Hi! So this last week was my favorite week so far because we got into the nitty-gritty of the play, "The American Dream", and it was so great for my understanding of the work as a whole. With annotating in general I'm surprised by how much fun I'm having with it, I'm seeing a lot of connections that I missed on a first read. I'm anticipating reading, "Death of A Salesman", and I'm curious to see how Arthur Miller's play contrasts with Albee's on what (I think) is a similar topic.
I like the banter of class discussions and how no to people take exactly the same meaning out of a passage, and how (generally) a hybrid of everyones impressions is what we decide is the truth. On the other end, it was obvious to see when the class hit a dead-end. It generally took the shape of a bottomless pit of banter over something we couldn't figure out that the more questions we asked the more questions were surfaced. At which point it was funny to have Ms. Holmes chuckle knowingly and explain the passage to us.
Studying for the test on Friday (playing games) gave me the impression that I could take this test (that's next Friday) and get a "D-". But! I don't really want this grade so I think I'll be playing games a lot this week!
I shared a similar experience when it came to reading The American Dream with close reading techniques. It all seemed to make sense to me after looking at it a second time. the first reading really didn't accomplish much other than details for me. I agree that it is interesting to sit in class and listen to all of the different viewpoints of a single topic that arise. No one sees anyone one idea the same way and that is what makes investigating the play in a group so rewarding. Sometimes I feel our class gets a little too deep into the text and starts looking for bogus things, but overall its a very good experience.
ReplyDelete