RESPONSE TO COURSE MATERIAL

http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/the-internet-has-until-october-2015-to-create-15-jaws-sequels-or-else
Not saying this is a challenge for post AP AP Lit, but it is totally a challenge, issued by me.


Well gang, it was a good run. I've officially been desensitized to discussing the literary meaning and effects to meaning of incest (man, we should watch Game of Thrones...). I now own a shirt with a giant elephant sized rooster on it. I have officially gotten an amazingly awful photoshop of an elephantacock on the B215 SmartBoard. I am now an official playwright and screenwriter. Which is not nearly as important as the elephantacock but still important. And well, though I won't miss Sunday post blogs, I will certainly miss the spirit of Team AP.

That said. Here we go!

March 16-April 27

We have just started reading Fifth Business which is an entertaining memoir-like read, and will discuss that soon in class. We finished reading and responding to Ceremony this month, and I found the central message of the novel to be very encouraging, and surprisingly simple once my confused Western brain wrapped itself around the idea. The idea of cultural unity and balance and the acknowledgement of both good and evil in everything and everyone is a freeing idea, as it allows the moving past of the past towards the future while still acknowledging past injustices. I know it took a while to move out of the space of simply Western medicine, as I was convinced that Tayo just has PTSD, and that there was a bit of subtle slut shaming/using of women in the narrative because of the idea of there really only being one female character, short of the "evil" and drunken Jean.

We have been extensively prep-ing for the AP Exam, which is just around the corner, with our first individual multiple choice assessments. We also looked at the 2013 AP in class, and I found that the section I covered was immensely easy and I got a 100%, far different than my results this summer. I do think I happened to get an easy section though. We have also been practicing our closed and open prompt writings. I find I like the open prompts much more as I often can use a work that I have a very clearly understanding of, instead of having to rapidly develop a theme statement. In the 2013 exam there was a compare and contrast closed prompt and if I had been taking the exam I might have ran away crying and screaming because I do NOT want to have to do a compare and contrast closed prompt.

We also worked on a review site where we wrote intelligent adult people papers further discussing the texts we read in class. However, timing couldn't have been worse for my parent and I, as we are both in the musical and at school until 9PM every night, and I have the misfortune of missing school for several inopportune days. Not only that but we also foolishly pick historical context and existentialism in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead which is a hard play to start with, while also generally an apolitical play with little meaning that can be drawn out into the real world. Also the idea of working online with people in different classes was at first welcomed as I do like working outside of the 17-some people in my hour, but I found it far to difficult to organize my thoughts with someone not physically present while I was working, instead resorting to cryptic notes in google docs. I find I do my best work when I work with other people who are equally investing in the work as me, but only if they are present at the same time as I am working, or we have long, extended phone conversations as I work on it. Which is actually what I did for my play, as I worked with a professor from Cleveland, so we had long phone calls really working out all the kinks in my play. But, personally I don't really care for the site review assignment as I don't think I can do a good enough job when separated from my working partner, even though I did like the actual idea of the paper.

Well. Adios!

Ceremony

This has nothing to do with Ceremony. I just thought this blog needed sixth hour's mascot.

Title: Ceremony
Author: Leslie Marmon Silko - A female author of mixed race, who grew up on the edge of the Laguna Pueblo culture.
Setting: Laguna Pueblo. To the northeast is Sacred Mountain/Mount Taylor/the Uranium mine/the point of convergence.

Significant Characters:
Tayo: The protagonist. A mixed race war veteran of World War 2 who struggles with alcoholism and what is first believe by the white doctors to be PTSD. He heals himself through regaining his spirituality and riding himself of lies/witchcraft. A Sun Father figure
Emo: Short for Geronimo. The antagonist. A Laguna man who is corrupted by witchcraft and spreads lies about the glory of war.
Betonie: A mixed race medicine man who shows Tayo the healing powers of ceremonies, but also acknowledges that ceremonies are always changing, and that that is not bad.
T'seh: Tayo's primary love interest. She is married to the Hunter, and is a Ts'its'tsi'nako figure. She is also mixed race.
Rocky: Tayo's cousin who Tayo watches die while being a prisoner of war in Japan during World War 2. He is not mixed race, and is full Laguna, but he pursues the white culture and is generally rewarded for it.
Auntie: Tayo's aunt who took him in when he was a child. She is generally spiteful and wishes that Tayo died in the war instead of her son, Rocky.

