Revision Exhibit

Revision of Paper 1: “What You Pawn I Will Redeem”: Jackson Jackson and the Native American Journey Towards Redemption

After consulting my journals and reviewing my first draft, I decided to focus on the following section of my first paper:

Jackson Jackson feels empty–even mentally deprived–from the very beginning of his narrative. His absent culture has left a part of him missing. He begins to explain his “mental problem” and how, while he is somewhat crazy, he’s not serial killer crazy. Jackson Jackson knows that something within him is not quite right. In reality he’s mentally anguished over being estranged from his heritage. After reasoning through the nature of his mental disorder, he goes on to say that he’s been disappearing “piece by piece”. Jackson Jackson seems to lack purpose in his life. However, he’s awakened from his spell of self-pity when he spots his grandmother’s regalia in the store window of a pawnshop. Jackson Jackson immediately feels connected to this regalia. It had been taken from his family years ago, and the need to win it back in his grandmother’s honor is overwhelming. But, although the regalia drives Jackson Jackson to want to be more connected to his culture, it doesn’t change his ways as a modern Native American.

I like how I explained Jackson Jackson's human nature in the above excerpt, but I'm a little bit redundant in my analysis. In my second draft of this section, I tried to trim out the unnecessary parts/repeated analysis:

Jackson Jackson feels empty–even mentally deprived–from the very beginning of his narrative. He states that he has a “mental problem” and how, while he is somewhat crazy, he’s not serial killer crazy. In reality, he’s mentally anguished over being estranged from his heritage. After reasoning through the nature of his mental disorder, he goes on to say that he’s been disappearing “piece by piece”. Jackson Jackson appears to lack purpose in his life. However, he’s awakened from his spell of self-pity when he spots his grandmother’s regalia in the store window of a pawnshop. Jackson Jackson immediately feels connected to this regalia. It had been taken from his family years ago, and the need to win it back in his grandmother’s honor is overwhelming. But, although the regalia drives Jackson Jackson to want to be more connected to his culture, it doesn’t change his ways as a modern Native American.

I decided that my third draft needed to be much more concise, with more in depth analysis:

Jackson Jackson feels completely empty–perhaps even mentally deprived–from the very beginning of his narrative. He concludes that he has a “mental problem” and how, while he is somewhat crazy, at least he’s not serial killer crazy. Jackson Jackson understands that he's not in the right state of mind. He recognizes that he’s mentally anguished over being estranged from his heritage. But there's no easy fix for this realization. After reasoning through the nature of his mental disorder, he goes on to say that he’s been disappearing “piece by piece”. Jackson Jackson appears to lack purpose in his life. However, after Jackson Jackson finds his grandmother’s regalia in the store window of a pawnshop, he begins to find purpose in his existence. Jackson Jackson immediately feels a connection with this regalia. It had been taken from his family years ago, and the need to win it back in his grandmother’s honor is overwhelming. He feels as though if he could gain it back, he could regain his sense of honor as a Native American. But, although the regalia drives Jackson Jackson to want to be more connected to his culture, it doesn’t change his ways as a modern Native American.

The problem with my writing is that I never seem to be concise enough. By my third draft, I feel like I cut out a lot of the redundancy. Hopefully this will make for a better, easier to read, paper. In my third draft I went more in depth of my analysis of Jackson Jackson's mental depravity and how he tries to solve his anguish through winning back his grandmother's regalia. The addition of this analysis should make the rest of the paper make more sense.