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Spencer Fogleman
Dr. Miss
UWRT 1104
31 January 2017
Rhetorical Analysis
Each work of writing contains rhetoric and each author uses their own rhetorical style. It

is important to analyze an author's rhetorical decisions to become a better writer, including my

own. In reviewing the rhetoric contained within one of my past assignments, I am able to identify

my clinical approach to writing as well as the poor coherence evident in the assignment and

adjust to better my writing in the future. The past assignment I am reviewing is an analysis of the

play, She Kills Monsters. In this paper, the explicit objectives of the assignment were to examine

the theatrical elements of the play and their effectiveness, express why the playwright wrote the

play and describe how I felt about the play as a whole. These specific objectives, coupled with

my desire to earn a high grade, fogs the main point of my writing. The personal nature of the

experience I was being asked to describe, also inspires a more informal style of language that

would have been more appropriate when speaking to family or friends. I should have worked

harder to better expressed my ideas more formally.

My overall purpose for writing this text was to describe my experience in seeing the

production She Kills Monsters and determine the playwright's reason for writing this play.

However, I was unable to blend my own experience with the playwright's purpose as thoroughly

as my professor would have preferred. I realize now that I can not simply add a few brief and

seemingly unrelated comments to satisfy an assignments objectives. I should have focused more

on coherence and clarifying message within my paper. I was instead thinking about a rubric.

Here I speculate briefly at the end of my introduction, In a play about dragons, family and

sexuality, I was able to experience what the characters were going through and that experience

allowed me to grow. I think that was Nguyens purpose for writing this play and again at the
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end of my first body paragraph, It brought an abrupt halt to the argument and scene that the

audience was engaged and invested in. So, in a way, the audience felt slightly annoyed and

cheated, as Agnus did, because they were forced to remember Tilly was gone and all the

conversations taking place in the fantasy were just that, a fantasy. After comprehensively

describing my experience at the theater in the body of the paragraph, I include these two meager

remarks in an attempt to remind my professor that I was, in fact, considering the principal theme

the playwright was trying to convey. This attempt failed. At the end of the first paragraph, I

wrote, "In a play about dragons, family, and sexuality, I was able to experience what the

characters were going through, and that experience allowed me to grow. I think that was

Nguyen's purpose for writing this play" (Fogleman 1). Since the entirety of the body paragraph,

excluding the final sentence, is written purely to convey my feelings after seeing the play, this

flimsy one sentence statement was not enough to meaningfully connect the playwright's goal to

my experience. The assignments rubric called for an explanation of how I felt about the show,

identification of social issues within the play I would not normally consider, and the playwright's

purpose in bringing the show to set. I knew that the length of the paper would be most important

as the professor would only briefly skim the paper if he read them at all before grading. So, I

made sure to type out three whole pages and provide an easy to identify example of each of the

three criteria. By explicitly repeating my reason for the author bringing the show to production in

succinct sentences at the end of the first two paragraphs, I thought the professor would notice

that I did indeed give the objective some thought and check the box on the rubric. Of the three

objectives, I was told to address in writing my production analysis paper, my professor explained

describing how I felt about the play was of greatest concern. This is what I should have focused
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on as I truly enjoyed the play and find my authentic style resides in describing my experience at

the theater.

In discussing my assessment of the production, the main body of each of my paragraphs,

my writing takes a more informal and verbose form. I enjoyed the play a great deal, and that is

what drove my writing more than the formal rules of writing an academic paper. I often put lots

of thought into the words I put down on a page. I try to avoid the use the same adjectives and

verbs in proximity and frequently make use of a thesaurus in an effort to ensure I find the exact

word and connotation I desire. This habit sometimes leads to a bombast and ultimately less

effective sentence when compared to how I would have phrased the sentence naturally or in

speech. In this paper, though, I found I did not struggle for a single word time and time again, as

is usually the case. Instead, I used phrases like, "he seemed off" and rhetorical questions like "Is

he not distressed by his new discovery and why does it take the criticism of Agnus's friend for

him realize he should talk to her?" to better convey my opinion of the play (Fogleman 3). I

believe this return to everyday language is due to my passion for the production. I was unused to

writing so simply to convey how I felt, as I was usually forced to write to persuade or inform.

But, I enjoyed the topic about which I had to write, unlike most assignments. I was moved by the

play. Several scenes spoke to me personally and urged me to consider the importance of my

family, my girlfriend, and my friends. They were what I was thinking about when writing my

production paper and my diction displays it. I am and have always been, very close to my friends

and family and that familiarity inspired my more informal writing style. I decided I would rather

be informal than do the play I enjoyed so much an injustice in letting my meaning, and therefore

the play's, get lost in formality.

My regression to informal writing in this paper, though it conveys my desired message,

leaves room for criticism when submitted as an academic paper and my lackluster references to
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the playwright's purpose for writing the play fulfills the assignment's requirements but

diminishes the coherence of the paper. To amend these issues, I must focus on tying all aspects of

my paper together, and better express my ideas formally while focusing less on the technical

grading criteria. Creating an outline and multiple drafts for each future assignment would greatly

improve my writing in these areas. By beginning with an outline, my papers will be clearer and I

will be better able to tie multiple ideas together and by revising my work through several drafts I

can meticulously redefine my ideas in a more formal manner. Through this analysis of my

previous assignment, I acknowledge my literary short comes and devise new methods to improve

my rhetoric.

Works Cited
Fogleman, Spencer. Production Analysis. Paper to Liberal Studies 1104: Theatre. University
of North Carolina at Charlotte. Charlotte, NC. n.d. Print.