Since my last response to course materials our class has finished our discussion of The American Dream and annotated it, started to work with Death of a Salesman, and took the second terms test.
When the class first read through The American Dream I barely understood any of it. I was entertained by it but I didn't understand any of the deeper meanings whatsoever. The analysis we read of The American Dream better helped me understand the themes of the novel and some of its symbols. The packet also better helped me understand the Theater of the Absurd and its applications. I learned that Grandma represents the "Old American Dream" whereas the young man is the "New American Dream". Our class discussion and the annotations helped me further understand the main themes and meanings of the piece as well as the more complex symbols such as the "bumble of joy" and the twin brothers. There is so much more to the play than meets the eye and it really stands as a testament to rereading a piece.
Although we haven't done much discussion of Death of a Salesman, and haven't read the actual book yet, based on the movie I can tell that it is going to be another hard book to crack. Contrary to The American Dream however I am not left completely clueless as to the meaning. The main character, Willie, seems like he is rather senile. I think that the book is a representation of the evils of a capitalist society as Willie is being taken advantage of by big business. Of the brief discussion in class one really interesting connection I made was of all of the christ figures in the book. Biff is 34, whereas Jesus was 33. This is representative of Biff being passed the hope of ever being what his family expected of him. Willie and the rest of the family wanted Biff to succeed in the world of sales but he failed at that. He is good with his hands just as Jesus was as well. The family looked to him as a source of salvation but he let them down. He is a sort of failed christ figure. Willie on the other hand works himself to the core every day for his family and made the ultimate sacrifice of his life, just as Jesus did, because he knew that he was worth more dead than alive. He knew that his family would benefit from his life insurance. Ben, Willie's brother, is also a sort of christ figure as he is always looked at as perfect. He is big, tall, powerful, and successful due his diamonds. This leads Willie to always look to his brother for help, just as one would look to God for help. I also noticed a few connections of Death of a Salesman and The American Dream. Both Willie and Grandma seemed very disillusioned with society. I also noticed that in both stories the "American Dream" is a major theme. Willie had been determined to achieve gain a grip of the "American Dream" his whole life. He wanted to provide for his family and have all of the hot commodities. He also seemed very upset and unsatisfied with life just as the characters in The American Dream were. I found that Willie complaining about the refrigerator was very similar to the characters in The American Dream complaining about the toilet. There is still a lot that I do not understand of the book but I think I will gain a much greater understanding after we finish the annotations.
The terms test that we recently took made me lose a good deal of confidence. I didn't study as much as I should have for the first terms test and my grade reflected that. This time however I studied for hours and really felt like I had all the terms down. I felt like I was able to apply them really well to literature and felt confident going into the test. Coming out... not so much. I got the same grade as I did the first time after hours of work and a much better understanding of the terms. What was tricky to me is that it seemed as though there was more than one right answer. Upon checking over the test however, I realized that there were just many answers that were very close to being correct, but just a little bit off. I think that I will be able to apply the terms much better than I could before so that is a good thing but my test score did not reflect that. I think I was just thrown off by the answers that were near-answers. This will definitely make me read the questions on the AP test of as we learned in class that the AP tests have a lot of near-answers to throw people off as well.
Overall we have learned a lot these past few weeks and I am excited to further analyze Death of a Salesman.
Something that I found very interesting when reading this was when you talked about Christ figures in the book Death of a Salesman. That is something that I didn't really look for, maybe because I was still trying to figure out what all of the symbols meant! I think you made some good points for aruging that Biff is a Christ figure in the book, like how they were both good with their hands. I also saw some connections between this book and The American Dream, but I saw more of a connection between Willy and Mommmy, mainly because Willy seemed a little materialistic, just like Mommy.
ReplyDeleteAs for the terms test, I didn't do as well as I had liked either. I had the same problem where I thought that there could very well be two answers for a question. I guess that is something that I need to work on is really being able to distinguish between every single term.
I am sorry that you weren't successful in your terms test. At least you know that you have a better knowledge of the terms, even if the test doesn't reflect that. I had troubles with the test as well, although I think my problem was that I had forgotten some of the things we had talked aobut in class before we took the first test, so for the second test, I didn't really know the words as well as I wanted to.
ReplyDeleteIn this response, I really like how you included specific things that we talked about in class and details that you have noticed. I think it is really good how you made the conneciton of all the Christ figures. I didn't notice the Christ Figures and failed Christ Figures until one our last discussions. I think maybe I need to work on learning more about the Bible so that I can recognize the comparisons easier.
Overall, great response!
My goodness this is long. My responses are usually like three sentences because I can't think of anything to say. I really liked how you summarized everything in the first paragraph, and then went on in detail in the next paragraphs talking about what we did for each section and your responses to it. One thing I'd suggest is to not analyze too far into what we did - they're responses, after all, and not an analysis. But I did like your points about Death of a Salesman, as they were well thought-out and interesting.
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