This week in AP Lit class, we have been going over tragedy just like the past weeks. This week has been different though. We have received an assignment to write an essay on our reflection and what "They say" about tragedy. This will definitely be a tough assignment and I hope it doesn't wreck my grade. It's worth 28 points, which is a lot bigger than most of our assignments in this class. I'm trying to put time into it, but working last minute has become a habit for me so it's difficult to get myself to do things ahead of time. That's definitely something I need to work on and improve later on in life. I don't think I can keep getting by at the college level by putting things off until the last minute like I have my whole life. So I suppose while I'm learning about tragedy, I'm also learning life lessons.
This week we also read a story about tragedy. The story was more of a metaphor as to how it's tragic that man can never reach the goals and aspirations he has no matter how hard he tries or what he sacrifices. The piece is called "Before the law" and is written by an author name Kafka. The story explains how a man wants to enter a door, but the guard of the door won't let him in. The man constantly tries to get in, and spends the bulk of his effort trying to get through the door. There are three doors, but each has a guard that won't let him through. The story is a metaphor for how man tries to get past his limitations, but can't because that's just how the human race is. This itself is one of the roots of tragedy. If you want a more in-depth explanation, you can check my tragedy blog about the article.
This week, we have been exclusively going over the concept of tragedy. We read the full story of Oedipus Rex and let me say, it was ridiculously tragic. The whole story, Oedipus was trying to avoid the prophecy the oracle revealed to him, but walked right into it. It was foretold that he would kill his own father and marry his mother. To avoid doing this, Oedipus leaves his home and moves somewhere else. Oedipus finds a man on a trail, and has an altercation with him and some others. He ends up killing the man and is on his way. That man turns out to be his father. He then moves to the town of Thebes and becomes the king. He has children and is a successful ruler. Later on, he finds out the queen is his birth mother. It turns out the people he thought were his parents weren't actually his parents, they just took care of him.
Everything that happens seems very coincidental and unlikely to me, but that about sums up Greek literature. I don't know why everything had to happen like that. Although if you think about it, it really is the ultimate tragedy. It's hard to imagine killing your own father and having children with your own mother. Although you had no intent to do these things, you are still doing something extremely awful and so difficult to imagine. I feel like you might be able to recognize your own mother and father, even though you haven't seen them since birth. I am very glad I am not Oedipus and I'm very glad I don't live in ancient Greece.
This week in AP lit class, we started focusing on the element of tragedy. Tragedy is a type of literature in which extremely sad events happen to the characters in the story. We made two blog posts about it already, so if you want some insight on that you can go to my tragedy blog. Another thing we did was we started to analyze and explicate "A Noiseless Patient Spider" by Walt Whitman. The poem has a lot of metaphorical meanings to it, like many other poems we have read in this class. I enjoyed it, but I definitely had some difficulty understanding it right off the bat. I think that happens to me with every poem except for "Pathedy of Manners".
Walt Whitman was a very famous poet who wrote only one piece of literature. His one book was a large book of all of the poems he wrote. It was an extremely famous and well renowned book because of his vast amount of poems and skill as a writer. "A Noiseless Patient Spider" was very interesting to me because he used a literal meaning to compare a figurative meaning to. He used a spider as a literal base and went off of it when describing his soul figuratively, I found that very interesting.
This week in AP Lit class, we explicated a poem titled "Pathedy of Manners" by Ellen Kay. The poem was a lot longer than we are used to having for our poem of the week. To me, this made it much easier to decipher. The author is able to be a little more descriptive and specific. I feel like this poem was much easier to draw a meaning from. To me, it was very easily about a girl who was looking to find a man with money, and that was all she wanted. She had no emotional attachment to her husband, shown in line 19 when it said she was "Toying with plots to kill time and re-wed". This means she is ready to move on only a year after her husband passed. Which may not be that strange, but when the author uses "plots", it definitely tips you off that she has motives that have to do with more than just being by herself. It is all brought together when it says she will be "Alone in brilliant circles to the end." because then you know that she is all alone because gold digging is not your first action if you're trying to make friends.
Overall I found this poem to be a good change of pace in terms of difficulty to understand. It was pretty straightforward and literal. Or at least it seems that way after you try to explicate "Eagle". I don't think there was much disagreement between any of the people in the class. It seemed to be a universal agreement in terms of opinions. I think this will help us in the future because it shows you that not everything is hard and some things come easy. Maybe just not many of them do.
This week was essentially the ending to what we have been building up to. We have been working on elements of literary fiction projects, and we presented them. It was really interesting to see presentations about the other elements of fiction, and how authors use them in their stories to make their work more interesting or how it makes their writing more meaningful. Through the use of symbols, they can achieve compression. I know this because that was my main focus throughout the time. The rest of the topics were helpful for me because they helped me understand how certain elements of writing worked. I feel that in the future I will read an author's story and be able to relate what they wrote to these projects, and maybe realize their writing isn't as clever or crazy as I thought it was.