Plot:
Tayo, a veteran from World War 2 returns to his home of the Laguna Pueblo with what first appears to be alcoholism and PTSD. As the story goes on he realized that to mend himself he has to cast out the lies within himself through an old ceremony and then continue to return to his spirituality and heritage, while accepting his mixed race ancestry to continue to heal himself and his land. He is aided by Bentonie a mixed race medicine man who believes in the changing nature of ceremonies, and T'seh a woman who is also mixed race. Each of these characters' mixed ancestry allows them to see past being rooted in the old ways while adapting and adjusting the old ceremonies to the new world. Tayo then returns the rain to the land after a long drought through his internal acceptance, and finds the stolen hybrid cattle, returning them to his uncle's lands. At the climax of the story Tayo is hunted down by Emo and the other destroyers influenced by witchcraft, and watches them kill Harley, unable to stop them in order to stop the circle of violence that started in the desecration of the sacred mountain to mine the uranium used for the atomic bomb. The novel ends in a sunrise and Old Grandma remarking that she had heard the same story before, only with different names.

Quotes:
"The mountain outdistanced their destruction just like love had outdistanced death" Page 204

"From that point on, human beings were one clan again, united by the fate the destroyers had planned for them all, united by a circle of death that devoured people in cities twelve thousand miles away, victims who had never known these mesas, who had never seen the delicate colors of the rocks which boiled their slaughter." Page 228
These two quote are similar and I shall lump them into one as they occur in the same arc of the story. These quotes illustrate the final message of this novel that all of humanity is united against the destroyers, and that love will conquer all. (Cheesy, but a likable theme). It also show how the nuclear bomb and the destruction and war all tied back together through Tayo.


"Spider Woman had told Sun Man how to win the storm clouds back from the Gambler so they would be free again to bring rain and snow to the people" page 87
This quote is significant because it foreshadows and also brings light to the allusion to the Sun Father and how Tayo serves as a Sun Father figure, ridding the world of the destruction and winning it back from the Gambler, which in this case is Emo. T'seh's role as the Spider Woman is also foreshadowed here before she is ever introduced, while also showing Betonie's guiding force telling Tayo how to find back the rain through the ever-changing ceremony.

Other:
This novel is told in a third person narrative with a poem-like art to the prose, along with many overarching poems telling the stories and myths of the Laguna people inserted throughout the novel.
There is lots of sun and weather imagery to key in to Tayo's relationship with the Sun Father and how he gains strength in the sun.
The timeline of the novel is also in a tangled mess as Tayo attempts to piece his mind back together and cope with his past. The narrative gains a more linear focus as Tayo progresses in his healing.

Motifs:
The hybrid cattle - showing hybrid vigor and the best of both worlds, along with their tenacity and survival instinct to find water.
Water - A drought is happening in the Laguna Pueblo while their is an excess of water while Tayo is a prisoner of war in Japan
Lots of imagery from the Laguna people's set of beliefs, including cultural stories.

Theme:
In Ceremony, #S!lko suggest that good and evil exists in all things, and are thus meaningless classification; understanding this allows one to achieve a personal and communal balance.

Tayo's mixed race allows him to see the racial classifications of people better, and from this he discovers that while each population may believe that the other is evil, and that the White culture has grievously hurt himself and the Laguna people, White people cannot be viewed only as evil as there is evil and good present in all people and things, just like the destroyers and those influenced by the witchcraft were all fulled blooded American Indians.

Furthermore, it is through the ceremonies (wahoo, title!) of the first medicine man and then also the personal ceremony of returning the cattle that Tayo heals himself and the land and finds internal balance. By rooting himself in the old ceremony he cast off the lies and darkness in him, but it is only through adapting with his new ceremony and also not continuing the circle of violence that he heals himself and returns the water to the land.

Response to Course Material

So. It's the second to last response to course material. Only one more rotation of our little AP Lit blog calendar, and then we will be faced with the Big Adult Exam Day. This year has flown by and yet it still drags on. I know that I, like all of you, have learned so much from AP Lit and have cultivated a new awareness of literature and how I think. Yes, Ms. Holmes can rest assured that I learned more than just AP Sex Jokes (aka AP Hamlet). And sure, this isn't a new thing, though the first lesson of this school year, with the paintings and drawing out meaning and yes--each class comes up with their own different ideas, it isn't that amazing--is finally starting to hit home with a strange case of premature nostalgia as we draw to a close our Ros and Guil discussion. Because, wow. Sure, there is no such thing as a wrong answer, and everyone else theme statement is fine so long as it is drawn from the text, but I'm rather sure there are infinite permutation of combinations of possible theme statements for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead that are all valid. I also stand by my possible theme statement that this play could be suggesting that there are aliens who are watching us and our life, in turn, is also just a play where we don't know the directions.

Dear Director or Aliens or God-figure in an agnostic play, Ceremony is going to be terrifying if it just keeps getting harder from here. I think I may just use Hamlet for every single AP open prompt question because at least I think I know what is going on. Anyway, in less general news, here's what has been going on in AP Lit when we manage to be serious and get things done.

We started Ceremony this month, which continues to be an excellent read, as each line could standalone as poetry. However, the timeline in this novel, while not technically a stream of consciousness narrative, is certainly more twisty-turny than even Death of a Salesman. In prep for our very first novel, we have been doing some self taught learning through presentations and readings online. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I personally would have preferred to have been taught the last month or so worth of material in lecture format than self learning during class as I am aware than I mess around a bit while in the computer lab, and I also have an awful habit of getting quite literally lost in Google Drive. (We shall not mention the time I spent an entire day learning from the wrong presentation, as apparently we were covering literary lens NOT literary eras.) Either way, we have been treated to a nice introduction of critical lens, or re-re-introduction for those of you like me who took both American and British literature. Applying literary lens is in no way a new thing to me, in fact my weekend movie group has on many occasions decided which critical lens well will view the film of the night with before we go on to the theater. (I have to say, Snow White and the Huntsman was strangely fascinating when looking at it through the Marxist lens.) We also covered Northrup Frye's mythoi, and discovered that for the most part every single piece of literature ever written can fit into the handy-dandy Frye Doughnut of Structure.

In sixth hour we became grievously behind the other hours as we accidentally took two days to discuss "Defending Walt Whitman" which was apparently not even what we were assigned to do, but we created a statement of meaning and we all decided to ditch class one day and had to make up the closed prompt Cisnero essay the next day. Earlier we were also introduced to beliefs of the people of the Laguna Pueblo in preparation for reading Ceremony. Not to mention we also finished, or at least were forced to stop due to time constraints, our discussions of Ros and Guil, and after being introduced to a Post Modern analysis of the work my class decided to not even try to create a unified theme statement and instead they all decided to play a prank on me. 

In other news, my play will be performed at the Wharton Center on May 10th, which I hope you all will attend, and my life continues to be incomplete, as I have yet to watch Zombeavers, or Ghost Shark. Aaaand I think I may have just found my afternoon plans...

Also, if you haven't tried the google docs collaboration with famous writers (which is on the Holmes' blog) I highly recommend it... I can now say that I told Shakespeare to shut up, he corrected it to "the handsome and lovely" Shakespeare, and Poe corrected that to "the dreadful and lonely" Shakespeare. Ah, literature.

Open Prompt 2.3

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 Shakespeare's Hamlet, Young Fortinbras serves as a foil to the title character, Hamlet as he highlights Hamlets flaws. This comparison between alike characters illuminates Hamlet's struggle of self and identity as he contemplates the central question of the work, whether or not one should usurp the natural order. 

Fortinbras is Hamlet's foil as they share many characteristics, yet the actions they take delineate them. Both Fortinbras and Hamlet are noble sons named after their throned father, who are next in line for the crown. Both Hamlet and Fortinbras are denied the throne and the crown is passed on to their respective uncles. Yet, while Fortinbras complies and does not make a bid for the throne, Hamlet alone fights against the perceived injustice. Fortinbras easy complies with the wishes of his king and uncle, and indirectly the wishes of God, as the power to wield is bestowed by God. Yet Hamlet questions his loyalty, whether it be to his earthly father, heavenly Father, and thus, by extension, his new uncle-father, Claudius. This directly highlights Hamlet's major character flaw which drives the entire play, his indecision of which values he should act on. Fortinbras' concise decision to do what he knows to be right and step down from his claim for the throne directly contrasts Hamlet's inability to do such, thus subverting Providence.

Hamlet is at a juxtaposition of beliefs between his Protestant values of Germany and his Christian values of Elsinore, and the plays central question is which belief he will hold true to, and what consequences shall it have. To question the right of Claudius to rule would be to question the order of God, yet his acquired Protestant values also tell Hamlet that the incest and murderous behavior of Claudius is against God's will. With the character of Fortinbras, Hamlet is presented with what is supposed to be the right and just decision; to obey the wishes of God and to step down from his claim to the throne while his uncle rules. But Hamlet's inability to choose that path directly corresponds to inability to choose with faith to adhere to, illuminating the central theme of Hamlet posed to the audience, that indecision and conflicts of faith can lead to the subversion of Providence.

The evidence that Hamlet's indecision is in fact his character flaw is his ultimate death at the end of the play, whether as Fortinbras, who was faced with the exact same situation as Hamlet, survives to infamous bloodbath at the end of the play. Because Fortinbras does not fall prey to Hamlet's indecision, and he does not delineate from the Godly order, thus he obtains from the tragic death that Hamlet is punished with. All those who acted in sinful manners or who acted against the natural order were killed by the final scene of Hamlet thus Fortinbras' decision and subsequent survival mark him as Hamlet's perfect foil, that Hamlet could have survived had he not chosen to subvert Providence.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Not Dead Because I Refuse to Believe Otherwise

That is All.

Title: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Author: Tom Stoppard (#T $tawps)
Setting: Nowhere. A blank stage with no visible character, which is accented with the use of props and lighting to become a castle (Elsinore) and a boat. Also, the edge of a cliff and then a dark suspicious forest (or, at least in the movie rendition).

Characters:
Rosencrantz: A Victorian gentleman friend of Hamlet. He is often portrayed as childish and seems to go through a literary "puberty" character development arc throughout the play. However, he and Guildenstern are really one and the same, and are often portrayed as earning to be one person.

Guildenstern: A Victorian gentleman friend of Hamlet. He is often portrayed as more mature, and dismisses Rosencrantz' more childish ideas. Guil deals with ideas and often tries to make sense of the world around him with the rules and theories of the world he has accepted. However, despite their differences, he and Rosencrantz are really the same character.

The Player(some times referred to as the Player King): The leader of a troupe of actors that Rs and Guil meet while traveling to Elsinore. The Player acts almost as a deity-like figure in that he knows the script of the play, thus know what is fated. He treads the gray area of being both an actor and a character.

Hamlet: Prince of Denmark. At times, possibly portrayed by The Player?

The Tragedians: The Player's troupe of performing actors who love acting out death scenes, but their entire purpose revolves around having an audience. Includes poor young Alfred who gets whored out to settle debts. The tragedians often portray the various other character of "Hamlet" as well.

Plot:
The plot is largely circular, and is often self aware of its own structure and that it is a self fulfilling prophecy that Ros and Guil are dead and will die and will continue to die but are also alive. It also acknowledges that because it is a play they will continue to spring back into existence every time you open the play again. The scenes often change when the sound of the tragedians band is heard and/or their is a dramatic shift in lighting/

Act 1:
Ros and Guil sit on a blank stage flipping coins, however the coin keeps being heads and Ros just keeps winning, until a band of actors show up and sets the plot in motion. Realizes he has a chance to win, Guil offers to bet the Player, though not knowing that was the Player's plan all along. The Player purposely losses and after offering to whore out the young boy actor, Alfred, general causing a bit of an uproar, puts on a play to settle their debts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern leave before the play can even start anyway, but on their way out Ros reveals that the coin had landed heads up for the first.

Ros and Guil suddenly arrive in Elsinore and after seeing the Hamlet/Ophelia scene are commanded by Claudius to spy on Hamlet and see what is wrong with him. Ros and Guil find that they are able to formulate complex sentences and ideas when they have their Shakespeare lines, but quickly turn back to their babbling selves after everyone else leaves. Ros and Guil then pretend to be Hamlet and each other to practice questioning Hamlet, and they play the Questions game. Hamlet then comes on stage and in a slightly skewed form of "Hamlet" runs riddles around Polonius and talks to Ros and Guil, in which they accomplish nothing in terms of gaining information on Hamlet

Act 2:
Ros and Guil attempt to talk to Hamlet, but he ultimately runs circles around them and "murderers" them at their game of questions. Polonius comes by to announce that the Tragedians are performing the Murder of Gonzago, and the Tradegians complain to Ros and Guil about how them leaving them without an audience hurt them for they are nothing without an audience as the art and audience are two sides of the same coin. Then Ros contemplates death and being dead in a box while Guil doesn't really listen. Normal scenes of Hamlet are interwoven while Ros and Guil traipse around the castle, coincidentally falling into the right scenes and having the right lines. They also run into the Tragedians performing a rendition of the play Hamlet, in which it is revealed that a play ends when everone who is marked for death dies, and that no one decides who is marked, it is simply written. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern then take the place of the dead bodies of the characters that portray them in the play within a play.

Upon waking, Ros and Guil try to establish a sense of time and direction but fail and are ultimately interrupted by Claudius informing them that Hamlet has killed Polonius and that they must go find him. Eventually Hamlet happens upon them after their failed searching, and they try to trap him but it fails. Claudius shows up and Hamley flees, only to be escorted back into the scene shortly after Claudius informs Ros and Guil that they must accompany him to England (where they do not know he will be executed).

Act 3:
No more is written in lines in the actual play of "Hamlet" thus Stoppard has free reign over this act. It opens with Ros and Guil in the dark, slowly realizing they are on a boat. They then play around with the game and wonder more about life and direction and generally make all us Rosencrantz fans very sad about their inevitable (maybe???) upcoming death. In the course of their playing around, in searching for the meaning and lines of their life, they act out being the King of England (which, England being Heaven, could very well be God) and themselves and find out that they are actually on a mission to send Hamlet to his death. Rosencrantz, being the feeling half of the duo, balks at the idea, but Guil, being the logical half reasons that there must be a reason for Hamlet to die and that since they dont know what death is there is no reason to fake it. Then while they sleep Hamlet switches out their letter for the letter he wrote.

As they wake, Ros hears the sound of the Tragedians band, and is confused to find that the players have hid along on the boat with them. Suddenly pirates come along and Hamlet is stolen away onto the pirate boat, leaving only Ros and Guil. Trying to make sense of what they should do with Hamlet gone, Ros and Guil act out the questions game acting as the English King again, only to find out that the letter now condemns themselves to death. The Tradegians hop out of the barrel and surround them, while The Player tells Guil that death is common. Enraged that the Player doesn't actually know anything of death, Guil steals the Player's knife and kills him with it. Except the knife is fake, and after a very convincing death the Player hops back up to tell Guil that the only deaths that people people are the fake ones. The Tradegians then act out the end of "Hamlet." Knowing that it is their time to go, Ros and Guil remain on stage wondering if perhaps they could have changed anything, or if they even did anything to deserve it. Ros then leaves the stage and does not return (thus dying) and Guil remains on stage calling out for his friend, though not knowing if he is Ros or Guil. His final remark is that perhaps they wll do better next time, before he too also leaves.

The last monologues of "Hamlet" are then performed, and Ros and Guil are declared dead by the ambassadors.

Motifs:
Just about every motif scene in Hamlet is at very least mentioned in this play, along with the fun addition of some other key reoccurring ideas.
Gambling
The use of music and lighting to change scene or denote an important scene
The unreliability and ambiguity of language
Circular lines and plot
Parallelism
Light vs. dark
Confusion of identity
Direction/Fate/Providence
Religion - specifically the failed use of the Lord's Prayer
♫♫Homosexual under(and over)tones♫♫

Overall, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are (not)Dead, doesnt read like a play at all. Though there are not so many self loving didactic stage directions, this play was clearly meant to be read not just performed and seen. The stage directions enjoy their own minimalist style, and at times, as someone who has read many scripts, do not read like a script at all. Any stage manager probably wouldn't be very happy with T-$tawps as he refuses to capitalize all sounds and props, a common and general courtesy in script writing. But even in the stage directions there is often the same sense of ambiguity that the characters themselves feel, making the readers try to figure it out for themselves.

