Response to Course Materials #4

       It's been a month since the last response to course materials and ALOT of material has been covered.  Since I last wrote we finished up our discussion of The American Dream and moved on to the Death of a Salesman by Miller.  This time instead of doing a read-through as a class we watched the movie and then read and annotated the play at our home.  The movie was almost exactly the same as the play and but it was interesting to see how they interpreted the play.  The only issue was that since I saw the movie first I didn't form my own conclusions in my head about the characters before I saw the movie. 
       Looking back on The American Dream I noticed that the themes were very similar to those in Death of a Salesman.  Both stories had clear themes of the evil of consumerism.  The characters in both the Death of a Salesman and The American Dream chased after money and material things to find happiness. In The American Dream the author goes out of his way to point out material desires of the characters.  Mommy and Daddy even looked at their deceased son as a material possession and since Grandma is not bringing any money to the table think she is useless and want to kick her out of the house.  In Death of a Salesman Biff is looked down upon by his Dad because he doesn't have a great desire for money and material possessions.  Biff desires to work out West with his hands but Willy seems to think that he is still a child for having such thoughts.  Willy was being taken advantage of by the business he makes sales for and works very hard for little pay.  He is depressed because he works so hard but does not have the money to show for it and is always complaining about some material desire.  He even goes so far as to kill himself because he knows that his family will make more money from his life insurance than they would if he was alive.  Both stories revolve around the desire to make more money and material things. 
       What was really interesting to me about our study of Death of a Salesman was how deep it went.  I have begun to view plays as bananas... with multiple layers.   As we peeled back layer and layer of Death of a Salesman we found all sorts of hidden meanings.  When our class read one of the professional criticisms on Death of a Salesman I found it really interesting that the critic disagreed with Miller on the meaning of his own play.  This showed me that there is no correct or incorrect answer as to the interpretation of plays.    
       Another thing we did in class that was very helpful was the multiple choice practice for the AP exam.  We read through passages and tried to answer as many questions correctly as possible.  The questions were rather difficult for me but I managed to get a surprisingly high percentage of them correctly.  What challenged me was that they used very complex terminology.  I am also still not used to having to think so in-depth about passages. After this we tried to create our own multiple choice questions.  I found this really helpful because it allowed us to think from the point of view of an AP test writer.   
     We are starting to read Hamlet in class now and  I am really excited to tackle a Shakespeare play, however so far I am incredibly intimidated by the elevated diction because it is so different from what I am used to seeing.  To me Shakespeare is like a foreign language.  I think it is really helpful that Ms. Holmes stops us every so often to clarify certain things, clear up the confusion, and provide a little bit of background for us to help us understand the play better.