As of right now, I’m still unsure what to write about for my final essay. Compared to Moby-Dick, which was a slog to get through even with a whole class, being able to close read The Deep by Rivers Solomon et al. after all of that felt like a reward. It being a much shorter story should make it easier to close read since at least it doesn’t have much going on compared to that other whale. Plus, there shouldn’t be any convoluting themes; the first few chapters seem to revolve around History and intergenerational trauma.

As I’ve said in 522, I still need to work on my writing/analysis skills since my mind defaults back to just summary instead of explication. I still think there’s room for improvement since a couple of the essay assignments I wrote for this class and the Moby-Dick class got mediocre grades because I wasn’t able to do the So What (relevance) portion of these essays that well.

I envy people who are able to make convincing arguments/interpretations/insights/whatever about a particular passage and turn them into a 750-1000+ word essay. If only I had the skills…