Response to course material #4

Hamlet has pretty much consumed the entirety of this past month in AP Lit. We’ve read Hamlet out loud during class, read it at least once more at home to annotate it, watched half a dozen movie version of it, listened and read a story about it, read a poem about it… I don’t think I’ve ever done such in-depth work on a book or play and I am amazed at how much there is out there on Hamlet. I had always known it was supposed to be one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, but I just never heard much more than that.

It’s kind of funny that I write that though, because as a kid I probably would have had the opposite reaction. As a kid, if I saw a great movie or read a great book I would watch/read the same one over and over again and if I mentioned the title to someone else and they happened to not know what I was talking about, I would be in shock because I figured if I had heard of it, everyone else must have too. If I had had this reaction with Hamlet, I would have been spot on, because not only has everyone else apparently heard of it (I mean, it is a play that is constantly referenced), but people have written long articles on it, even taken the play to be preformed in prison.

I actually really liked listening to the story about Hamlet being preformed in prison. I didn’t enjoy the other forum assignments quite as much, but the one about prison was really interesting. It’s cool to think about how Shakespeare, without actually being a criminal himself, could write so accurately about how a criminal thinks. As a reader, I feel like his writing is pretty convincing without being a criminal myself. This feeling is only heightened after listening to the prisoners talk about how they can really connect with Hamlet and how some can even learn more about themselves through the play. The only thing I really didn’t like about listening to that recording was that is was so long; if only there was a shortened version, it would be a perfect forum assignment.

The various movie adaptations we watched on Hamlet were also interesting, but after a while they just got really repetitive. Watching the first couple really allowed me to understand the play a bit better, since I was actually able to see certain scenes acted out on a screen, but after a while I don’t think it would have made a difference how many more Hamlet movies I saw, they all started to become kind of the same and I felt like I wasn’t learning anything more about the play. That being said, I did really enjoy a couple of the versions that we watched. I thought the Tennant version was pretty well done. I liked that it was somewhat modern but that they didn’t really change the story to modernize the movie like in the Ethan Hawkes version. I also thought the Branagh version was good. The casting wasn’t the best, but I liked the setting and I thought Branagh played Hamlet well, despite his age and his super pale skin. I similarly liked the Olivier Hamlet, even if the kiss shared between Hamlet and his mom was a bit much. The two versions of Hamlet that I really didn’t care for were the Jacobi and Hawkes Hamlets. I just felt like the Jacobi version wasn’t quite as interesting as the others and the scene with his mom shouldn’t have been more than just a kiss, but it was. I didn’t like the Hawkes version because I felt like the modern interpretation took a lot away from some of the themes of the play, and the ghost hardly even seemed like a ghost in the film. I also thought that Hawkes didn’t play that great of a Hamlet because he was so one-dimensional.  

Open Prompt #4

Open Prompt 2004:

Essay N: Overall, this was a pretty good essay (it received an 8 from the AP graders), but I didn’t think that it started off very well. I didn’t like how the thesis was incorporated into the introductory paragraph: it was broken up into three sentences, one of which was a question from the character, not actually a question from the writer. The student also didn’t give a road map of the essay to outline the literary devices used in the work being discussed. I guess this is because the student didn’t actually divide the paragraphs by DIDLS or anything of that sort, but instead divided them by ideas about the book, such as the character’s journey of answering the question of “why would God create a world that is not the best possible?” Dividing the paragraphs like this worked for this essay because the student still managed to stay on task and write about the theme through each paragraph. The only other flaw to the essay is its lack of complex vocab. The essay is developed, but not in its vocab.

Essay J: This essay starts off with an ok thesis: it isn’t the worst, but could definitely be much more developed. What makes the thesis a lot weaker is that the word “explore” is repeated within the same sentence. I also didn’t like the organization of  the essay; there is way too much summary. The essay is about Huckleberry Finn and the first paragraph is about how Huck and Jim are free; the second is about how they “explore” their limited freedoms; the third is about how they are both freed from their “masters.” Only the second body paragraph has more analysis than plot summary, but even that is not very well developed. I think this student has all the building blocks to create a good essay, but this simply lacks depth. The AP graders gave it a 6, but I would probably give it a 5 or maybe even a 4.

Essay UU: This essay has some major issues. First, the student doesn’t always use proper agreement between nouns and adjectives or nouns and verbs. Also, the writer does not demonstrate a very strong vocabulary and, when he/she does try to throw in a bigger word, it’s incorrect (they write “apprehendable” rather than “apprehensible”). On top of this, there are quite a few sentence fragments. One example is in the opening paragraph, then student writes, “Especially through the main character Okonkwo.” Aside from mechanics, the essay does not have a very clear structure at all. The thesis statement is a question and most of the assertions in the essay are pretty vague (the student writes, “the author…introduces a society of traditional and contemporary beliefs that reflect their culture”). I think this student has some ideas demonstrated in the intro paragraph, but he/she fails to ever expand on them with any analysis in the rest of the essay.

Close Reading #4

Nelson MandelaExpanded Government Health Care. Rick Santorum Uses His Death to Attack It.

            Nowadays, everything is political, even death. The author of this article, Amanda Marcotte, writes about Rick Santorum’s response to Nelson Mandela’s death. She uses diction, language, and detail to portray how ignorant she believes Santorum is.

            First, Marcotte uses diction to portray her message. She uses very strong words to paint Santorum in an adverse light. She starts off the article saying that she cannot believe how “ignorant” Santorum is and that he “hijacked” Mandela’s spotlight when Santorum appeared on the Bill O’Reilly show to speak about him. Both “ignorant” and “hijacked” have very negative meanings and connotations. She continues her article by saying that all Santorum wanted to do was “exploit” Mandela’s death to “whine” about current social welfare programs. “Exploit”, again, has a very negative connotation and the word “whine” almost conjures the image of a little kid or a baby. All these words clearly show how much disdain Marcotte has for Santorum.

Next, Marcotte utilizes language to negatively depict Santorum. Marcotte says that many conservatives mourned Mandela’s death despite their differences. She continues by saying that “Santorum really outshone the competition” by choosing not to mourn over Mandela and instead to use Mandela’s death as an opportunity to attack Obamacare. Marcotte figuratively uses the word “outshone” to express how she believes that Santorum was just trying to outclass than the rest of his party.

Finally, Marcotte uses detail to convince the reader that Santorum really is ignorant. She does this in two ways: by telling the reader about all the great things Mandela has done and by telling the reader of all the terrible things Santorum has done. She writes about how Mandela pushed for women’s reproductive rights and how he even made sure that the government could pay for a woman’s abortion if she could not. Marcotte is also sure to mention that Santorum is strongly against reproductive/abortion rights. Marcotte then writes about how Mandela was in favor of a national health care system and did his best to make sure all the South African population could have good health coverage. She contrasts this to Santorum, who is against Obamacare and believes that Mandela was communist for his health care reform. Marcotte uses detail to convince the reader that Mandela is all good and Santorum all bad.

            Writing about Mandela’s recent death, Marcotte composes this article to praise Mandela and condemn Santorum. To relay her message, she uses detail, language, and diction.