Response to Course Material # I've lost count

These past few weeks have been pretty busy in A.P. Lit. We finished up our Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead discussions. As I did my close reading and talked with the class, I got a better understanding of the play, and came to really like it a lot. Noticing more of the patterns and witty wordplay as well as deeper meaning was super exciting, and I found myself eager to get to class and discuss more. I'm pretty happy with the theme statement our class came up with, especially considering how a week or to earlier I had no idea if we even could come up with a theme statement. I was interested to see that our theme statement had similar ideas to the post modernism article we annotated. The article had some really cool ideas, but I thought the wording could have been a lot more straight forward. It actually sounded kind of pretentious to me. Overall though, I really liked the way we handled R and G, and I'm so glad it was part of our curriculum.

We have also been doing a lot of A.P. test practice, and I was encouraged to see that I have been improving! We split into groups and did some practice multiple choice, and found ourselves getting a lot more of the questions correct. I still think my biggest issue for the multiple choice will be vocabulary, both in the questions and the answer choices. It's not just terms related to rhetoric that I'm having trouble with; those questions just like to use big words in general. But as a literary analyst I am getting better, and all the practice we've been doing in class has helped a lot. We also wrote a practice essay on Cisneros's "Eleven", and with some advice on centering each body paragraph on an idea/ point rather than on a literary technique, I was able to produce an 8- scoring essay, which makes me feel a lot better about the exam. We also studied a poem called "Defending Walt Whitman," as a class. Going through the analysis process together was a good review, and helped me remember how to structure my analysis.

The next big work we are studying is Silko's Ceremony. We started by viewing a presentation on Laguna culture, and reading a few essays on their philosophy and way of life. I found this extremely helpful when I started reading the actual book, and I was so glad I had that background knowledge. It helped me analyze the characters because I had a better idea of what was and was not acceptable in Laguna culture. I have to say I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get to read this work in class, because I've always found it helpful when Ms. Holmes stops us to clear something up, but it's a long work and I understand that time is limited. I am really enjoying Ceremony so far. I love how it sometimes explains things in abstract ways (this kind of reminds me of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and it gives both works a surreal effect, which helps the meaning along), and how it jumps around the timeline. This makes it feel like the story is unfolding in pieces, like a puzzle. There's also some really rich symbolism that I'm excited to discuss with the class. We talked about Auntie a lot in class, and I'm noticing more and more how manipulative and complicated her character is. I'm just really excited to get deeper into this book.

Recently, we've been studying the different critical lenses. I've learned a few new ones, such as post colonialism and literary Darwinism. As a class, we looked at The American Dream through several different lenses, and it was cool to see how different the conclusions we came to with each lens were. When we looked at it psychoanalytically, we noticed how troubled Albee must have been when he was writing it, which I hadn't thought about as much before. I think it's cool to look at a single work in so many different ways, and I disagree with people who stick to one lens and think it's the only "correct" way to look at a work.

We also looked at Northop Frye's "Mythoi". When I first looked at the circle printed on the handout Ms. Holmes gave us, I was didn't fully understand it and was pretty skeptical. But when she drew it on the board and explained it more, I understood it better and thought it was pretty fascinating. I found myself thinking about the works we've read, and seeing where they fall on the circle. Death of a Salesman, often considered a tragedy, seems fall more into the "irony" category. I thought it was a really interesting way of studying literature, and I'm excited to get more in depth into some of the other lenses.