Learning Reflection

It's been a long time since the beginning of this course and I have enjoyed the entire journey. From the first essay about Joseph Campbell and The Dark Knight, I learned to make sure I integrate quotations, make a strong claim and organize my paragraphs in a coherent order. The next unit was about Grendel from the original Beowulf as well as the novel written by John Gardner. With that argument essay, I met the expectations for quote integration, showing I had improved since The Dark Knight essay. Finally, in our last unit, we became experts on our respective monsters and wrote a narrative from the perspective of that monster. That was my most favorite assignment because it let my imagination go wild and I could, in effect, write about the aftermath of Fenrir's imprisonment and the events leading up towards Ragnarok. Even though the word limit was a bit to little, I think I still managed to convey the irony and effect of a short story to my readers.
 I think the narrative really made me realize why monsters are so fascinating: it is because they are different. We always think about the heroes and how they accomplish their feats, but nobody really thinks about the monster, or tells the story of the monster from its point of view. The audience could be, in effect, missing important points because all of us only focus on the point of view of the hero, and ignore the monster. This difference really adds to the fascination of the monster because we are unfamiliar with its point of view and its perspective. It really fascinated me to read about Grendel and Beowulf's battle in Grendel by John Gardner because it provided a new perspective of a story that is ages old. After reading all the short stories, watching The Dark Knight and reading all those analytical texts on the nature of a monster, I think a monster is someone or something that is bent on some kind of destruction. Fenrir, the Norse wolf, was a archetypal destruction monster, as well as the Joker, who was bent on destroying society to prove that everyone is as crazy as he is. The only thing that differs between monsters is the medium they act through. For example, Fenrir acts through the physical medium, by physically destroying the things around him. At the same time, his destruction affects other mediums, like society. The Joker destroys through the social medium, and that affects the physical medium, for example, when he kills so many people to prove his point.