This week in AP Lit, we devoted most of our class periods too watching BBC’s 2010 version of Macbeth. Unlike Shakespeare’s original, this production was set during the 20th century in an attempt to update the play. At times, this was helpful, but also led to some confusion. My main complaint with watching the play is that for most of the play, I did not know the names of the characters. This led to problems when I was taking my notes as well as gaps in the story line. It seemed that the directors of the movie assumed that the viewer had some knowledge of the context of the events of Macbeth, but I, a total novice was in the dark. That being said, I did appreciate watching it because it gives me a visual representation to reference when I inevitably read the story. I think that I focused too much on the updated setting and performance of the characters and not enough on how the story intersects with the literary theory that my group is researching.
I thought that the message that Mr. Schoenborn received from a former student regarding the usefulness of the skills that we learn in AP Lit was interesting, but not surprising. It seems to me that I have learned a lot already. The structure of the class creates an environment that stimulates learning. At times it seems like what we are doing is pointless, but the blogs give me a chance to reassess what we have done and see the benefit to it. In the class that I took at CMU last semester, I got a very good grade on the final paper. The class was filled with juniors and seniors in college that still did not know how to write and received much worse grades than I did. I know that I still have a lot to learn, but can see now how the MPHS English department has set me up for success at the collegiate level and beyond.
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This week in AP Lit, we continued working on our Literature Theory projects. My group has decided to watch Macbeth, focusing on the philosophical and existential theories. As we researched existentialism, I learned that Camus was one of the writers that pioneered the theory. I have read both The Fall and The Stranger for my summer reading project and SSR respectively, so I am relatively familiar with aspects of the theory. It will be interesting to see how the theory relates to works written by Shakespeare. I think that by the end of this unit I will see that humans tend to repeat themselves. While Shakespeare was not thinking about the theory of existentialism in particular, I am sure that there will be parallels between Macbeth and existentialism.
We also read and explicated two sonnets this week. I am happy that we are doing the Poem of the Week again because I think that the skills that we exercise while picking apart the poems will be beneficial on the AP Test. The poem “Ozymandias” by Shelley really spoke to me. I thought that the idea of impermanence that was discussed in the poem was powerful. It really showed that the material wealth and power that we are so focused on accumulating during our lives won’t matter after we are dead. For that reason, we should focus on making the world a better place for those that live here after us. It is interesting that a poem comprised of only 14 lines can say so much about the world that we live in. This week in AP Lit we started by getting back into the routine of thinking critically with an activity about the 10 rules of being human. After that we started our next book assignment. We had to pick two books that related to an inquiry that we created. We then created a proposal that was meant to be a reference point for our project. At the end of the trimester, we will present our findings using a pecha kucha style of presentation. I am excited about this project for a number of reasons. I picked Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse 5 and I am interested in reading them. I am also interested in the pecha kucha presentation because I like how it emphasizes the presenter instead of the slides. It seems like it is more intimate and forces the audience to listen to the presenter. Often times, I find that presentations that rely on visual aids to be more than a supporting aspect of the presentation are underwhelming.
This week we also took a practice AP test. It reminded me a lot of the SAT reading section, just more advanced. I usually dislike these kind of tests because unlike a math test that has a definitive answer, I feel that reading tests are much more subjective. These tests seem to contrast everything that we have learned throughout our literary education. We have been told that we all have different ways of interpreting literature, and as long as you can back up your claims, you are correct. With these kind of test, there is only one correct answer and you have no opportunity to back up your claims. This week in AP Literature we continued to explore tragedy. We began class by watching a TED talk about success, failure, and tragedy titled “A kinder, gentler, philosophy of success.” The presenter, Alain de Botton, spent very little time on how success and failure connect to tragedy, but his presentation was helpful nonetheless. He explained that success and failure mean different things to different people, but that our notion of success is formed due to our environment. We learn what is seen by society as successful as a child and that image sticks with us as we grow up. He also brought up some interesting points about living in a meritocracy. For example, if those who succeed do so because they deserve it, by design, those who fail also do so because they deserved to. We also got to read Oedipus Rex this week. This was the first tragedy that I read knowing what tragedy actually is. In the past, I was told that something was a tragedy, but that was where my understanding stopped. I think that I enjoyed Oedipus more than some of the previous tragedies that I have read because I actually understood some of the deeper meaning behind what I was reading. I like to do more than merely scratch the surface, and AP Lit is allowing me to do that. Granted, sometimes I feel like I go in too deep and find meaning where there really isn’t any. Overall, I like how we have been learning tragedy. I like that it is a self exploration because it allows me to come to my own conclusions about tragedy. This week in AP lit we began exploring tragedy. I liked how we were given time to explore it on our own before we had a class discussion over what we found. It was fun to have a solid thirty minutes to explore tragedy. I found myself becoming engrossed in it, clicking links and going deeper and deeper into Wikipedia’s pages. I also liked the “Save the Last Word for Me” exercise. It was a new way to share our ideas, and I liked that it emphasized listening to the other person, instead of competing to get your words in.
