As far as content goes this week, it has been mostly "This I Believe". The main topic of discussion has been the concept of writing and performing our speeches and making videos to go along with them. To me, this has been a rather difficult unit because I'm having a hard time trying to decide what I want to write my speech on. There are a lot of things I believe and I don't know if I could pick just one to write about to explain my beliefs properly. I think the problem is that I'm afraid of sounding corny. The problem is that I can't get very into anything I come up with. I think that's just because I don't have the right idea yet. I wonder what it'll take for me to get the right idea. I'm thinking I'll come up with something but of course it'll be later than I had hoped. Although all that matters is that I come up with something I believe in. I need my topic to be something I can stand behind and stick up for when people are arguing against it.
The majority of people's talks are going to be about how they worked hard or some life lesson they learned that relates to working hard and their path to success. To me, that's something anyone can write about no matter how genuine it actually is. Most people writing about things like that really don't know if it actually changed their life, they just either want something to write about, or they don't know what to believe in terms of what got them where they are. I really want to avoid this, and perhaps my analysis of the situation is a little bit wayward of accurate, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to. I've been really busy lately and am having trouble keeping up on sleep so maybe my brain is just being lazy.
I think this could be a really helpful unit as long as I'm able to put my complete effort into it. I could make some very good personal discoveries and share those with all of my classmates. Perhaps my ideas that I share will help them on their path in life. As long as I put my best effort forward, this unit will help me a lot.
This week the culmination of our efforts was presented in front of the class. We presented our critical theories to everyone about either the play King Lear or Macbeth. There were a wide range of theories and they were all very interesting. To me, the most interesting one was the theory that my group presented. The psychoanalysis of Edmund is very interesting because he's a very twisted character that does many twisted things. By learning his motives we get to figure out perhaps some hidden meanings in the play or maybe we learn things we didn't think we would learn. For example, Shakespeare could have implied a hidden meaning about how constantly treating a bastard child like a bastard child that has no value. The important thing to learn is that everyone has value, no matter where they come from or what situation they are in.
Another theory I was very interested in was the Marxist theory that took place in Macbeth. I thought it was really interesting how a political ideology could carry on to affect more things that just the government or politics. The idea that people can carry these things past what they are meant for is interesting because it causes you to think that people who are communists politically would also like totalitarian control in the rest of their lives. Not only is it interesting but it is a little scary as well.
To me, all of this proves how great a writer Shakespeare was. His work appears in almost everything you see nowadays and it can entertain you as well. The language is pretty dry but the themes are very interesting and they are still relevant, time has never taken anything from the main idea of a Shakespeare play.
In our eighteenth week in AP Lit class, we haven't been learning anything in the conventional sense, we haven't learned a new author, a new formula, or a new way to write papers so sometimes we think we haven't learned anything. In reality, we have really learned a lot. I learned about the connection between music and Shakespeare's plays. There are a lot of songs that draw inspiration from King Lear. Maybe they don't do this on purpose, but the themes overlap. For example, any song that talks about having issues with your father relates to Edmund and his hatred of his dad because he is a bastard and his non-bastard brother, Edgar, is treated much better than him. This seems to happen a lot in modern work because Shakespeare covered such a wide majority of topics that sometimes it can be hard to find something that he hasn't done yet.
The problem with this is that finding one that matches up perfectly is difficult. A lot match up, but they don't cover more than one or two aspects of it. You have to dissect it and find each element in it before you can find a match. You have to gain an understanding of the words in the song and the play. I find this to be challenging but it's a fun challenge. I gain from this because I learn how to understand things better and how to find a match for things. I am gaining an understanding on how to match themes with others and create a powerful example. It's not a conventional skill I will use in other classes, but it's a real life ability that someday I'll be glad I learned.