Reflecting On Revision

Ebony's draft immediately caught my attention on what her take on the article "Standing By" was. Although we both included in our papers that the article was written sarcastically, she seemed to have thought that at one point, Sedaris may have actually been ranting about the people he observed, reevaluated his opinions later by self reflecting. My take was that he was never seriously talking about these people, that maybe this is all a non-fictional tale of a previous fictional "David Sedaris". Perhaps he was (and could still be) this person who has such a low self-esteem issue that his way of avoiding having to deal with himself, his release was/is to take it out on others. It is always easier to admit to and find someone else's flaws rather than your own. I believe we both came to the same basic conclusion of a sarcastic outlook, it was interesting to find that maybe at one point, she felt he meant some it and his opinion evolved while I thought sarcasm was throughout from the start.

I think she and I touched on many of the same things, although I did see that she noticed that the article happened to be written around election time, where people all over were into judging the former candidate Barack Obama based on a lot of assumptions, not facts. I did not look at it that way and that is actually a great point. Politics are one of the most frequently argued issues worldwide.

Ebony stated in her paper: "I think Sedaris wrote in a sarcastic, witty tone so the reader can feel the emotions he was feeling when he was thinking and reacting to certain things because we all tend to feel the same way while annoyed." I believe that is an excellent thesis statement although it is not in the beginning. I also believe that it is properly placed. Due to the way she wrote the paper, it would not necessarily flow had she included that in the beginning. I wrote: "I found Sedaris’ writing to be critical to the human race only to a degree of sarcasm. It seems as if he wrote the article to ridicule the natural, unconscious behavior of humans so that by reading his composition, we would then become conscious of the fact that do indeed tend to be selfish in our thoughts until it comes down to ourselves. Although we made similar statements, this was found at the beginning of my paper, in the introduction. It just depends on the writer. That is was makes each writer unique, their personalities reflecting into their writing style.

Now that I have read a wonderful draft with excellent word choice, I definitely have some work to do on my own paper! I think mines is still very unorganized and has a lot if editing that need be done but that is why it is a rough draft, emphasis on rough.