RGAD

RGAD!!! Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, by Tom Stoppard is a ridiculously well written play. The word play, ironies, clever phrases truly make this play a shakespeare success. For example, on page 65...
Player: We already have an entry here. And always have had.
Guil: You've played for him before?
Player: Yes, sir.
Ros: And what's his bent?
Player: Classical.
Ros: Saucy!
This section of the play here was one of the funnier examples that were present throughout the entire play. When the player answers Rosencrantz about what type of music he likes, Ros replies in a very awkward manner. "Saucy," is most likely a substitution for the word "sexy." But how is this "sexy?" I guess that's part of the joke. But Stoppard's use of such hilarious examples make this play a phenomenon. I don't believe this could be a success without all the sex references. I mean... What fun is it if there's no sex? (not to be perverted in any way...) I can guarantee that Mrs. clinch would agree, Right Mrs. Clinch? But I'm excited to continue reading this play and hope to even possibly use this play for the AP exam next thursday. LET'S GET A 5!!!

Fight Club

Fight Club is a very interesting novel by Chuck Palahniuk. The two main characters, Tyler Durden and the narrator, experience the freedom of life through creating a club: Fight Club. After drinking at a bar every week, they would fight each other to blow off some stress from the week. As the story goes on, Tyler and the narrator enlarge their club and have some very intense experiences together.
We see the narrator as an average and normal office worker who hates his job. For some strange reason, he cannot sleep; he has insomnia. After a few weeks, he even begs his doctor for some pills so he can get some rest. Unfortunately, the doctor believes that the narrator needs natural sleep. When the narrator goes to a testicular cancer group meeting that the doctor recommended to watch, he observes all the pain and suffering of all these people. They are suffering just as he has been. In some way, they are both dying. During the one on one’s, the narrator meets Bob, and they both cry into each other’s arms. “Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.” For the narrator, this moment was an enormous release, because from that moment on, he was able to sleep. Is that not strange? The narrator goes to doctors and other people for help with his insomnia, which cannot be helped, but when he meets a stranger for the first time, he cries and is able to sleep at night. I just find this very unusual. The only explanation I could find was that the narrator was able to finally express his emotions, because those who were at all those meetings would not judge him. The narrator could emotionally express his feelings through crying, and that was his sleeping pill.
There are also some other questions that boggled my mind. Why does the narrator relate his “fake” tumor with Marla? Could this be because he cannot get rid of her or is it because he must endure being with her? This message seems very ambiguous. Furthermore, is there some larger connection between Tyler and the narrator? Everything Tyler does or is, the narrator praises him for that. Even with simple things like knowing that you can create bombs with a few household items, the narrator seems so amazed. Is Tyler in some way his ultimate role model? Another thing that bothered me is why is Tyler never around when Marla is? Are they trying to avoid each other? Another strange thing is that Tyler made the narrator promise to never talk about Tyler to Marla Singer, even though Tyler and Marla were having sex almost everyday. Is it not obvious that after weeks of sex, Marla would want to talk about Tyler? Some of these events do not connect and confuse me. It all seems like a mystery. I thought for a moment, that Marla and Tyler were somehow imaginary friends of his, which would make sense because the narrator goes to all those ‘sick’ meetings. But that probably cannot be right, because other people have seen Tyler and Marla, especially during the fight club.