Symbols:

BOATS.

Boats: We are all on boats. Boats are our lives as we are confined within our vessels as we float through the ocean, and it is up to us to take to the steering wheel and guide ourselves because,

PIRATES. They can happen to anyone. They are the life changing events that can happen to anyone.

England: is Heaven or the afterlife, or generally the end of the voyage of life, where one's Earth path ends at.

Quotes:

"We are tied down to a language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style." -The Player. Page 77.

This quote comments on the unreliability of language in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and how they are tied down to these words, trapping them in the plot and unable to escape of fathom their own complete thoughts when they are off "stage."

"...demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance-and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air." -The Player. Page 63. 

This quote summarizes the Player's need for an audience, otherwise his art becomes meaningless, much like the life it parodies. It also recognizes the absurd nature of art and theater, as it is an exaggeration of life.

Theme Statement

In T-Stawps, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" the play suggests that art imitates life, yet because life and art are ultimately different no meaning can be drawn from art to apply to life as life does not come with directions, and thus has no meaning. 

(Unless maybe you believe, like Hamlet did, that you have an audience, and believe in God or aliens. Or Heaven. Which may just be a conspiracy of cartographers. In which case this play may then suggest that aliens are responsible for the influx of gay communists in space.)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, clearly shows the distinction between life and art, and then blurs the lines as the characters continue to break the fourth wall as they struggle to find their own life within their art. Other characters, such as the tragedians jump around as they will, recognizing that they are part of art, yet remaining almost omni-knowledgeable as they have access to the "script" of their "life." Yet, at the end, after aimlessly searching for directions, the characters are doomed to follow their path, a fenomenon that does not exist in life.

Of course, their is always the postmodernist interpretation in that any interpretation back by the text is an acceptable interpretation, as it really comes down to what the reader sees that the play is asking. In which case art could imitate life and thus meaning can be drawn from art to apply to life, and that meaning could be that we all have directions and fate, or that we can all escape that fate by grabbing the wheel of our own ships. Each to their own.

Response to Course Material

It seems as though it was only last week that we last checked in and reprocessed our course material, with finals having taken up a week of our time, and various snow days and days of change scattered about before coming to our well earned five day weekend. Yet here we are again, reflecting on what we have learned yet again.

First off, my babies. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Perhaps I have been building up to this play since I applied for AP Lit almost a year ago, but it was definitely worth the wait. I absolutely adore this play, and it did move me, despite what the pompous lectures that we read might claim. In fact, one day after class I immediately texted a recent AP Lit graduate, with absolutely no context, mind you, "Imagine Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. In space." We then proceeded to have an hour long discussion of Rosencratz and Guildenstern in space, and how Ros would just bounce around testing gravity and being the adorable puppy that he is, while Guil tries to fix the gravity field back to normal, but ends up doing nothing of value until Ros accidentally lands on the ON switch and turns it back on again. Or how they could be playing marbles or coins and one of them could accidentally flick a marble out into space and wonder about where it ends up for the rest of his life.

Though we haven't formulated our big thesis/meaning, I can see us teetering on the brink of great understanding of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (who are not dead, thank you very much, I think I'll just reread it). To start our understanding we were faced with these four questions. "Can pirates happen to anyone?" "Are you on a boat?" "Are you entitled to some direction?" and "Is England just a conspiracy of cartographers?" To which I have decided the acceptable answers to be: Yes, unfortunately pirates can happen to anyone. We are all on a boat. Is this play about religion? And, (my favorite) Wait a second, is England supposed to be Heaven?

