So here we are. Many may have already commented on this, so let me be another man among the masses: gee, time sure flies. The distance between the last "Response to Course Material" and this one here seemed exceedingly short. Now, at this point, you may be wondering "I wonder what Andrew is going with this?" Guess what? I am wondering that same thing too.
Or maybe I'm trying to justify the lack of stuff I'm gonna talk about. Sure, we kept busy the past few weeks, learning stuff and whatnot. But, no insult to Ms Holmes (but it will probably rub off as an insult anyways), I felt as if we didn't really learn much. Yeah, sure, we learned some test taking skills, such has how to analyse a passage for the multiple choice portion, or how the prompts work and whatnot. But we were more of doing exercises than learning. More of applying than receiving. In class we would do an activity, think about it, discuss it, move on. Repeat. I dunno. Perhaps I'm being too harsh. Perhaps I'm not paying enough attention in class (the most likely case). I dunno.
What I do know is that the new literary text that we have begun to analyze in class, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, was less of a new experience for me than I was for my classmates. However, I am NOT saying that I didn't have a new experience: literature has an interesting aspect that, despite the text never wavering, it always changes. Anyways, I discovered that, although many of my classmates have taken American Lit., Ms Dockus was the only one that discussed Death of a Salesman. Curious. So this time around I was already familiar with the plot and a few broad aspects of the play, such as the open boundaries. This freed my mind up to focus on other aspects of the play during my second helping, where I saw things I didn't see before sophomore year. The tragic figure of Willy, drawing parallels with Oedipus, the meaning of the words. I could dive deeper, analytically, than I could before. I admit, I was somewhat excited to analyze Death of a Salesman again: of all the stuff we covered in AmLit, this stuck with me the most. Now I can figure out why it has remained in my memory.
A little side note: I feel that the class discussions have been getting less useful. Perhaps it is my ego, but the discussions seem to be straying away from literature. Too many times, opinion based on one's views and not ordained from any evidence from the text is brought to the table to be discussed. Our class need to stop talking about what they think about a piece from a historical or present perspective, whether that deals with sex or not (which seems to be a hot topic), and discuss the material in a purely professional manner devoid of mere speculation, but composed of intelligent, well constructed opinions on the basis of textual evidence. We are trying to analyze a piece to see how it is what it is and to analyze how literature is created, not mere plot discussion and whether one "likes" a character or not. We are trying to learn the complex art of literature, the whys and the hows. Literature is not just a bunch of words and ideas throw in to create some meaning: it is delicate, exquisite, brilliant and somber. Literature is deep. So please stop talking about things like "I don't like Happy" or "Willy is such as jerk" or "Ooh, lets talk about poor Linda and her abusive relationship with Willy". Why is that there? Why does Miller sets Happy or Willy up that you don't really like him? How does he do that? He uses the exact same bloody words that I am right now. So why is his work more moving, more emotionally responsive than mine, eh? BECAUSE IT'S LITERATURE. And because Miller is a ton smarter than me.
Whew. I'm done.
Well. I do always want you to speak your mind, so I won't try to invalidate your feeling that you haven't learned much this month, but it is a requirement of this assignment to cover the material, so I'm wondering why you haven't talked about learning the history of the changing definition of tragedy, the STIFS technique for holistic reading of poetry, distractor types, AP Lit question types, or the process of deriving a theme statement from motifs--the new skills and information that we covered in October. You do a great jog talking about the DOS/Oedipus connection, but a lot of this post is padding, and the last third is just venting against your Teammates. If you have concerns about the direction of a discussion, the discussion circle is the place to raise those concerns--the Response to Course Material is meant to be a reprocessing of course concepts, not a critique of your classmates' discussion skills.
ReplyDeleteOk
DeleteAndrew. Well, although you may have fully followed the Response to Course Material assignment, I again greatly enjoyed your post. It was interesting to hear about your reprocessing of Death of a Salesman since we were in American Lit together. In terms of your class discussion, like Ms. Holmes said, you should bring up your concerns in class and not this blog - however, it's still good to hear that you're thinking critically during discussion. The key questions in discussion should be "Why does an author include something or how does the author create this effect?" You definitely need to include a more in-depth reprocessing of the poetry we studied, including the STIFS technique. We have essentially been in the same literature classes all through high school, and STIFS was completely new to me. Did it help you analyze Promises Like Pie Crusts? What about our close reading of poetry? Until next time, Drew Liu :)
ReplyDeleteAndrew,
ReplyDeleteInteresting response. I continue to enjoy reading your posts, as your voice is so fun! It made chuckle when you said "time-flies" because I said the exact same thing in my response. It seems you made some good headway between your first time watching this play and your second time reading this play. Although I agree somewhat with your claims made about our class discussion, however, I don't think peoples personal opinions should be necessarily ignored as a whole. Sometimes it's important to question why the writers of these plays are writing something that is so controversial to our morals. Overall I think you have drawn some great conclusions, particularly in your analysis of Oedipus and it's relations to this play. I would have never made this conclusion and it is really interesting to hear your insights on this. Overall, Good work.
Andrew,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your response. It was definitely different from any that I have read thus far, and I appreciate your honesty. I disagree with you in that the exercises don't really help us that much. Not that I find them to be the most exciting part of class (I really like taking notes and class discussions more so than practicing things like multiple choice and analyzing poems) but I think they are going to help us with the exam that's coming up in May.
Also, your description of your classes Socratic discussions seems to be similar to my own as well. I feel that when we were analyzing The American Dream, we were way more into it and people could really pick out the meanings and it was easy to find evidence because of minimal amount of actual pages in the play. With DOS, like you said, people just kept talking about how much they didn't like Willy (I mean, c'mon though, he was a jerk) and I feel, much like you do, that we should've discussed more of the why's and how's rather than our own personal feelings. I really liked your response and it gave me some great ideas for my next response (being more honest, even if it is a little harsh - not a bad thing though). Well done.