My best piece of writing, or at least the one I consider the best, from my Humanities 1 course was an analysis on a single scene in Virgil's Aeneid. The scene depicts the gathering forces of the Latin armies, led by their imposing hero, Turnus, as they march to war against Aeneas and the Trojan refugees. In my analysis of this frightening image, I examine the way Virgil's descriptions of the pre-Roman Italians and of Turnus fit into the narrative of building a nation and the Aeneid's purpose as Rome's national epic.
I felt this piece best reflected my experience in Humanities 1 because it required me to analyze specific textual details and imagery and synthesize them into the broader themes of the work, which in turn had even broader implications for the concept of a nation. Of all the works we treated in this course, the Aeneid stands apart as the one with which I most drawn and to which I have returned numerous times. This essay reflects the extent to which I engaged with the work and best illustrates my ability to work on multiple levels of literary analysis.