Reflection – Wolf in White Van

Wolves by flickr user AdamHallArt

Thought is an unruly gust of wind frantically pushing us towards the limit of our minds. It refuses to obey the helm despite numerous efforts to keep it in control. While inspiration and invention often participate in such mental flourish, its capricious nature at times worries us with anxiety and irresistible impulses, leading us towards unforeseen tilt — accidents — or even devastating outcomes such as suicide.

My analysis on John Darnielle’s Novel, Wolf in White Van, centers around the transformation of Sean from unable to resist bad thoughts, resulting in the traumatic event of he shooting himself, to controlling his imagination and resting it in his game, Trace Italian, through which he slowly recovers and gains access to the outside world.

The assignment helped me improve my critical thinking and reading resulting in writing skill. I learned to use ideas from the work as a way to analyze the book from my own perspective. I integrated the author’s point of view into my essay and bridged the gap between his interpretation and my argument. Another learning outcome is rhetorical composition. This assignment is very different from Unpacking Manuel’s Tavern and therefore I had to compose it in a different way. I assumed that the audience didn’t know much about the novel so I tried my best to guide them towards getting a sense of what it is about while at the same time understanding my main argument.

Reflection – Wolf in White Van

Wolves by flickr user AdamHallArt

Thought is an unruly gust of wind frantically pushing us towards the limit of our minds. It refuses to obey the helm despite numerous efforts to keep it in control. While inspiration and invention often participate in such mental flourish, its capricious nature at times worries us with anxiety and irresistible impulses, leading us towards unforeseen tilt — accidents — or even devastating outcomes such as suicide.

My analysis on John Darnielle’s Novel, Wolf in White Van, centers around the transformation of Sean from unable to resist bad thoughts, resulting in the traumatic event of he shooting himself, to controlling his imagination and resting it in his game, Trace Italian, through which he slowly recovers and gains access to the outside world.

The assignment helped me improve my critical thinking and reading resulting in writing skill. I learned to use ideas from the work as a way to analyze the book from my own perspective. I integrated the author’s point of view into my essay and bridged the gap between his interpretation and my argument. Another learning outcome is rhetorical composition. This assignment is very different from Unpacking Manuel’s Tavern and therefore I had to compose it in a different way. I assumed that the audience didn’t know much about the novel so I tried my best to guide them towards getting a sense of what it is about while at the same time understanding my main argument.

Wolf in White Van Reflection Post

Once your essay is published as a page on your site, also publish a post that links to your essay and also does the following:

  • Invites readers to read the full essay by conveying what is interesting about what you’ve said and/or why they should care about your argument. This invitation can take many forms, but the gist is that I want you to recognize what is most exciting about your own essay and to convey that to an imagined audience.
  • Articulates, in a concise way, the controlling idea for your essay. Ideally, your controlling idea will be part of what is exciting about your essay, so this might not be distinct from the first bullet point. But if you don’t state clearly in your invitation what your controlling idea is, then make sure you say it someplace in your post.
  • Explains how your essay fulfills one or more of the course learning outcomes.

Wolf in White Van follow up

The essay prompt on Wolf in White Van is up.

Hyborian_War_Setup_Rules
Also, I mentioned in class a week or so ago, that when I was young (pretty sure I was in middle school), I briefly participated in a play-by-mail game set in the Hyborian Age, the fictional period created by Robert E. Howard in his Conan the Barbarian books. I had forgotten all about this game until I read Wolf in White Van for the first time. I searched around online a bit, just hoping to remember what the game was called, and I found that it evidently still exists and is still running as a game: Hyborian War!

I link to this game mostly to show that the fundamental conceit of White Van is valid — these games did exist and they still do.

Also, if you’re interested in watching the bad, old fantasy film Sean watches in the first part of the novel, Krull is available on YouTube in full: