Since the last response to course materials, we have finished discussing and reading Death of A Salesman and this past week we began our study of Hamlet.
In Death of a Salesman we read a play that I found pretty enjoyable (the annotations for The American Dream were nothing short of torture). Reading all of the discussions afterward was also really helpful, as it helped me to develop my thoughts and consider the meaning of the work more than when I had been reading the play itself. Miller is a great writer and I just hope that next time we watch a movie, it's more entertaining than Salesman or his Crucible were.
So far in Hamlet, we've only gone through about an act and a half, but I can tell it's going to be much harder than the last couple of works for me. It's challenging to follow everything that the characters say without my attention drifting off while we read in class, but when we go back and re-read what has been said it is helpful. The Shakespearean language hasn't really been a problem for me this far and the subtleties of it that I would miss have been explained well by Ms. Holmes (fishmonger=pimp? never would have known). I haven't read any Shakespeare since Julius Caesar a couple years ago, and I didn't really pay all that close of attention to that play so I'm looking forward to closely reading Hamlet this next quarter.
Chris, I also thought that reading the discussions/commentaries after starting Death of a Salesman was very helpful. Even though some of them were pretty lengthy, they opened up my eyes to some ideas about the play that I hadn't thought of before. This also helped me with my annotations, too. I felt as though I was able to analyze a lot more thoroughly and with new ideas after reading those commentaries. The discussions we had in class helped a lot too because it was interesting to hear people's different interpretations about things in the play.
ReplyDeleteHamlet, to me, was a little more challenging than the pieces that we have worked on in the past. At first, it was hard for me to keep track of who everyone was and how they were all related to one another in some way, but after a while, and with Ms. Holmes stopping to explain after each act, it got better. I think that after talking about the play first in class, the annotations won't be too bad!
I think that Death of a Salesman was pretty enjoyable and that reading the discussions really helped to understand the important choice that the author made for the characters. I don't think that the movie was too bad it was just not expected of some of the choices that the authors made. I feel like after reading a lot of Shakespeare I have an idea of where Hamlet was going and what Shakespeare was getting after but Mrs.Holmes did clear up a lot of things in the book that were confusing and made the play harder to understand.
ReplyDeleteI agree, Death of a Salesman was a pretty good and enjoyable play to read, but that the movie was kinda boring. I also really enjoy the discussions too. They really give me insight to many more aspects of the book and helped me dive deeper into the meaning of the play. And I also agree that Hamlet seems like its going to be really hard, there are a lot of characters, hard language to read, and a complicated plot.
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