As we look forward to Turkey Day, it has been yet another eventful month on the AP Lit quest, which includes the start of a civil war between the hours.
So, we started out this period by finishing our discussions of Death of A Salesman. I had some mixed feelings about the "fishbowl" discussions. It was actually rather interesting to watch them and participate a little, and I liked having some structure in our discussions for a change through the simple prompts. On the other hand, with the restrictions of the fishbowl, I felt like less ideas were stated and discussed. Still, since Ms. Holmes is by far the Salesman expert, I'm sure we understood what needed to be understood. Funnily enough towards the end, I began to realize that my family is kind of like the Lomans in the story. We've got the same structure: two sons and two parents, and my dad also drives a lot for his job. Though we are by no means dysfunctional like the Lomans are, when I recognized these simple similarities, it emphasized Miller's idea of the common man to me; the Lomans are kind of generic, if not archetypal, characters that can easily be related to.
Moving on, we went on to write our first closed prompt this month as well, where we analyzed the poem, "The Century Quilt." Once again, though, I never failed to miss some deeper meaning/connection in the poem. I guess with "Promises like Pie-Crust" it was understandable since I'd never really heard of the saying. But with this poem, I kind of skirted around the deeper meaning by recognizing the simple, noticeable trends in the details. When Holmes took it apart using her insane tools of literary analysis, I was kind of shocked that I had failed to trends as simple as structure (the sandwiches throughout the poem) the first time around. In the end, I'm assuming that it's okay for now, since we probably have many closed prompts awaiting us in the future. These essays actually remind me a lot of the history A.P. exams, even if we have a bit more freedom in A.P. Lit; these closed prompts particularly reminded me of the DBQs that we had to do in A.P.U.S.H., recognizing trends and pulling evidence directly from the sources just as with "The Century Quilt."
Of course, now we have just finished our big read of Hamlet, and I have got to say that so far, I have seen a lot of Macbeth in this play. From the presence of messengers to the idea of sending off the good guy to England (like Macduff), there have been many Brit Lit déjà-vu moments for me. When I asked Holmes, she told me that Macbeth was actually written after this play, so my thoughts were turned upside-down, but I have also noticed some major differences between the two, especially the fact that Macbeth isn't much of a Senecan drama. For example, everybody doesn't just die at the end of Macbeth, as opposed to Hamlet. I also made a mini-connection with The Children of Men, another story I read during Brit Lit, when Hamlet mentioned the word, "quietus," which is a term used in the dystopian world of the novel. After making these connections, I am really excited to see what new ideas I'll discover during my close reading of the play, especially looking at meter. I was able to recognize some areas where Shakespeare wrote in a long set of rhyming lines, but I have yet to figure out whether they are an actual sonnet or not. I do have to say that deciphering some of the language is a bit challenging, especially with the myriad apostrophes thrown around. Yet, it was still exciting to read a British work; even if Shakespeare's perspective is dated, his writing is still masterful and a little enigmatic too.
As second quarter continues to move along, I would say that my biggest challenges so far remain with recognizing some of the less obvious rhetorical techniques, especially structure. With more experience in essay-writing, I hope to greatly improve on this, and I am eager to continue building on my general writing skills with our voice lessons.
Well done! You captured what we have done in class very successfully. I love when you say "insane tools of literary analysis" because I feel the same way, I think I understand something and Mrs.Holmes explains it and I realized I probably missed about fifty percent of the meaning. But its a start right? It was very interesting to hear how you related DOS to your own family, that's what makes us remember information to relate it back to our lives. I agree with you that DOS is very much so about the common mad and the characters are suppose to be easy to relate too. I also agree that the language in Shakespeare seems to always be hard no matter how many stories we read. Great job!
ReplyDeleteVery well written response Abhijit! I loved the way you wrote this! I think you really knew what you were doing when you wrote this blog response. It perfectly combines the elements of explaining what we did in class in a clever way, incorporating outside elements both from school related topics and non-school related topics, and you make it fun to read. I agree with you on the points you make saying how helpful Ms. Holmes is! She always tightens up the loose ends and just ties everything together for us since most of the time we (or I) can't seem to get these complete analyses or ideas on our (or my) own. I agreed with you also on the fishbowl exercise in how I didn't think I would, but I think I actually enjoyed in more than the full class discussions because it gave everybody the chance to tell the class their opinions. Overall great post!
ReplyDeleteAbhijit,
ReplyDeleteI honestly laughed at your introduction, thank you for mentioning the beginning of the civil war between class rooms, not only for the sake of remembering our crazy drawing but also because it helps me remember what we did on those days of civil war. I felt the same way about then fish bowls but I did not have the connection that you had outside of DOS but it is good to make connections like that to help you remember what you have learned. I felt so stupid when Ms. Holmes went back through Century Quilt because like you said it was so obvious once she explained it! It was like when she gave the helpful summaries of parts in Hamlet that we just read, like oh yeah how did I miss that! I have similar goals that I hope to achieve too I think that Ms. Holmes does a good job of exposing us to poems slowly so we can really understand how to analyse them. Any way back to your post you did good, keep up the great work!