Response to Course Material

So this month we've finished reading and discussing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I thought it was truly an amazing play, mostly because it seemed to have to much depth to it. There are so many different way to interpret the novel and so many levels on which you can do so. Even though we discussed the novel for quite a few days, I think we could have spent at least another week discussing it and still come to new conclusions each day. Our class never actually even came up with a theme statement, partially because we were so divided on the meaning of the play and partially because we couldn't completely figure it out. Discussing the work was actually kind of funny I think because at times it felt like our conversations were very circular or that we were only asking questions instead of answering them and sometimes people didn't even remember the questions they were trying to answer; it was almost like Stoppard was turning us into Ros and Guil.

After finishing up with that play, we began our first novel of the year: Ceremony. I had never heard of the novel before so I really had no idea what to expect and I was a bit confused when I first started reading. Events and stories are told out of order and there's poetry interspersed throughout the novel. Once I was able to get through the first chunk of reading though, I decided that this is another amazing work. First, no matter how confusing the passage might be, everything is written so poetically - even the prose. I have also learned to like the way the novel is laid out; it doesn't have chapters and it isn't in chronological order, but I find all the quick little stories interesting page-turners. The day our class was supposed to discuss the first third of the novel we only had time to talk for about 10 minutes, so hopefully we'll find more time next time we discuss; I'm excited to hear more about what others have to say about it.

We have also begun discussing different types of literary criticisms and how they apply to all the past works we've read this year. This was actually somewhat difficult for our class to do for various reasons. First of all, almost no one brought their books so it was hard to reference the text, but the main challenge was trying to discuss just one type of criticism until we came to a conclusion. It is so easy to tie many of the criticisms together or to say something that works for multiple criticisms. We started off with Feminism, which wasn't too difficult to dissect, but it was after that when topics started to get confused.

Other things that we've done that aren't quite so confusing is practice for the AP exam. We've done multiple choice and, more recently, practice essay writing. We were given the passage Eleven by Sandra Cisneros and wrote a timed essay during class. Afterwards we discussed the essay in small groups and rewrote it. I really liked the passage and didn't think it was too difficult to dissect, and I really liked that we could talk about our essays afterwards in groups. It allowed me to get different perspectives and ideas about how the essay should be written and what kind of theme statement would be good to use. It's better too, than simply let someone mark up the essay with pen because everyone was able to ask questions, about what was good in their essays and what wasn't, and get immediate feedback.

Overall, we've done a lot in the past month and I cannot wait until we finish Ceremony and begin discussing it more.