Textual Analysis

I just turned in the final draft of my textual analysis today, and hopefully I will get a decent grade on it. For my paper, I chose to analyze the word assisted suicide in numerous texts. It is an interesting topic to discuss because many people have different perspectives on the issue depending on their morals.

On Wednesday Professor Duncan handed back our rough drafts of the paper. He said that my rough draft was a solid start, but he gave me a few suggestions. First off, he asked me how the term is used politically. I found a few politicians' views on the issue, but I could not find a way tp incorporate them into my paper. When I tried to add a senator's quote in my paper, it sounded out of place, so I decided to just leave it out. I was also asked where the term originated. Now, I did not find where the term assisted suicide originated, but I did find out how the broader concept of euthanasia was first used. It used to be referred to as a pleasant state of mind, and I added this information to my paper when I talked about how euthanasia and assisted suicide was perceived before the Hippocratic Oath. Mr. Duncan also stated that I should find an article that states if the government tries to intentionally miseducate the general population by having them believe that euthanasia and assisted suicide are the same thing. Unfortunately, I was unable to find this information. The articles that I found for my paper distinguished assisted suicide from euthanasia. This theory, however, is interesting, and I would like to pursue it.

Overall, I believe that my paper did an adequate job of defining assisted suicide through the use of several sources. Now, I get to look forward to that wonderful synthesis paper (Did you notice the sarcasm?).