American Literature is a class that allows us to learn and explore rhetoric as it pertains to our daily lives and other text. This semester our main focus has been being able to create strategies and adding techniques from connected passages to improve our writing abilities. In our Connecting threads project we were to select a central theme or concept and then collect and analyze multiple works of non-fiction, poetry, and media that all contribute perspectives to the complexity of the idea. In addition we had to create central observational claims that display complex syntax and specific commentary on abstract concepts, that could be expressed and defended in original an argumentative essay. The topic I chose to focus my project was Death & Legacy. I chose this because some opinions based on the concepts of death and whether or not it is important people leave behind something greater than themselves once they die. I learned that to leave a legacy that outlives m requires sacrifice and selflessness. My final complex claim was, death is inevitable, and although sometimes that is scary, it's necessary because our sacrifices and acts of selflessness determine the legacy we leave behind. The first part of this project has been tedious but I think that next semester I'll be able to have a good grasp on my idea and be able to put my thoughts into words and soon art.

The poem "Because I could not stop for Death" represents the stages of life and death personified as she moves to her own grave. Through her transition there is a sense of reality as death is what we make it, and the feeling that we have of immortality comes to halt. In our musical score we decide to keep the same melody all the way through because in our lives we've only had one idea of what death is, but as we get older and come closer to it, its like a silent beat in the back of our minds that all eventually comes to an end.