This week we also focused on illustrating, authorizing, and extending. This new technique was hard to grasp at first, but I hope that it will help me when I write POW essays. Using highlighters was helpful because it gave me a visual representation of the importance of extending when you are responding to a writing prompt. Your own thoughts and ideas should make up the majority of the essay, because that is what makes it yours. My favorite part of the week was Friday’s lesson. We discussed the Dakota Access Pipeline and the protests surrounding it. I really enjoy debating political issues with my peers. I’m not sure if that is a good thing or not, but either way I find it fun. I think that we should have more discussions in class because it is a good way to learn how to formulate your ideas and stimulate learning about less known subjects. This week in AP Lit we finished up our “What is Literature?” projects. We began the week by watching a TED talk about how to have a good presentation. It was very interesting to think about all great presentations following the same structure that Nancy Duarte explained in her presentation. The video was actually pretty helpful and my group tried to implement some of the ideas that it discussed. After that, we had plenty of time to finish our own presentations. I was happy with the amount of time that we had. At no point did I feel rushed to get it done, and for that reason I believe that we were able to look at our two elements of fiction from different perspectives. Our main goal with our presentation was to have as little words on the slides as possible so that the audience could focus on what we said. We also wanted to make sure that we gave an in depth explanation of our literary elements instead of just a plot summary of our stories. I believe that we did a good job with both of those things, so I am happy with our presentation. It did not feel like we did that much learning this week because we were so focused on our projects, but after looking back on it I realize that the whole week was filled with active learning. I learned how to make a better presentation and broadened my knowledge of the elements of fiction. When I listened to my classmates presentations I learned about the stories that they read and how they thought the elements of fiction affected their story. It was especially interesting to hear the ideas of people who read the same stories that I did. Often times they focused on different things than I focused on so it was interesting to get a different perspective on the same topic. This week in AP LIt, we continued to work on our “What is Literature?” projects. My group had finished humor last week, so this week we moved on to our second element of fiction, fantasy. The article about fantasy explained that while most fiction has aspects taken from the real world, Fantasy is usually set in an impossible world with unrealistic events. We read The Jilting of Granny Weatherall by Katherine Anne Porter. After reading it, my group and I could not see the elements of fantasy in the story. Everything that happened seemed like it could happen in real life. This is the opposite of what fantasy is supposed to be, so we concluded that The Jilting of Granny Weatherall is not a fantasy story. After we finished reading our final story, we began working on our presentation. We chose to keep it pretty brief. If you have too much information on the screen, the people you are presenting to will read the screen instead of listening to you. For that reason, each slide has only a little amount of information on it and we will have everything we want to say memorized or written as notes. Our main goal with the presentation is to answer the “So What?” question. Basically, the “So What?” question explains the deeper meaning behind what we are presenting and the reasons why it matters. If you do not answer this question, your presentation is not engaging. You end up only scratching the surface of the subject that you are trying to explain. This week of class once again focused on our “What is Literature?” project. Edgar, Sloan, and I have humor and fantasy for our two themes of literature. Last week we read the article that talked about irony and humor in literature. This week we got to read Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood and The Drunkard by Frank O'Connor and identify the humor in them. Out of the two of them, Rape Fantasies was my favorite. I was able to identify the irony in it much easier than in The Drunkard. While both works have a tongue in cheek aspect to them, I thought it was pretty funny the way that Atwood chose to address rape and rape culture. There was a lot of verbal and situational irony present. Due to the provocative nature of the subject and the ironic way that Atwood addresses rape and rape culture, she is able to create a compelling commentary about society and human nature. Overall, I think that my group and I are doing a great job understanding the project and formulating our ideas about humor in literature,
We did not have a Poem of the Week this week and therefore did not have a Poem of the Week essay, but we did have a Free Response Essay over our SSR books. I believe that I did a good job answering my prompt for the FRE, but, like most of my POW essays, I had a hard time concluding the essay. My introduction and body paragraphs are thought out and complete, but I never have enough time to finish my conclusion. Usually my essay is left open ended. I want to work to get better at this as week keep doing our POW essays. This week of AP Lit was cut short by a fog delay and a fog cancellation. While we did not have much time, we still did manage to do some learning. We began working on our What is Literature project. I read an article about humor that explained that humor in literature usually comes in the form of irony. The article explained the differences between verbal, situational, and dramatic irony. I had already studied irony in previous classes, but the article was a good refresher. It explained that good authors use irony to convey a commentary on political or societal issues without actually referencing them. An example of this would be Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. What I liked most about the article was that it discussed the difference between a writer who tries to invoke certain emotions upon the reader, and a writer who does not. Often times, the one who does not makes a bigger impact because the writing is not predictable and doesn’t force the reader to feel a certain way about the book. I thought that this was a good tip that I could use in my own writing in the future.
We also began deconstructing the poem Bright Star by Keats. I thought that it was fairly easy to uncover the literal meaning of this poem, but I was a little unsure of it’s symbolic meaning. I liked our discussion in class about connecting with the star, the speaker, of the speaker’s love because when you can connect with a poem it is much easier to understand it’s meaning. Throughout this past week’s classes, we began exploring the question, “What is literature?” We read an article that explained the differences between literature and story. I thought this was an interesting concept because it reaffirmed my notion that books usually convey more meaning than a movie. In a movie, the director and the actors can only convey the plot, and the literature part is left by the wayside. After that, we watched a TED Talk about art and how art is a lot like literature. This connection between literature and art really opened my eyes when it comes to thinking about paintings and other forms of visual art. I already knew that literature was considered art, but the parallels that we made between the author’s word choice and the artist’s color choice and the effect that they have on the tone of the art was very interesting to me.
We also began looking at Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.” At first, this poem did not make much sense to me, but after a week of analyzing it, I have found a few possible interpretations. We looked at the types of imagery that Dickinson uses in her poem and came to the conclusion that there was no visual imagery in the poem. I thought that this conclusion was not accurate, but after examining it further, I found that the speaker of the poem doesn’t reference seeing anything at all. The visual imagery that I was experiencing was as the reader. This realization was important for my understanding of the writer, speaker, and reader, and the different roles they play in a piece of literature. |
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