Response to Course Materials November 15th

     This month, we did some more AP practice. We worked on the the process of taking the multiple choice section of the exam. I think I'm starting to get the hang of it, but I could definitely use some more work. We also did quite a bit of practice on the open prompts, mainly focusing on the introduction. Ms. Holmes taught us that a good introduction will include a thesis that answers the prompt. The AP Lit essays are different from any essay that I've written for an AP class before because they include more elements. In AP World, we just had to write as many facts as we could remember in a short time. For APUSH, we had to write information AND get it right, which was a drag. As far as I can tell, for AP Lit we will have to write a good essay that also has information.
     After completing a close read of Death of a Salesman, we had a class discussion. I was especially interested in the symbolism of each character's name. For example, Linda's name comes from the word for a German tree that represents tenderness. In previous years, I was never very interested in the symbolism of a work; I thought the teacher was just making stuff up on the spot. However, after a few lessons in analyzing literature, I find it fascinating. We also read a few pieces on tragedy and how it relates to Arthur Miller's play. The first was a general description of how tragedy has changed through the years, the second was Miller's defense of his own play as a tragedy, and the third was a critic's view on the play. I enjoyed the lecture because it provided some basic information on tragedy. The critic, Richard Foster, though, kind of annoyed me. He claimed that Death of a Salesman doesn't fit under the category of a tragic play because it doesn't follow this arbitrary set of guidelines. Although I don't doubt that those rules are often true, I don't think that every work has to be a textbook tragedy in order to be qualified under that genre.
     At the beginning of class, we began doing a different warm up exercise that involves analyzing the mood and/or atmosphere of a photo. One of the pictures that our class evaluated was a drawing of a T-rex holding an ice cream cone. Surprisingly, it ended up being relatively easy to describe. I think that writing my own description of a scene, keeping in mind the mood and atmosphere, will help me to be able to recognize it in my reading.
     We recently began reading Hamlet. I was a little nervous to start because I (and probably many others) struggle to understand Shakespeare. However, it's been pretty smooth sailing so far and Holmes does a great job at explaining the historical context to the play. I was chosen for the part of Hamlet and Ms. Holmes explained that it was because I'm the coolest kid alive.