To me, there's no better way to know you've learned something than judging your ability to teach it. If you're able to teach something to someone, you obviously know the topic at least fairly well. That's why I think it's good to have groups present. The only way to prepare to teach something to someone is to further your understanding of it, or maybe learn it in different ways than you already have if possible. Due to these reasons, I found this to be a very effective and efficient assignment. Overall, I think I learned a good deal this week about symbolism and theme. I learned quite a bit about the other elements as well, but mainly symbolism.
In AP lit class, it has definitely been an eventful week. Mr. Schoenborn has given us a lot to chew on. The thing that has really stuck out to me was our elements of fiction project. My group is working on symbolism and theme, but to me symbolism is very interesting. It has really opened me up to a big part of many of the stories I read and have read.
The idea behind symbolism is that the author can compress his/her story by making either a reference to a well known event or story, or by adding details that can have multiple meanings to them. It's all about compression. The author can reference something well known, like the bible, and he/she doesn't really have to elaborate for the reader to understand the point of this occurrence. This is huge for fiction writers because it can save them time and give their pieces a little more food for thought. Writers can also add a detail about something that would be just your average object or noun, but with symbolism it can represent something completely unrelated. This makes reading it more complex and entertaining, while also saving the author some time.
Understanding what a fiction writer has to work with is rather intriguing because it can really help you see where they are going with something you may not have understood originally. You can connect with what their idea is because you understand what they are working with and can spot it. It definitely makes you feel smarter while reading.
This week in class we focused on a new poem entitled "Cross" by Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes was a poet during the Harlem renaissance. He was half black. He literally had a white dad and a black mom. So when he says those things in the poem, it's hard for me to look elsewhere for a meaning. This kind of split me because I thought there could be other things to it before I found this out. However, with that discovery it was the only thing that made sense to me. We looked at the poem in a reflective way. Rhetorically, his language is very improper. I would even call it colloquial. I think that adds to maybe just the life he is living, and how it can be rough to not be completely white or black. He's not exactly used to having it easy, or at least that's how it appears to me. Especially back during the Harlem Renaissance. His main idea is that he feels confused and left out from a lot because he is "neither white nor black" (11-12). One thing I really thought was cool was that he ended with a rhetorical question. It added a whole new meaning from the rest of the lines. When I stop to think about his question, to me the answer is all up to him. He will die how he chooses to live his life, but maybe the racism in those days could have prevented that. It is most certainly good material to ponder.
I also think he played the stern, and pretty much stuck-up nature of some of the white people in that time when he says " If I ever cursed my white old man, I take my curses back" (3-4). I don't think his dad was having any of that. His dad would punish him and be angry at him for cursing. And when he says "I'm sorry for that evil wish" (7) in regards to cursing his mom, he is referring to the poor treatment the black people received in that era.
I think the structure of this poem is easily overlooked, but still means something. He spends twice as many lines talking about his mom than his dad. This leads me to believe he was closer to his mom than his dad. He also mentions his dad first, perhaps that is due to his dad's higher social status.
Overall, it is a very short, yet thought loaded poem. I really do enjoy the analysis portion. The fact that we can all see it a different way and make it our own is awesome. I think this poem is great and I hope we read more like it in the future.
This week in class, we read a poem by the name of "The Eagle". The poem is very short and old. It has lots of vague language and imagery. Supposedly it has one meaning to it, but the average reader would not be able to tell. The descriptive language can be deciphered many different ways. This is a part of the nature of poetry. What we focused on was trying to draw a conclusion from it and back it up. Any conclusion can be valid as long as you come up with some supporting evidence. The main idea is to be aware of all of the ideas you could come up with and weigh each option. Give each one a chance before you decide your favorite. The main idea is that you should look into things that seem short and sweet and maybe you can find something you didn't see originally. What could normally be perceived as imagery, could be code for some completely different meaning. You could completely change someone else's perspective by just throwing a couple new ideas at them. You can open up a completely new door that has never been opened before.
This week in this class, a lot of things have been brought to my attention. I realize that not many people meet their ceiling in writing at the high school level, but I feel that I still have many improvements that can and hopefully will be made throughout this school year. I may not be able to reach my peak, but I want to take what I can get in terms of writing improvement. Being able to write a solid essay is vital for success at the collegiate level. I also figured out that approaching everything with an "I am going to learn and master this" mindset can get me almost anywhere. This applies to all of my classes. The purpose of school is to learn, and I certainly intend to fulfill that purpose.
On the first hour of my first day back to school, my AP lit teacher brought a very cogent point to the table. The gist of what he said was that approach makes a big difference. Approaching a class as a blow off will certainly turn it into one. If you ignore any prior opinions about a class and just dive in, you will get the best result possible. Go into any class and try to learn whatever you possibly can. Ask questions. The knowledge you pick up will be extremely valuable to you. This is also a great way to sort of "condition" yourself for the next level. A more avid and aggressive approach will certainly be rewarded with better grades by your professors in college.
The same as above applies to learning how to write. You obviously need to do the things stated in the previous paragraph, but also need to take a lot of criticism and help. Unless you are a professor at an Ivy League school who teaches one of the toughest writing classes in the country, you probably have room for improvement. Be able to take people's suggestions and consider them without getting your feelings hurt: especially your teacher's. This my advice to anyone reading this and to myself. Of course, it's all easier said than done.