This week in AP Lit, we've been watching our perspective Shakspear plays. I have been watching King Lear. In this play, pretty much everything happens because on man decides that his life is not enough for him. This man, Edmund, goes power crazy and is determined to wipe out everyone and every thing that stand between him and his kingdom. During this struggle for power, he dies, his father dies, and all of Lear's daughters dies. This theme of power driving men mad in Shakespear's plays is a reoccuring thing. Power so easily goes to one's head, and it is indeed a fascinating topic. But this power that makes men and women giddy and weak in the knees is always the cause of their ultimate demise. I liked watching this play much more than I did listening to them being read. I feel like watching it allowed me to be able to better feel what the charcater's were feeling with the actor's given inflections. King Lear is an interesting drama, but also hard to understand. It was a little hard to determine what the motives were for these characters, but most everything was discovered in the end. Overall, I really enjoyed this drama. I'm interested in seeing what my group will be able to come up with for our project.
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This week in AP Lit, we started our Shakespearean drama projects. We divided ourselves into seperate inquiry groups and chose between two dramas; King Lear or Macbeth. My group chose to analyze the play King Lear. Working in these inquiry groups proves to be more challenging than I had previously thought. This project is challenging, and having a difficult project abd trying to work with individuals that i don't know very well is a bit of a daunting task. But I believe that we will be able to pull through and create an amazing paper and presentation. I'm actually kind of excited to take on the task of analyzing King Lear. I have interest in the play, and I think that that interest I have will lead me to work harder to try and understand the meaning in the play and will also help me to find things that will support the critical theory that my team has chosen. We chose to study Gender (Feminist) Critisism. This will be interesting to see play out while watching the drama. I have high hopes for this project, and I look forward to seeing what my group and I will be able to accomplish in these next few weeks before break. This week in AP Lit, we mostly discussed what the plan was for the rest of this trimester. We started with the 10 Rules for Being Human, and I really appreciated strting the trimester with that. Having a reminder that we are all but human and that we will all have our ups and downs. It's very important for me to be reminded every now and then that I'm just a teenager in high school and that I'm just human. I don't have to do absolutley everything that everyone asks of me. Also during this week, we discussed our independant reading project for this trimester. I was introduced to a new form of presenting, the Pecha Kucha style. I think that I'll like working with this presenting style more than any other style that I'v experimented in in the past. This style incorporates listening more than watching, and that will help the audience in understanding and absorbing information. The last thing that we did this weel was take a short practice AP test. This test might be more work than I thought. Everything is up to interpretation. But the hardest part is the the interpretation isn't ours; it's the test's. The test's thoughts on how the story exists might be completley different than mine, resulting in many missed answers. All in all, I'm looking forward to this trimester. I think that I'll be able to expand my horizons and learn a lot. :) This week in class, we spent another week focusing on tragedy. Instead of looking at the big picture of the genre, we went a little deeper and tried to connect tragedy with other things. Watching the TED talk about success helped open my eyes and see that tragedy isn't a subject that stands alone and that there is much more to it than meets the eye. We also read the story of Oedipus, which is a story of true tragedy. This story focuses on one man's downfall from hero to zero. In other words, it focused on human suffering, the core of tragedy. Reading this story really helped me to better understand the main idea of an aspect of literature that is tricky for me to understand. Along with reading the legend of Oedipus, we were able to read an article entitled The Tragic Fallacy. This article furthered my understanding of tragedy by sharing that tragedy is not only about misery; but also about the triumph that man has achieved. With these two pieces of work, I was able to immensely expand my appreciation for the subject. With each new tidbit of knowledge that I gain with this unit, my fondness for literature, and tragedy especially, grows. Tragedy is the thing that we are now discussing in class. Learning about tragedy is interesting, for I had already had an idea of what the genre was about, and I realized that there is much more to it than what meets the eye. For example, I had already known that tragedy is based off human suffering and those emotions of pain and despair. But something that was previously unknown to me was that tragedy is not only in literature, but also in our natural world. In an article