What a Week

Unfortunately, I could not make it to Mrs. Clinch’s wonderfully amazing AP Literature & Composition class, for I had the stomach flu. However, I was able to continue reading the last 20 pages of Invisible Man, and I enjoyed it. Invisible man was an extremely long read, but getting to the end allowed me to finally understand the values of reading such a large book. Hopefully, in the book test that I failed to take today, I will be able to do decent enough to maintain my grade.
In the recent poems readings we have been doing, I believe that this has helped me tremendously in gaining an edge on analyzing poetry. I finally understand at least half of what the poet is trying to say through the intricate weaving of words, phrases, and structure. Some poems are so difficult that I want to give up, but analyzing the poems in group helped me in understand how to approach these poems. I think that the tip that helped the most to understand the poet’s feelings and views are the multiple definitions of the words that he uses. Many times a poet will use one word and mean over 7 different things, which allows the reader to interpret what the poet is trying to get across. As a result, I am able to see the poem from multiple angles. It could include anger, depressions, caprisun (haha), and even drama. Anything would work within a poem, but we just need to search for it. Poetry is analyzed based on the ways that we feel. If we feel similar to how the poet felt when he wrote the poem, the more likely that we are going to analyze the poem correctly. Although it seems a little strange, reaching our deeper emotions may actually help with these poems. Hopefully, we will get an easy enough poetry on the AP exam so we do not need to reach too far.
I also need to purchase the book Fight Club soon because I think the seminars are going to occur sooner that I expect. Neil Sethi has already read the entire novel in a day, so I believe that I have hope. If someone can read an AP Lit book in a day, it cannot be that boring. Most likely, it will be interesting enough for me to read within a week or two. I would hate to read another book that I despise, but hopefully, the novel has enough action and drama to keep me on my feet. Furthermore, Fight Club is a very ironic book. We are taking a seminar on Fight Club, but in the book, the first rule about fight club is to never talk about fight club. Doesn’t that mean we are breaking the rules? I guess the risk does not affect Mrs. Clinch. (I’m just joking, but it is still somewhat ironic).

Poetry

In Mrs. Clinch’s class, we discussed multiple sonnets by both Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sydney. In Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Sonnet that was for homework, we discovered that the hunt that he talks about is a woman. He is in love with a woman who is a wife to a king. Because the first line states that he found a doe, it seems as if the woman desires to find another man as well. Furthermore, when it says “Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am: And wild for to hold, thought I seem tame” around the woman’s neck, it seems as if she were under control or a slave to a king.
In Spenser’s Sonnet 67, I saw the game or woman as a prize to the man. When we see him, the huntsman is weary after chasing this woman so long; however, right as he is about to forget about her, he sees her “thinking to quench her thirst at the next brook.” Is this from human nature? When the hunter was chasing the woman, the woman ignored, but when the hunter stopped chasing, the woman showed up in front of him. When analyzing this moment, the woman seems to be controlling him. The huntsman is a tool. The woman is only interested when the huntsman forget about her. Luckily, he marries the woman shown from “with her own good will her firmly tied.” The tied signifies when a couple ties their hands together when married. If seen from another prospective, the poem seems very flirtatious. I see a woman returning to a man only to play with his feelings only until she realizes her true feelings for him. Her “milder look” gives a clue that the woman no longer despises the man, but actually enjoys his company.
Sonnet 79 is very different from the other two. In the beginning, he seems to be insulting the woman. He says that she is “fair” or decent looking, but defines true fair right afterwards. This means that this woman does not have true beauty, but only physical beauty. Furthermore, the poet uses multiple definition for the word fair. It is defined as desirable, reputable, gentle, not violent, of character free from moral stain, unblemished, just, and equal. Amazingly, all these definitions are used within the poem. The moment where ‘fair’ is most smoothly used is “He only fair, and what he fair hath made;/ All other fair, like flower, untimely fade. The first fair relates to the fact that GOD is just and fair, but the second means that it is good. The “all other fair” refers to limited physical beauty, which will eventually fade with time. Spenser is an amazing poet who has done something I could have never fathomed.

