When I was first given this assignment, the class was prompted to pick a story to explore and write a brief discussion on what Freudian concepts we see in the story of our choosing. I originally wanted to psychoanalyze “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe. I had previously read this, and a few other of Poe’s stories, in high school. I was intrigued by the idea of re-reading it through a Freudian lens because it created a whole new story for me as opposed to the one I read when analyzing it from a literary point of view.

I outlined a few defense mechanisms I saw in the story, and even drafted an essay on the story. Although I felt my draft incorporated everything the assignment asked for, I decided I wanted to write a paper on something I really enjoyed reading and could think outside of the box for, not to just write it for a grade.  Although “The Black Cat” spurred my curiosity, I felt the examples of Freud were too obvious and I could do a deeper analysis and portray how I think better using another story.

I turned my attention to “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates. The first time I read it I was really anxious at certain parts of the story where I misunderstood scenes for things worse than what they were, and almost digressed from using the story at all. However, after a few more readings and applying more of Freud’s ideas, I was able to create clean cut theories on what I saw was going on, and approached the story in a much different light than the way I initially understood it.

This was the first paper of the semester that I had to create an outline of all of my ideas of the story on, just because of how much volume of content I ended up thinking of. From there, it was just an onward thrill of writing a cohesive paper, doing it, even though tough, for my pleasure and not just to satisfy requirements.

After 7 drafts, I reached my final revision, I could not be happier that I deviated from using Poe’s story. Although it was difficult at times to contextualize what was happening in “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been”, I was rewarded by writing a paper outside of my comfort zone that taught me how to think more critically.