Response to Course Material # 2

This class has once again challenged me and helped me grow as a reader and a writer. Using the movie version of Death of  a Salesman as our first "read through," in some ways made my analysis of the work easier (it was more clear whether Willy was in current time or having flash backs), and in some ways made it harder (I was seeing the words actually written down for the first time as I was annotating). I did like this method because it made the annotating a little more exciting in that I felt like I made more discoveries of patterns and themes in the close read because I had only ever seen the work before on a screen. The movie helped clear up a lot of plot confusion, yet it allowed me to feel like I was digging deeper as I read the text. I liked having class discussions before and after the close reading, because I felt like I had a lot more to share after the close reading and was excited to discuss with my peers. I also liked how we read Death of a Salesman right after The American Dream, because there were a lot of parallels. For example, Linda and Grandma are similar in that both put on acts to make them seem less competent than they are. I also saw in both works a motif of not being able to "get satisfaction". In The American Dream, Mommy has the episode with the hats and Mommy and Daddy are so unsatisfied with their "Bumble" that they mutilate and eventually kill it. In Death of a Salesman, Willy makes several comments about the refrigerator breaking again as soon as its fixed. I find it interesting that although both works have this motif, Arthur uses it to actually make the point that you can't get satisfaction, while Albee uses it to mock the middle and upper classes and criticize their materialism. Being able to compare and contrast both of these works helped me get a better understanding of each of them.

Overall, I like the independence we were given as a class to come up with ideas about Death of a Salesman on our own. We weren't given any articles until after our close read several discussions after the close read. Also, I liked how these article seemed to be more discussion-provoking in that we were given two very different viewpoints on whether or not Death of a Salesman is a tragedy, and we were given some varying definitions of what a tragedy is. Getting both sides of the argument helped everyone in the class pick a side for themselves, which provoked more discussion and debate. I do hope that we discuss this topic more though, because I left the classroom pretty confused. I had always thought a tragedy was defined by the emotions it provokes in the audience, but our discussion made me start to think that a work being tragic doesn't necessarily make it a tragedy, and that there are certain requirements it has to meet in order to be a tragedy in a literary sense. I am having a hard time figuring out what a tragedy actually is, because it seems to be pretty subjective and it's changing quite often. This makes it hard for me to decide whether or not Death of a Salesman is a tragedy. So, although I like how much freedom our class was given in discussing this topic, I hope we are given the chance to discuss further and hopefully clear some things up.

Another big concept we have been working on in class is being able to use the motifs of a work to come up with a theme statement describing the author's intent in writing the work. This is something I struggle with, because it's hard to come up with a statement that is support by all aspects of the work. The day our class came up with our theme statement helped me a lot, because I was able to go through the process with the help of my classmates and Ms. Holmes. This made it easier to come up with a theme statement for "Promises Like Pie Crust", because I had more experience and knew more strategies. This also helped me outside of the classroom. We had a day in choir where we sat down and discussed the meaning of two of our pieces, which were both originally poems. One was Shakespeare's "O Mistress Mine," and the other was May Swenson's "I will be Earth." I was able to use the strategies I learned in lit class to come up with an overall idea of the meaning of the pieces. I looked at the DIDLS ("I Will be Earth" is loaded with imagery, and uses some interesting diction, which can be seen in lines like "Burn radiant love,/Born scorpion need"(Swenson)) to come up with motifs and bigger ideas, which led me to the overall meanings. This allowed me to relate the poems to other works. For example, "O Mistress Mine" is quite similar to Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," which I read in Brit Lit last year. I like how I can apply what I'm learning in lit class to other situations, and I feel like this class is enriching my experience as a reader.