Fifth Business

Theme: Davies urges readers to accept the possibility of the unknown despite one’s fears.
Summary, characters: Fifth Business begins with the story from Dunstable's childhood. He is sledding with his rich friend Percy, but Percy gets upset when Dunstable's sled is faster than his. Percy begins to throw snowballs at him and the last one he throws hits the pregnant Mrs. Dempster who falls down. The baby is delivered prematurely that night by Dunstable's mother. It is then explained that Dunny is writing all this as a letter to the new headmaster to prove he has had a interesting life. 
Percy is Mrs. Dempsters son and Dunstan teaches him to do magic tricks but Mr. Dempster gets very angry because he thinks it's trickery and a sin. Mrs. Dempster has become "simpler" and the people in the town do not like her at all. She goes missing and is caught sleeping with a hobo because "he wanted it so very much and he was so polite".
Dunstan then leaves home to go the war. He writes Leola every week but does not like her much over paper. He is almost killed and is nursed back to health by Diane who he eventually has to leave because she reminds him too much of his mother. When he returns to his hometown, Leola and Percy are engaged. 
Dunstan goes to college and starts looking for Mrs. Dempster who he finds living with her aunt. Dunstan finds Paul in Europe and he is now a magician. Percy, Boy, is now very rich and him and Dunstan are still close friends. Boy is married to Leola but he cheats on her often and she is very sad. She tries to commit suicide but she dies from pneumonia. 
Dunstan joins up with Paul's circus and becomes Fifth Business, a person that Liesl explains as coming in at just the right time to do something important. 

Quotes:“If you don't hurry up and let life know what you want, life will damned soon show you what you'll get.” This quote was probably my favorite from the book because it is so applicable to everyone's life. 

Response to Course Materials

Since the past response, school has seemed pretty sparse and there haven't been a ton of normal days. We began by finishing off Frankenstein, which I enjoyed. I did feel like our discussion of it wasn't very good. In fact, I've noticed our discussions have gone considerably downhill but luckily we ended on a high note with our discussion of Fifth Business.

I strongly dislike the syntax and diction of Frankenstein, but I love the story and the meaning behind it. It made me think of the nature vs. nurture argument that we argued about in AP Bio last year. Basically, what parts of a person are ingrained into them when they are born and what parts are learned behaviors through society? Frankenstein believes his monster is pure evil, but the monster thinks that he learned his behaviors by being an outcast and not having anyone to look after him.

After we finished Frankenstein, we began Fifth Business. This book was wonderful. It is so strange to read a book and have to constantly remind yourself that you have to take everything you are reading with a grain of salt because the narrator is not 100% reliable. It also made me think about how single events can be pivotal in peoples lives, like Willy having an affair, or King Hamlet's ghost coming to see Hamlet. 

We wrote two AP essays, which I actually enjoyed. I've been looking forward to having graded essays for a while now because I needed to know how much work I had to do before the exam! We also had a quiz on the Critical Lenses&Literary Eras, which showed many of us (including me, sorry Ms. Holmes!!) that we absolutely need to study them more before the AP. 

Frankenstein

Settings&Plot:
Frankenstein begins with Walton writing letters to his sister. The key things here are that Walton is on a quest for knowledge and glory, wants a friend, and is very close with his sister. He sees a strange creature being pulled by a dog sled and a man is pulled up onto his boat who is very cold and ill. He nurses him back to health and the man tells him a cautionary tale. This tale starts out when Frankenstein, the ill man on the boat, is a child. He is always super into learning and has a close knit family that he feels like doesn't understand him. He is "given" Elizabeth (blonde haired angel who is a noble that was abandoned with a poor family) and she is his sister/potential life mate. He goes off to college and learns lots from his professors and books and becomes obsessed with creating life. He cuts himself off from his family and friend (Clerval) and manages to create a giant human. Although Frankenstein means for his creation to be beautiful, as soon as it comes to life he is disgusted by it so he runs away and becomes very ill. His good friend Henry Clerval comes to see him and nurses him back to health but Frankenstein won't tell him what made him so ill. Victor gets a letter from home telling him that William, his younger brother, has been murdered so he goes home and realizes the monster is responsible for his death. Justine, a close family friend, is charged with the murder and is eventually executed which causes Victor to feel incredibly guilty. He meets up with the monster and the monster catches him up with all that has gone down since Frankenstein abandoned him and asks Frankenstein to make him a lady friend. Frankenstein agrees and begins to make it, but cannot. The monster appears and says that he will be with Frankenstein on his wedding night. Victor goes on a trip with Clerval, and Clerval gets murdured. Victor is charged with his murder and spends some time in prison. When he gets out, he marries Elizabeth and on their honeymoon, big surprise, Elizabeth is killed by the monster. Victor then begins to chase the monster, ending up in the North Pole which is where the story catches up to his meeting with Walton.
Author: Mary Shelley
Theme: The inaccurate judgment of character based on society’s prejudices contributes toward alienation and unnatural instability.

