First Draft Analysis

My research paper on the death penalty has gone through some major revisions since the first draft I wrote.  Initially, I was arguing that the death penalty was necessary in the justice system but I soon realized that the only reason I believed this was my own views on crime and punishment making it difficult to develop good arguments.  Additionally, every source I was able to find on JSTOR advocated for the abolition of the death penalty on the grounds that it was a highly ineffective system and the margin for error was too great given how a life was in the balance.  I soon became swayed to agree with these authors on the effectiveness of the death penalty in our current justice system.  That being said, I do maintain my belief that the death penalty is a necessary aspect in justice.  I was forced to revise my thesis to deal with the theoretical, ideal justice system that our current justice system strives to emulate.  

After rewriting my thesis and trashing a paragraph or two I began to analyze my sources for appropriate quotes to use in the paper.  I met with some difficulty here because all my sources were against the death penalty.  I think I managed to incorporate my sources pretty well given the difficulties I met with.  I had to throw out some sources in favor of more unbiased ones over the course of the paper.  This was by far the largest difficulty I encountered over the course of my work.  

I think I managed to analyze my visual very well.  I made sure to look at every aspect of the visual and relate it back to my thesis constantly in order to show how perfectly it matched my claim.  I used the visual both as a source and as a focal point of the paper.  Roughly half of my arguments stem from my analysis of the Lady Justice picture I used.  The other half of my arguments built on conclusions drawn about justice from my visual.  This format allowed me to analyze the visual very well and also to build around it in order to make a solid argument.