LAE6392

J.D.,

I think that you definitely chose a great movie to use as an example for this topic.  Your thesis statement seems to be somewhere on page 4.  Could we reorganize the opening paragraphs?  Also, take yourself out of the essay (use fewer personal examples); focus on using the movie as an example.  Perhaps you should use less speculation about what characters could have said; try to find examples of actual dialogue from the movie to support the concept of positive metamessages.  Also, the essay needs more examples of positive metamessages from the movie.  Try to limit your definition of metamessages to eliminate repetition, and consider reorganizing the paragraphs so that the discussion of positive and negative metamessages flow more clearly.  Suggestion for reorganization: Look at each paragraph and decide what the main idea is; reorganize based on main ideas.  The conclusion needs more development; it doesn’t synthesize well enough.  Make sure to discuss both negative and positive metamessages in the conclusion.  The examples you chose from the movie are great; they do a good job of illustrating metamessages.  You have a lot to work with here, you just need to focus on organization and more concrete examples.