Check-in #3: After you complete your challenge, reflect on the process of your experience writing for this specific genre. How did completing the chosen challenge enhance your understanding of Gothic representations? What difficulties or issues did you have during the writing process?
This challenge consisted of writing a paper on how a poem by Emily Dickinson ("I started early..") represents the Gothic. This really enhanced my understanding of the Gothic because I was forced to really think about what Gothic actually is. Honestly, this is something that I probably haven't done enough of in this class. It's easy to quickly write down terms that you think relate to the Gothic (as we did in class), but it's another thing to actually have to write a paper on how specific aspects of a poem represent specific features of the Gothic. I had only a couple difficulties during this assignment. This included ensuring that I didn't get too repetitive when saying certain aspects of the poem represented the Gothic. Also, as always, I struggled with making sure that my explanations and arguments were coherent and that I could fit all my ideas within the constraints of the word count.