that we read off Wikipedia, Tragedy of the commons, it was made aware to me that our environment is in a state of tragedy. The article illustrates this tragedy in our surroundings by saying, "We may be living in the current tragedy of climate change based on the assertion that our short-term goals (manufacturing and production - CO2 emissions) are at odds with the long-term goal of survival for future generations." This quote opened my eyes to the fact that tragedy is all around us. We are given the responsibilities of the protagonists of our own stories, and right now, the current state of many of our stories is a tragedy. But some could argue that we are actually living in a dramatic irony, considering the decline of our environment due to mankind's own fault and because of the current state of our political election. But you know, everything is in the eye of the beholder. What's the state of your own story? Everyone has role models, and mine is Leslie Knope. Leslie is confident and charming, and these characteristics are some that make a good presenter. This past week in class, all students have been working on presentations about different elements of fiction. While presenting, we were urged to use examples and quotes that would enthrall the audience, leave them wanting more, instead of having them sit like stones and do nothing but listen. Presenting needs to captivating and exciting, and when the presenter is interested in their presentation, it becomes easier for both the audience and the speaker. During my presentation this week, I tried to channel my inner Leslie Knope. I tried to be interesting and and thorough and knowledgable. Though I know that I did not completely blow away my audience with my presentation, I now have experience so that I will be able to add elements to what I'm presenting that will make it extra special. Something that I was going to use in my presentation, but forgot about it when the time came, is a piece from my favorite composer. The song is Summer, written and performed by Joe Hisaishi, the composer himself. The reason for choosing this piece to go with my presentation is because it reminds me of the feeling that I get when I think of fantasy. Full of endless possibility and thriving with emotion, Summer is a piece that never stops moving, much like fantasy. It continues with a lighthearted intensity that leaves the audience yearning for more, as presenting should. If you would like to give this piece a listen, the link can be found below.
In the sixth week of our AP Lit class, we've focused on creating a presentation in groups. I have a group of two, and I find that working in a group of two is easier than working in a group of three but a little harder than writing in a group of two. I appreciate working by myself, for working alone enables me to share my thoughts freely and without outside restrictions. However, working in a pair has it's perks. My partner is able to help me see that all contributions are necessary and that not all information is applicable. In our groups, we were tasked with analyzing two aspects of literature. The two aspects that my pair focused on were fantasy and point of view. This week, I have mostly focused on the fantasy part of our presentation. I have been writing and thinking about fantasy on a different level than I ever had before. Fantasy is an incredible genre, and I have always loved reading it. While analyzing fantasy, we were given packets that further explained the aspects of literature that we have chose. One of my favorite quotes from this packet is, "truth in fiction is not the same as fidelity in fact.". Not everyone's truth is the same, and that's one of my favorite things about fiction, especially fantasy. When writing fantasy, you are under free reign and you are in charge of the facts.
This week in AP Lit, we focused on a poem written by Emily Dickinson, I felt a Funeral, in my Brain. With this poem, we spent all week diving deeper and exploring the meaning of it.With the dissection of this poem, I was able to go back and utilize my skills that I gained in fourth grade. I was able to connect this text to other texts, and I was able to connect the writing with my own self. With connecting this text to other texts, I was able to recognize the writing and the feel of Dickinson's poems. Many of her works have an overbearing feeling of despair and decay. I was able to connect this particular work with my own experiences, as I have felt a funeral in my own brain. I've felt the emotions and experiences that the speaker discusses in I felt a Funeral, in my Brain. As I was connecting this to myself, I recalled something that I had felt as I experienced a funeral in my brain. I felt a complete loss of devotion to life, similar to the dread written into the poem. The style that Dickinson uses to portray her thoughts in her poems is truly unique. She was a visionary, and her works have inspired many writers and readers, including myself. I hope to one day be able to write as she did, having the reader question the meanings and origins of the text, and having the power of thought. Dickinson is one of my literary heroes, and I admire her works. One of my favorite pieces of hers, along with an analysis, is linked to the left. |
AuthorCailin Rose Russell Archives
April 2017
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