We then watched Stoppard's movie adaption of his play, which we have concluded to treat more like an essay on the possibly meaning, than the "correct" interpretation of the plain black and white text. Throughout the movie, Ros continued to win my heart and replace Luna Lovegood and Little Red as my new favorite literary character. Ros continues to "examine the confines of the stage" (though in the original text it is actually Guil who does so in the opening scene) through the near discovery of the laws of physics and the natural world. He then always tries to proudly show Guil his discoveries, but ends up failing. I am unsure if this is supposed to show some sort of big brother/little brother relationship between Ros and Guil, but I ultimately find it quite endearing and i'm sure we will talk about it more. We have, throughout all the hours, I hear, discussed whether or not Ros and Guil are actual friends or just acquaintances of convenience, to which not only was it pointed out that it really does not pertain to the overall interpretation and meaning of the play, but I would also like to point out a third option. The gay option. (Because I will always bring up sex and the innuendos present in the works we read because I am an twelve year old). I mean, there is most certainly many references to gay sex throughout the play. But anyway, moving on.

This week we discussed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, continuing to think about what was Stoppard going for, and why, and what do we get out of the play? We read and annotated a lecture on Stoppard that was met with many fiery opinions dissing the lecturer's personal opinions on the work. It appears as this has been the month of passionate literary debates. We also received a stern talking to about to about our open prompt blog posts, and how we have absolutely no clue how to write an introductory paragraph and thesis. We then practiced in writing and answering prompts in a crazy shorten hour, and was by far one of the more stressful classes of AP Lit this year for everyone involved. Overall though, it was quite useful as I now feel that we have gained some muscle memory in how to correctly write opening paragraphs for open prompts (yes, we got to use the Magic Question). I personally found joy in how much pointless fluffery we are not longer allowed to write.

It has also been a big literary month for me, as I've started auditing one of my professor's classes at MSU, learning about screenwriting, and I recently was named semifinalist for a stageplay I wrote. Hopefully, many of Team AP will be able to come see the performance of my play if I make it to the finals, as there is a plethora of AP Lit easter eggs hidden in the play.

In other news, Zombeavers.

Open Prompt 2.2

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.'
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-W3yarE1RUsRWo2N0dFR1dkY3c/edit

Willy Loman of Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesman is a key tragic character in the development of tragedies. This is because Willy Loman's tragedy was the tragedy of a common man, and how his tragedy was that he could never be more than a common man. Through Willy's suffering, he acts as a conductor of tragedy and brings on the tragedy of his own family, and the ultimate loss of self and deterioration of family.

The Death of a Salesman introduced a new kind of tragedy to the theatre, the tragedy of the common man. In his essay of the same name, "The Tragedy of the Common Man," Miller defended his work in that is not only had tragic elements, but always was a tragedy itself as tragedy is something that invokes the feeling of tragedy in the audience. Thus, the play is labeled, by its own creator, to be a tragedy, making Willy Loman the unlikely tragic hero. One common trope of tragic characters that Willy fulfills is that he sees and converses with the ghost of his father figure, and brother, Ben, who portrayed to him what he could have been. The ghost, especially the ghost of a father figure, appearing before the hero is a common plot point in tragedies. Willy also goes through the typical arc of a tragic character in that due to his character flaw, in this case being his pride and unacceptance of seeing that he is indeed an ordinary man, it lead to his downfall and eventual suicide. In this way, Willy most certainly has elements of a tragic character, and even though he does not fit the classic definition of one, he still fulfills the role of a tragic hero and brings about suffering to all those around him.

Willy acts as a conductor of tragedy, in that by being around him and being influenced by his ideals, his family also falls to their own downfall or tragic ends. First, is Mrs. Linda Loman, who cares and nurtures her husband much like baby. She relinquishes control of her life and her household to Willy to give him the illusion that he has a semblance of control and is not just a common man. Biff and Happy, Willy's sons, also suffer at his expense, as they are also deluded into thinking that they are extraordinary. Happy enters the business world as he wishes to follow in his fathers unfortunate footsteps. And Biff is so deflated and distraught when he finds out that his father, who he looks up to and models his morals after, is having an affair that he turns to petty crime. In this way, Willy's role as a tragic hero not only leads to the deterioration of self, but also the deterioration of family.

This way in which Willy acts as an instrument in the suffering of others, illuminates how Willy "fell from grace" to illustrate the central meaning of the play. Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" suggests that valuing words instead of actions leads to a delusional perception of one's conventional success and this delusion leads to a deterioration of family and one's self. Through Willy's morals of valuing words he brought on the false inflation of self worth in his family, and caused his family to come crumpling down around his affair, loss of job, and eventual suicide, all due to his own tragic nature.