Open Prompt Part 2

2003. According to critic Northrop Frye, “Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning.” Select a novel or play in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.

In Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Hamlet is a perfect tragic hero. He is of noble birth and his tragic flaw is his inability to make decisions which is exacerbated by his isolation. Because of his tragic flaw, Ophelia is driven to commit suicide, his mother, uncle and Laertes are all killed, and his kingdom is to be run by a foreigner. Hamlet is made a tragic work by Hamlet because his tragic flaw eventually brings down the kingdom and everyone in it.

Hamlet begins with the pivotal moment that turns Hamlet into a tragic hero. His father, King Hamlet, has died and comes back to Hamlet as a ghost and tells him that Claudius, the king's brother, murdered him and Hamlet must get revenge. This sets up Hamlet's single task that dominates the entirety of the play. Hamlet has all kinds of power and prestige, but he cannot accomplish this simple task.

The first person who Hamlet causes to suffer is his girlfriend, Ophelia. He knows that Claudius and Polonius will use her to get to Hamlet, so he curses her and says he never wants to see her again. He then stabs her father when Polonius is spying on him and Gertrude, because he thinks Polonius is Claudius. Ophelia is possibly pregnant at this time and her father has been killed and she goes insane and drowns herself. Hamlet caused this by killing Polonius and being incredibly awful to her. The death of Polonius and Ophelia also causes an incredible amount of suffering for Laertes.

Hamlet causes the suffering of his entire country in the end. Because of the deaths of Ophelia and Polonius, Laertes does what Hamlet cannot; takes his revenge. He battles Hamlet, using a poisoned sword and poisoned wine. The wine kills Gertrude and the sword kills Claudius, Hamlet, and Laertes. This allows Fortinbras to overtake Elsinore because everyone who has a claim to the throne is dead.

If Hamlet had been decisive enough to immediately kill Claudius, he would not have led to the destruction of his entire family and girlfriend. He had all the tools he needed and had several opportunities to do the deed, but he was unable to do it.

Open Prompt Part 1

2003. According to critic Northrop Frye, “Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning.” Select a novel or play in which a tragic figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole.

Essay #1

This essay uses Jay Gatsby as the example of the tragic hero. The first paragraph is not set up like we have been taught to in class: the first sentence includes the author and the work but it does not state who the tragic figure is and it does not say how his suffering contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole. I do not think that the introductory paragraph could stand alone as an answer to the prompt and it also did not include a theme. Obviously the AP grader does not agree with me though because they call it a "strong introductory paragraph". I do agree with the AP reader that this author does a nice job of avoiding plot summary and only mentioning specific incidents when they perfectly prove how Gatsby impacts other characters and the reader. I did wish that the author had included a more concise summary.

Essay #2

The next essay starts with a quote that goes along nicely with the theme of tragic heroes but it does not state what work King Lear appears in. This is mentioned in the beginning of the next paragraph and followed by a pretty intense plot summary. This really annoyed me but the AP reader seemed to appreciate that at least they focused on the parts of the plot that explained the tragic nature of Lear. The author does do a nice job of explaining that it is King Lear's vanity that leads him to be a tragic hero and impacts other characters and the work of a whole. Without reading the AP reader, I would have given this a 5-6 because of the plot summary, disappointing introductory paragraph, and lack of organization.

Essay #3

This essay... is super crappy for lack of a better word. The intro paragraph does exactly what Ms. Holmes warned us against. It merely acknowledges that Patrick McMurphy IS a tragic hero and DOES hurt other characters. There is no description of how this happens or what this adds to the work. Basically the entire thing is a plot summary. It does mention how McMurphy throwing the party leads to the nurse asking Billy what his mom would think which causes him to commit suicide but there is so much plot summary surrounding it.

Response to Course Materials.

