Ahh! I can't believe it's already December! It
seems like just yesterday we started AP Lit and began learning about analyzing
literature. Now, we have finished analyzing
two plays and we are on our way with the next one.
This month, we finished analyzing Death of a Salesman. When we
first watched the movie, it seemed many people in our class were confused about
what was happening. However, I had
watched the movie in American Lit, so I felt more familiar with the play. When we got to analyzing, I realized that
there were so many things that I didn’t even think of, despite having discussed
the play before in American Lit. I
thought many of the things that we discussed in class were so cool and I was
surprised how I hadn’t thought of it before.
I guess I still have work to do with analyzing, although I think it went
better with Death of a Salesman than
it did with the American Dream. One thing that we did to help with our
understanding of the play was to read a couple of articles. Although they were extremely tedious to read,
I thought they were interesting and helpful.
I liked the interviews with Arthur Miller because it was interesting to
see what he thinks of his own works and what he thinks about what other people have
thought about his works. One of the
questions that I always have whenever we are analyzing is whether the authors
really intended to include all the symbols and meanings that we get when we
analyze it. I thought it was interesting
how Arthur Miller said that he didn’t really think that he had created
something this complex, but in a sense it is true. Death
of a Salesman has so many meanings on many levels and is applicable to all
people. There was another article about
the psychological aspects of Death of a
Salesman. I was interested in this
because it’s something that I feel we haven’t really talked about in previous
lit classes.
Another
thing we have talked about is the trends in literature and as a result, trend
in tragedies, characters, and types of literature. I think it’s cool that we can see the trends
in all different aspects of literature and how they are all related to each
other. That’s basically what we have
done and we are now reading Hamlet. I am struggling a bit with the language, but
hopefully it will be okay.
I definitely agree with you about DOS and the connection with American Lit. I took the class last year and we talked about it, but it was so different from when we looked at the play in AP lit. One way to maybe improve would be to add what exactly you learned this time as compared to last. I think mainly you talk about a lot of good things and give a good overview... but maybe add more examples so that you can remember specifics later. Like which interviews you liked or what does Miller think about other people and his work?
ReplyDeleteI like how personal you make your blog, as it really gives a comprehensive review of what we did and your opinion of our work. I would agree with Alexis in that I think you would benefit from adding one or two specific details when you talk about your opinion. I would point to the part where you talk about the trends we talked about as an example- maybe add something about how heroes become more ordinary and less kingly as the time periods advance.
ReplyDelete