Porter and Johnson-Eilola

I really enjoyed Porter's article seeing as he addressed an issue that I feel is hardly ever addressed in the reading material that many of my classes have either failed at or refused to analyze: the idea that the mind set is shaped by outside factors more so than the author realizes (which makes perfect sense to me). Very few classes I took throughout my college career have addressed that issue. And I was practically stunned when Porter introduced the idea that Thomas Jefferson, one of our very founding fathers, was not as talented and gifted a writer as so many fans of his seem to associate him with. I was introduced to this idea just two semesters ago, when I took a class on authorship and we looked at material through distinct yet different authros: Edgar Allen Poe and Louisa May Allcott. Through their works, the class found that their ideologies and backgrounds managed to shape and mold their works and how both have become respected in their fields. We know Poe as this genius that no one can top, and only Alcott as the writer of "Little Women". We found that both, while being talented writers, had to work through hardships, critics' expectations, and learning from the past in order to understand what it takes to be a successful writer while relatively being good at it. It was facinating how that class made me see two differeing writers in a very diffferent light.

I saw a lot of the same thing happening in the Jonhson-Eilola article as well. I took a Technical Writing course the following semester, and I was really surpised at how even the task of analytical/instructional writing takes so much intertextuality and hidden meanings that the author never intends, despite attempting a simple act like writing directions. It is with articles like these that I tend to wonder if Freud was right. I wonder if we will ever get the chance to know our true selves and what we truly mean when we say or act a certain way. I wonder if Freud himself ever talked about the act of writing as if that ever revealed the true self of a person or not.