The past few weeks have been very segmented and unusual in class. We got lots of in class time to read Frankenstein, with short discussions with our classmates every twenty minutes. I did not find this helpful because everyone reads at their own pace so some people were getting spoilers and others could only discuss half of what they read. I also think a lot of people did not actually read during this class time.
Overall I really enjoyed Frankenstein and the discussions about it. My favorite article was the one that talked about childbirth and how this aspect of Mary Shelley's life impacted Frankenstein. When I was going through my 2nd read and annotations I found evidence of the monster being Frankenstein's "child" and it made me see the resemblance between Frankenstein abandoning his creation and Mary Shelley's mother dying in childbirth. It made me wonder if Shelley believed growing up without her mother had impacted her in a negative way.
Another thing I found interesting about Frankenstein was the similarities between Walton. the monster, and Frankenstein. All of them dealt with isolation, really wanted to find companionship, and were super into nature. I also noticed some similarities with Hamlet and Willy. Hamlet was extremely alienated, like the monster, and this lead to him being kinda crazy. His relationship with Horatio reminded me a lot of Clerval and Frankenstein. Both Clerval and Horatio seemed to be utterly devoted to their friends and have no lives of their own to live. Willy reminded me of Frankenstein before he built the monster because they both had such one track minds and were so devoted to what they wanted their futures to be like that they neglected the people that loved them the most.  
As homework we were all supposed to watch a prezis on Literary Eras and Critical Eras. I thought both of these were really fascinating, especially the parts that talked about how people have viewed writers in the past. I had never fully considered how important writing is to not only our current society, but past societies also. Writing is immensely powerful because it can spread information to the masses which can be amazing, but also dangerous. These prezis also showed me how little I know about how writing has changed over the years, and it reminded me of how art is classified into different movements.

March 15th

2007, Form B. Works of literature often depict acts of betrayal. Friends and even family may betray a protagonist; main characters may likewise be guilty of treachery or may betray their own values. Select a novel or play that includes such acts of betrayal. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the nature of the betrayal and show how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.

In Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Dr. Frankenstein betrays the monster by creating him and then abandoning him. Frankenstein is obsessed with the monster for years of his life; he does nothing but sit in a dark room and slave over it. He does everything he can to make it beautiful, but when the monster actually comes to life, it is hideous. Frankenstein takes one glance at what he has made and is so horrified that he runs away, leaving this childlike beast to fend for itself. The theme of this novel is that creativity and single-mindedness can lead to destruction and heartbreak.

The monster in Frankenstein is kind of like Dr. Frankenstein's child. The doctor gave him life but then threw away his responsibility and left. This left the monster to develop in complete loneliness which made him dark. The monster learned to talk by watching a family in a cottage but when he tried to interact with the family, they were disgusted by him. Events like this led to the monsters intense feelings of loneliness and longing for a companion. When Viktor, Dr Frankenstein, met with the monster in the mountains, the monster has already killed once but he said he will never do it again if Viktor creates a partner for him. Viktor feels intensely torn, but decides not to. Because of this, Frankenstein kills Viktor's new bride.

Because Viktor left the monster, the monster had to deal with civilization with no buffer. This led to him being very solitary and craving companionship, but there were no other beings like it. The monster knew Viktor was the only one who could create another one but Viktor despised the monster, so he had to be threatened. Because of this, the monster tried to force Viktor to make another one by saying he would kill all of Viktor's family if he did not comply, but Viktor could not make himself do so. Viktor's betrayal of the monster forced him into this impossible situation, and it eventually ends in heartbreak when Viktor's wife is killed.

March 8th

The prompt for Question 3, the “open” question, began with a quotation from Kate Chopin’s novel The

Awakening (1899), in which the protagonist Edna Pontellier is said to possess “that outward existence

which conforms, the inward life which questions.” Students were then asked to identify in a novel or play

that they had studied a character who conforms outwardly while questioning inwardly and to analyze how

this tension between outward conformity and inward questioning contributes to the meaning of the work.

Readers found that students responded positively to the admonition to draw on material they had studied.

Moreover, most students understood that the prompt required that the tension between outward

conformity and inward questioning be the crux of their discussion. Thus, the inherent tension in the

character helped students to organize their ideas and to extend the discussion to a consideration of the

meaning of the work. Because AP students read a variety of texts with characters who struggle with the

complexities of human existence, they had ample titles to choose from and were not forced to distort less

appropriate texts to fit the prompt.
#1.
This first essay is the best out of the three of them, and was made all the more enjoyable for me because The Scarlet Letter is the only piece of literature I have actually read from these three essays. The introductory paragraph is specific and nicely sets up the organization for the rest of the essay. The author does a wonderful job of proving how the question of conformity adds to the novels theme of people who appear guiltless being the guiltiest. My largest complaint about this essay is that it is near impossible to read!

