the profanity that was used in the original comic so that it would be appropriate for everyone. I know that the use of the profanity in the comic helped drive home the angry and hopelessness of those involved but I feel that since my interpretation of the comic was with words and not images it would be just as easy to omit them so that I would have a larger audience.

I really wanted to focus on the emotions of the people from New Orleans. And take a closer look at the different personalities within the comic and how they have changed from what they might have been before the disaster. I try to make it clear that not everyone always had the same attitude that was portrayed in the comic by saying that “people who may have been the model citizen that had turned to violence to fill the necessity for them to survive or a loved one” (119945318 2). This was shown in the comic and described in my essay with the example of the father and his baby. I chose to use this example to show the change in emotion within the father. I also wanted to bring to attention the lack of sensitivity to the dead. I used the portion of the comic that showed the elderly women, Mr. Williams, who had died in her wheelchair and they just pushed her to the back and covered her with a blanket. I really liked this example since it helped to get Neufield message across that “I think was to let Neufield’s reader know that there really was no place for safety, no place for the dead, no place for an escape from the nightmare they were going through. The people at the stadium may have not found it to be necessary because they were trying to dodge the same fate that Ms. Williams had met” (119945318 2).

I really hope that my messages within my essays are understood and the examples provide help to get the message across that the Kalman and Neufield wanted people to understand.