Response to Course Material #4

Since last time, we thoroughly covered and finished Death of a Salesman.  I'll start by saying this was a really good play and I surprised myself how captivated I was while reading and watching the play.  Maybe it was John Malkovich and Dustin Hoffman.  Either way, I really enjoyed the play.  Some of the things we talked about in class, like Willy's perpetual search for approval, I kind of related to.  Sometimes I feel like I try to please others more than I end up pleasing myself.  We also read this one commentary on DOS about how Willy and Biff were kind of gay lovers which I thought was funny, although plausible because they were always just trying to appeal to each other.  From a bigger perspective, I thought it was interesting how in the world of literature you can claim anything, regardless of how ridiculous it might sound at first, if you have enough evidence to support yourself.

We also began reading Hamlet last week, which I am not all that excited for.  I have never been good at reading old British literature (which is why I took American Lit) so this might be a struggle in the coming weeks.  For some reason, I trip over the words and often have to read them several times.  It's a good thing that we read the text several times over the course of the study! (Although I am not very excited to annotate...) I do find it interesting, however, how Shakespeare makes a lot of the dialog so deliberate.  I think reading the play and searching for the deeper meanings will help me search for deeper meanings when I read everything, especially on the AP Exam.  Because there are so many hidden things in the play, I'm certain we will get a lot of practice finding them.