This assignment was easily the one I struggled with the most. The Road by Cormac McCarthy is an outstanding work, making you feel the despair of The Man and The Boy in this sparse, cruel world. However, I wrestle with novels in a more traditional fashion. I enjoy writing and creating arguments, but this assignment needed me to be at my most creative. This was a difficult task and I tried to live up to it. My initial draft dealt with the described landscape, its bleak, uninhabitable nature and how it relates to current concerns like climate change.

When it came to the revision, unfortunately this was probably my worst one as well (if I'm being completely honest). I still struggled with the inspiration I had for the other projects, this one was interesting but I never fell in love with am angle to really parse through the discussion of climate change and The Road. 

Here are Dan's comments on the initial piece (seems like he thought this was my worst one as well):

Dan lays out the problems with my video. I have found a quote that describes the bleak nature of this world in The Road and there is a plausible link between this desolate post-apocalyptic landscape and the actions humans are taking to destroy our modern Earth. However, Dan takes issue with the drought imagery laid out initially, and although I would push back on that slightly, I do see the point. The main issue is the articulation between the world in The Road and the lesson a human could learn from it. That is what I try to fill in. I also will change my narration. Instead of talking about the actions going on in the video (like why I chose this music, etc) I will focus on the point the video is trying to make.

here is the revised video:

Reflections:

The Road is a powerful novel and McCarthy is a wonderful wordsmith, I just hope I was able to do him justice. I changed the video a decent bit from the original. I simplified it. I did use the quadrant format, I thought that may actually work better than what I originally did. Instead of using annotations to spread the quote out, I used gray font in a word processor and captured myself typing out my quotation. I think that effect looks nicer than the annotations for this creation. I also referenced a quote about birds flying about The Man, that was the missing link to me between the landscape of the novel and the threat of man destroying Earth, whether it be through industrialization or climate change. I feel as if the final is simpler, but much better. I loathed my first draft, it didn't have a focus. But this is more to the point and I think helps to show McCarthy's warning to man.