Reflecton #6

Tamiria Dixon

Dr. Despain

Transdisciplinary Communication

October 29 2024

Reflection #7

My first experience annotating a text was in my sophomore year of highschool. Hearing the word annotation, automatically intrigued me. I soon learned that annotating is a reading tool to help students understand ideas and highlight important details they find in the text. After practicing this skill a couple times, I could say that my comprehension of text has improved.

In The Great River, the author uses figurative language to describe the Mississippi River. Boyce Upholt utilizes phrases such as “whole trees-ancient, massive sentinels that might weigh as much as sixty tons-shed into the water, sometimes hundreds at a time (Upholt 74)”. The previous quote demonstrates the author’s ability to incorporate a simile that compares the weight of trees to water. More importantly, this comparison allows readers to comprehend the true importance of water by revealing its weight. Another example of figurative language that the authors use is metaphors. As the writer explains Jefferson’s ideals regarding the idea of men owning land. He shared that Jefferson associated land with a fulfillment of resources, with the benefit of becoming your own boss. The author writes that “ The only shared resource he spoke of was the river itself, the highway into his promised land (Upholt 75)”. Metaphors similar to the one listed allows for readers to further connect with ideas such as land as it relates to history. It can be said that these items of figurative languages were all examples I used annotated, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the text. More importantly, highlighting these quotes allowed Dixon 2

me to analyze the history of the Mississippi, while being able to understand the river’s importance regarding resources.