#2 This essay has a good beginning but the end of the introductory paragraph does not tie into the meaning of "The Dolls House" as much as I would like it to. While the actual writing style of the author is quite bland and repetitive, the content of the essay is good. Even though I have never read this, I can tell that their thesis of Nora wanting to conform as the perfect housewife and yet wanting independence is strong.

#3 This was the worst essay by far. After reading it, I felt like I much more clearly knew the plot of "Their Eyes Were Watching God", but this is not the point of these essays. The author did not seem to know how to answer the prompt and much of the essay was simple facts that did not tie into proving the thesis.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Summary

Theme: Stoppard suggests that there may be incomprehensible forces shaping our lives, making it impossible to control or understand them.
Summary:
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are flipping coins and the coins keep being heads. This makes them talk briefly about the laws of probability but they get confused and remember their journey, which is to travel to Elsinore. On the way they bump into The Player along with his entourage. He interrupts their game and offers to perform some...hm not so PG material...for a few guilders. It takes Ros&Guil a while to get this and while Guil is horrified, Ros is a little interested. The Player desperately wants to perform in front of them so he makes a bet; if the coin lands on heads, The Player loses, if tails, The Player wins. It lands on tails but The Player covers it so they have to perform, but Ros and Guil leave them to go to Elsinore. At Elsinore, they meet with the King and Queen who cannot tell them apart and then with Hamlet. Questions are a big deal here; they play the question game and they unsuccessfully try to interrogate Hamlet. Hamlet then kills Polonius and they are all on a boat to go to England. Ros and Guil are given a letter to give to the King of England but they accidentally open it and see that Hamlet is going to be killed. Because they love having a purpose and directions, they don't say anything. Ros and Guil then find themselves on the beach and can hear music playing, but it is muffled. The Player shows up and tells them how angry Claudius was at their play, which is now they are all in England. Ros and Guil jump into some barrels, Hamlet disappears, and the lights go down. When the light comes on the Player tells Guil and Ros about death, and the last scene of the play shows them all dead.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: This title is significant because Ros and Guil die at the end of the play, but what does that really mean? Every time the play is reenacted they are alive again so does death really matter?
Quotes:
"Give us this day our daily...week"
This is an incorrect repitition of the Bible quote "Give us this day our daily bread." It is uttered many times throughout the play,never correctly.

Response to Course Materials Feb 22

The last time we did one of these was forever ago, but because of 7th grade camp and all our long weekends, I don't have too much to report on. We started out by doing final exam projects. My group picked characters from Death of a Salesman, Hamlet, and The American Dream that related to each other and could work as foils. We mainly focused on which characters died and what aspects of their personalities and lives led to this. When we first finished the video I don't think any of us really thought we had learned too much from it, but when discussing what we were going to say in the class discussion, I realized what common themes all the works we've read have had. After this, we moved on to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Although I like this plays connection to Hamlet, and the conversation it opens up about it, I did not enjoy the play that much. I definitely think part of that is because I missed all of the movie and some of the discussion days so I don't feel as comfortable with it as the other works.  I'm hoping that coming up with a theme will help me with this. We have been annotating articles on Ros&Guil, several of which have been about whether it is part of Theater of the Absurd. I do not think so because it is not cyclical and it does not seem to convey the message that life is meaningless.

Open Prompt part 2

2008. In a literary work, a minor character, often known as a foil, possesses traits that emphasize, by contrast or comparison, the distinctive characteristics and qualities of the main character. For example, the ideas or behavior of a minor character might be used to highlight the weaknesses or strengths of the main character. Choose a novel or play in which a minor character serves as a foil for the main character. Then write an essay in which you analyze how the relation between the minor character and the major character illuminates the meaning of the work.

In Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Laertes acts as a foil for the main character Hamlet. Laertes is very close with his sister, Ophelia, and his father, Polonius, offers him advice and cares deeply about him. Laertes strong family connections draw attention to Hamlet's weak family ties. This adds to the meaning of Hamlet because it shows how Hamlet's isolation and lack of support leads to him going crazy.
A major difference in Hamlet and Laertes family is their relationship with their father. Hamlet does not seem close with King Hamlet when he appears as a ghost, in fact he seems terrified of him, and he is trying to murder his new father/uncle so they do not have much of a relationship. Juxtaposing this, Polonius sits Laertes down to give him advice before sending him off to go to college. It is obvious they are close and can talk frankly with one another. On the other hand, Hamlet is constantly asking for advice-but only from himself. His long monologues show that he could use an authority figure to look out for him but he does not have one.
Laertes also has a good relationship with Ophelia, his sister and Hamlet's lady friend. They have a frank and equal discussion about Ophelia's life, including her relationship with Hamlet. She gently teases him for giving her advice to stay chaste and brings up that he isn't really all that pure himself. Hamlet's counterpart to this relationship is with his mother Gertrude. While Hamlet and Gertrude are close (maybe a little too close, if you know what I mean) their relationship is not a healthy one. While Leartes and Ophelia are calm and Laertes advice to Ophelia is gentle, Hamlet and Gertrude get into a screaming match that ends with a man dead and Hamlet going insane.
When Hamlet wishes to go back to college, he must approach Gertrude and Claudius in a crowded stately room and even then they say no. Laertes asks in their family quarters and his father helps him to leave. Both Hamlet and Laertes fathers are killed but while Hamlet is indecisive, Laertes takes action. Laertes rushes to the castle to kill the person who killed his father with a crowd of loyal supporters while the entire play is about Hamlet trying to decide if he should take revenge or not.

Open Prompt part 1 2008

1. In the first paragraph, the author answers the question completely by stating a character who is a foil for another character. I thought that she should have stated some of the differences and then showed how those added to the theme of the overall work. The AP grader thought the introduction was perfect though, so maybe I just do not know exactly what answering the entire prompt in a paragraph entails. The rest of the essay was good. It clearly stated points that proved the theses and then used evidence from the text to back them up. It was clear and focused.

2.The next introduction does not seem to answer the prompt at all. It reads like a plot summary to me and it never actually states who is a foil to who and why. Without having this strong thesis to prove, the essay seemed a little wishy washy and I kept going back to try and figure out what the author was trying to prove. In the next few paragraphs the author definitely had some plot summary going on but they did have some good points about how the characters opposing personalities were used to show the theme of the novel.

3. Ah, This essay is just straight up bad. The intro is a complete plot summary until the last sentence when it provides absolutely no explanation or tie in with the theme of the novel. The comparisons between Baba and Hassan mainly focused on random things that did not seem to have any connection to the meaning of the novel. Ample evidence was not provided and the organization of the essay was quite poor.

Hamlet

Characters
Hamlet: lots of moral confusion, kills a million people but takes forever to kill Claudius
Horatio: sane sounding board for Hamlet, scholar, trustworthy, stops Ham from being too isolated
Claudius: in it for the power and the ladies (Gertrude), kills King Ham
Gertrude: questionable Oedipal relationship with Ham
Ophelia: goes crazy, may be pregnant, loves Ham, obedient to her father
Laertes: example of filial piety, kills Ham in battle, some scandal, foil to Ham
Polonius: murdered, possibly less foolish than he comes across (think advice to Laertes)
King Hamlet: in purgatory! what for!?, good or evil? tells Ham to kill his brother, relationship between Ham and King Ham?
 Setting, plot.
This play takes place in an isolated castle called Elsinore in Denmark. It begins with the ghost of the former king appearing to his son, Hamlet, and telling him he must kill the late kings brother, Claudius. Claudius not only murdered King Hamlet and stole his throne, he also stole his wife and is now married to Gertrude. Hamlet is very religious and is not sure if murdering Claudius is the right thing to do. He pretends to go insane and Claudius and Gertrude try and figure out why. Ophelia is a young noble girl at court who Hamlet has been courting. Her father, Polonius, realizes this and tells her to stay away from him because he could damage her reputation. When Polonius hears that Hamlet has gone crazy, he tells Claudius it's because Ophelia has been ignoring him and they spy on Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet wishes to prove that Claudius murdered his father so he gets a group of actors to perform a play that has the exact way Claudius supposedly murdered King Hamlet in it so he can see how Claudius reacts. He gets very angry and orders the play to end, so Hamlet knows that he killed him. Hamlet goes to confront Gertrude and kills Polonius. Ophelia drowns herself because her father is dead. Laertes hears of this and comes to the palace to kill Claudius because he thinks he is responsible. Claudius tells him it was Hamlet and they make a plan to murder him. Hamlet and Laertes have a fencing match where one of the lances is poisened. Claudius has also poisoned some wine, just in case, but Gertrude ends up drinking it. Both Hamlet and Laertes get scratched with the poison lance and Hamlet stabs Claudius and makes him drink the poison. They all die. Fortinbras comes from Norway to take over.
Theme: Moral confusion along with isolation can lead to paranoia, corruption, and the upset of the natural order.