Great Gatsby LA Reflection

Reflection on The Great Gatsby Literary Analysis

Application

While the type of essay this is - a literary analysis - was completely foreign at the time of creating it, I

quickly realized how this type of essay simply is detailing a theme of a novel with a more specific format.

Thematic essays have been common in the past. The content of the literary analysis is very similar to any

old essay about the theme of a novel, but the product and the process to create it differ greatly from the

norm. This process has already been adapted to my senior literary analysis in which it differs slightly

without changing the product. The process used in this essay was much more lenient than the senior

variant but they both resulted in nearly identical products. I can see this process and product being used

very commonly with any piece of literature that can be analyzed throughout college.

Analysis

With the ability to create an outline format myself, I was able to utilize this outline very well and follow

it accurately. This fact combined with how each paragraph of the essay was a separate assignment and

deadline created a very straightforward pattern. The method of writing a simple outline according to my

needs and then focusing on each paragraph individually worked very well for me. The ability to ask the

teacher more specific questions about each paragraph really assisted in me writing an excellent analysis

of the novel.

Evaluation

At the time of writing this piece, I was learning about the decline of the American Dream. This referred

to how drastically the dream of coming to America for freedom and possibility has shifted to the want

for money and material possessions from the dream of success in life. Considering how I feel that this is

one of my best writing pieces to date, I strongly believe that I effectively demonstrated my

understanding of the decline of the American Dream. This piece showed me how writing about things I

am interested in, such as technology, leads to an improvement in my writing. Despite that, I still had

some problems finding fitting quotations from the novel, so I still have room for improvement in that

department. Since this essay was the first official literary analysis, it has greatly advanced my ability to

analyze a piece of literature for a specific theme and has improved my skills in finding quotes from the

reading.

Creation

My newly-found strength of writing about things I am interested in can lead to an improvement in this

type of writing as well as finding quotes from interesting stories. In order to better find quotations from

a novel, I should definitely put more effort into marking pages with great quotes when I come upon

them in my reading. I feel that the teacher had the right idea on how to go about assigning this literary

analysis and has left very little room for improvement. My ability to maintain interest in writing about

something I can relate to can definitely be adapted to aid in writing larger and more important pieces

throughout my life in college and beyond.