Writing Thoughts

One of my assignments at the moment is to pick a journal article relevant to your major (in my case, English) and write a rhetorical analysis of the article. Basically, it's reading an article and writing about what the article is about, how it's written, and how effectively it conveys information to its intended audience. I picked an article written about George Orwell. I particularly love the book 1984, so I thought it'd be interesting. So in essence, I'm writing an essay about an essay about a man who wrote essays. Essayception? (God, that joke is so corny).

Honestly, I thought the idea was a little bit silly. What's the point in just writing about how another piece of writing is written? But thinking about it, it's actually a kinda interesting assignment. I've found I've read the article in quite a different way than I would if I was just reading it for information. Rather than just looking at what the article says, I'm having to think about and dissect how it actually is written. It's kinda like doing an assignment on a poem, just with less metaphor and it's easier to make sense of.

Aside from the actual writing aspect, the article itself is pretty interesting. Of Orwell's work I've only read 1984 (many many times) and Animal Farm (only twice). I also don't know THAT much about the writer himself. The article discusses whether or not Orwell could be considered a genius and talks about his flaws and strengths. It kinda ends up portraying him as a dick. Intelligent, but a dick. He sounds like he was extremely arrogant, paranoid and just generally not very nice. Doesn't make me like his writing any less though.

Might actually post what I've written after it's done and graded.