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.

Response to course materials #4

In the past few weeks, we have been mainly working on Hamlet. First we read through the play, which took forever, and then we began to watch different films to compare. The biggest impact reading Hamlet had on me was realizing how much ambiguity could be in one piece of literature. We've now read, discussed, and watched Hamlet a million (approximately) times, and I still have conflicting views over what actually happened and how things are supposed to be acted out. The three major relationships I can't explain are between Hamlet and Ophelia, Hamlet and his mother, and Hamlet and the deceased King Hamlet.
For homework we annotated Hamlet and two essays on Hamlet. Annotating it took a much shorter time than I originally imagined and I caught and understood many more of the jokes and hidden meanings the second time through. The two essays discussed some of the major disagreements about Hamlet, including whether the ghost is from Heaven or Hell. I thought this was slightly stupid because the ghost tells Hamlet that he is burned during the day to purge away his sins, so he is definitely not in Heaven. One interesting thing that was included was that Hamlet is based off of Amleth, a much older play.
In class, we watched the BBC version of Hamlet with David Tennant, the Olivier version, and the Branaugh version. I liked the one with David Tennant the most, mainly because I felt they added their own twist to it.