Response to Course Materials

Well it has been a long while since the last time that we  responded to course materials. Before Christmas! Wow.

A long long time ago we were finishing up Hamlet, and I remember like 3 weeks of discussion. I really like Hamlet over all. The whole idea of the play is pretty easy to relate to: young fella being forced to come home and deal with all the unbearable drama that he wanted to escape when he initially left. Anybody else feel the same way? I know that just being a high schooler on the cusp of graduation fosters feelings similar to our prince Hamlet.

Final Exams were not at all bad in this class. At all. I was really pleased with my group considering we had such a hard time figuring out what we were actually going to talk about... I wish we could have group projects for finals in all of my classes!

Something that we recently started doing on our blogs is open prompt posts. This is new to me, I didn't really know how to do them really, so I winged it. At least part one was harder for me because I am TERRIBLE at editing/criticizing other people's work especially on AP essays. The part two blog post was easier because I just treated it like writing a free response essay, it was probably terrible but there was no hour of contemplation before beginning. Overall, I think they will become easier the more that we do them.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. We started reading, finished reading, and started discussing the play and it certainly is interesting. I think this may be the hardest work that we have read so far because so much of the content relies on stage direction and visual aid that you can't really get from just reading it aloud as a class. I would also like to comment on how depressing our general discussions in class have been. I kept catching myself zoning out and pondering the meaning of life. At least its sixth hour so I'm not out of it for the rest of my classes. Is there a God? Is there a point? Do we have free will? Even if we do have free will, what is the point of using it if it is for nothing in the end? This play is tripping me out.

Open Prompt Part Two: 2003

2003 Prompt: According to critic Northrop Frye, “Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning.” Select a novel or play in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.

Open Prompt Part One: 2003 Student Responses

2003 Prompt:
According to critic Northrop Frye, “Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning.” Select a novel or play in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.