Response to Course Materials

These past couple weeks have been incredibly long. I found myself more often than not running on less than 5 hours of sleep and caffeine, which, might I add, makes 6th hour mighty difficult to get through.

We finally finished Death of a Salesman. I feel like we spent more time on this than the American Dream, but did not get into as much detail. We created our theme statement as a class: Prioritizing success over moral values will harm others and cause personal failure. We concluded that Willy's obsession over his ambitions in commercial America were destructive to both his family and his own life. We also found that both The American Dream and Death of a Salesman have similar themes in exemplifying how specific attitudes toward societal roles is inevitably destructive in some way. 

Before we began reading Hamlet, we read and annotated "Elizabethan Theater" and "The Renaissance". These two pieces explained the cultural context of the time period that Hamlet was written, which is helpful when considering different perspectives. For example, Ms. Holmes explained the significance of Hamlet studying in Wittenberg, which was the epicenter of the beginnings of Protestantism, where Martin Luther supposedly nailed his grievances to the door of a Catholic church. 

Shortly after reading those pieces, we began reading Hamlet. I really am enjoying it so far, for out of the small collection of Shakespeare's play that I am familiar with, Hamlet is definitely my favorite. This may be in part because I can't help but picture Hamlet as Mel Gibson, who is incredibly attractive, but I digress. I love how the play not only has a plot that is complex and interesting, but also has an underlying political relevance to Elizabethan times, such as Hamlet's comment if incest to his mother and Claudius. I am really excited to figure out what the whole point of the play really is compared to the simplified lessons I received on it in the 10th grade at Corunna.

The next activity that I am going to talk about does not have a name, Well, it does have a name, but for whatever reason, it escapes me. Basically what we do is flip through a bunch of pictures on a power point and collectively decide which is the most controversial (If you are in 6th hour, you will know exactly what I mean by controversial). Then, we argue for about 15 minutes about which words from the word bank describe the picture. Then, when we have finally figured out what kind of mood we want to allude to, we attempt at writing a paragraph that actively describes the picture in the way we want it to, while at the same time does not directly state the mood. By the time we have reached this point, everyone in the class is frustrated, including Ms, Holmes, and we may even receive a lecture on productivity before the bell rings. Hence the phrase, "saved by the bell".

Another thing that we did in class was practice writing our AP test essays. I was absent on Monday when we got a really helpful lesson on introductory paragraphs. I am still not completely confident that I know what I am doing in that area of essay writing, but I think I got the just of it from Vanessa the next day. We basically were given a formula for writing introductions, and to use that for the structure of the body paragraphs. We wrote about Death of a Salesman, which I found to be more difficult than The American Dream.

All in all, we have gotten through a lot of material the past couple of weeks in class. I do feel that we could be a lot more productive in my class, but at least we are a lively bunch!

Summary and Analysis of Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

SETTING
The play is set in Brooklyn (most likely the 1940s and 50s). Most of the play takes place in Willy Loman's home as well as the back yard. Within the flashbacks, the house is surrounded by a cemetery and the skyline of New York City is visible in the distance. In the present tense, the house is surrounded by suffocating apartment buildings. The play also takes place in various buildings of New York City such as a restaurant and Willy's office building. The era that the play is set in is a developing urban society; rapid urbanization is evident throughout the play.

Response to Course Materials

     Over the past few weeks, our class has had many different accomplishments. We finally finished discussing Edward Albee's play, The American Dream, and I am happy to say that we are starting a new play, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. We also read the book, The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by Michael Harvey, which we were able to put to use when editing our college essays.