Hamlet

This past week in Mrs. Clinch’s, we were assigned to write a rough draft of the play Hamlet. I chose to write about the word phrase “to be.” One aspect I spoke about was a version of the word ‘to be,’ to seem.
To seem – to appear to be, feel, or do. This word is used many times within the play as well, but only in specific areas. For example, Horatio uses the word ‘seem’ when he sees the ghost. The ghost “seemed” to look like the king. Shakespeare very cleverly did not use ‘be,’ because the definition of ‘to be’ is to live and exist. Since the ghost is dead, he cannot ‘be.’ Furthermore, ‘seem’ is a very passive, unconfident word. It very much like the word ‘may.’ “May I leave?” instead of “I will leave.” Similarly, the word ‘seem’ is used during questions or moments that are unsure or times that do not relate to life. “To be” is story of Hamlet.
Returning to the “To be or not to be” speech, Hamlet's dilemma is that although he is dissatisfied with life and lists its many torments, he is unsure what death may bring. He can't be sure what death has in store; it may be sleep but in perchance to dream he is speculating that it is perhaps an experience worse than life. Death is called the undiscovered country from which no traveler returns. In saying that Hamlet is acknowledging that, not only does each living person discover death for themselves, as no one can return from it to describe it, but also that suicide as a one-way ticket. If you get the judgment call wrong, there's no way back.
The whole speech is tinged with the Christian prohibition of suicide, although it isn't mentioned explicitly. The dread of something after death would have been well understood by a Tudor audience to mean the fires of Hell. The speech is a subtle and profound examining of what is more crudely expressed in the phrase ‘out of the frying pan into the fire.’
If you follow Hamlet's speech carefully, you'll notice that his notions of "being" and "not being" are pretty complex. He doesn't simply ask whether life or death is preferable; it's hard to clearly distinguish the two—"being" comes to look a lot like "not being," and vice versa. To be, in Hamlet's eyes, is a passive state, to "suffer" outrageous fortune's blows, while not being is the action of opposing those blows. Living is, in effect, a kind of slow death, a submission to fortune's power. On the other hand, death is initiated by a life of action, rushing armed against a sea of troubles.

Invisible Man

My first thoughts on Ellison's Invisible Man are strangely straight forward; boring and dramatic. Unfortunately, after only reading a few pages, I gave up reading Invisible Man for a few weeks. As a result, I ended up forgetting what occurred within the novel, so I had to read it again. This is most likely why I was bored with this novel. The novel starts with a narrator who has no name, and for some reason, introduces himself as a man who no one notices.. Thus, the novel is called Invisible Man. He recalls multiple events such as his speech, boxing match, and graduation. When he provides part of the entertainment, a naked and very sexual dancer with a USA flag tattoo is shown where all of the classmates are forced to watch. Here I noticed a problem with the current society. This scene destroys the typical view of America and the objects that it finds most important, which would be the American Dream. However, the tattoo on the woman's stomach shows that the values have transformed into sex and money. Another strange thing I noticed was that during the narrator's speech, it did not seem truthful. It seems as though his own experiences taught him that the American Dream is a myth for blacks.
As the novel continues on, the narrator is continuing his goal of having an identity.

Hamlet

Today in AP Lit we watched each different interpretation for Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech. In BBC, Hamlet was set in a gloomy setting. He was in isolation, and you could only see people in the backgrounds, shadows on the screen. However, Hamlet’s tone turns angry later as she begins to shake Ophelia. This is slightly different to Mel Gibson’s Hamlet interpretation, because Hamlet is able to see everything. Nothing is hidden, whereas we see the shadows of multiple characters in the BBC version. Lastly, the KB version is different to both also. When Hamlet is speaking, it seems as if his speech is directed at Claudius, because Hamlet speaks into a mirror, where Claudius is on the other side. Additionally, Hamlet is very happy upon seeing Ophelia; however, as the conversation between Ophelia and Hamlet continue, Hamlet becomes angry telling her that she should not have loved him. Even then, Hamlet hears noise where the mirrors are, which gives him the idea that this all was a trap. With each interpretation, I was able to configure my own interpretation. I did not quite see it like Mel Gibson and KB did, but I do see why they interpreted this scene like that.
My favorite interpretation was with KB, because they thought outside the box. I would have never thought of Hamlet speaker to a mirror, where Claudius is hiding behind. This adds to the suspense and the excitement of the play, and brings new life to Hamlet.