It's been so long since we've done a blog I think I've forgotten how. For the past month, my life (as probably most AP Lit students') has been dominated by Hamlet. It took quite a bit of time to get through the text as a class, as it is a four hour play. We also did three forums that had to do with the play. All three of the forums provided a different perspective of Hamlet. My favorite post was the one on Ophelia. Ophelia is by far my favorite character in the entire play. The way I read it, I saw her as intelligent and capable. As one of two females in the entire work, Ophelia has to be strong-willed in order to go up against men like Polonius, Laertes, and Hamlet, who dominate her life. For this reason, I really respect her and also disliked Rimbaud's poem on her. He seemed to see her as more of a gentle flower, which I did not agree with at all.
Following our first read, we were assigned to annotate Hamlet in its entirety, a pretty daunting task. However, it didn't end up being as bad as I thought. I've found that it has become a lot easier to understand Shakespearean language after a few months in AP Lit. I remember when I read Romeo and Juliet my freshman year, it was extremely difficult to understand anything that was happening without the teacher explaining it in detail. In Lit/Comp 9, we did quite a few activities to help us get a better grasp of the language, but none of it seemed to stick until this year.
Once we finished annotating, we watched the David Tennant version of Hamlet. We also watched bits and pieces of the Branagh [aka Holmes (shoutout to first hour)], Hawke, and Olivier versions. The best one by far, in my opinion, was the Tennant film. I especially loved how they portrayed Hamlet and Ophelia's madness through the wardrobe and sets. We also read and annotated two more articles on Hamlet. The first one talks about Hamlet's predecessor, Histoires Tragiques. According to Devlin, the end of this version involves Hamlet wrapping people in tapestries and lighting them on fire, which I think would be a far better conclusion.
In non-Hamlet related news we did even more multiple choice practice for the AP exam. Each time we do it, though, I feel like I'm getting more answers wrong. The part I'm struggling the most in is understanding the vocabulary that is used in the questions and answers. Maybe I could use a little more direction, or maybe I'm not getting enough bananas in my diet. Either way, I could use some work.
