Responses To Course Material #2

Now attempting to think back as to what we have done in class, I find a fog forming in my mind. I don't think it's that we've covered too much material too quickly, but that it's all started to blend together that I can't differentiate what's what. From close analysis to reading plays to studying how literature has changed over time, a lot can happen in a couple of weeks in AP Lit. Let's go over the basics of what's happened.

So we started to read this book called The American Dream by Edward Albee. I was absent when we read most of this in class, so I had to read it on my own. Holy cow. Throughout the entire play, I struggled to find any meaning whatsoever. We later in class went over Theater of the Absurd and how "playwrights loosely grouped under the label of Theater of the Absurd try to convey their sense of bewilderment, anxiety, and wonder in the face of an inexplicable universe" (Martin Esslin, Theater of the Absurd, 1968). So on the first read, unless you know going in that the play is part of Theater of the Absurd as well as being a huge AP Lit geek, it is normal to not understand the point of it. That helped, but what helped the most was when we read Ervin Beck's analysis of Albee's The American Dream. He helped bring to light the complex ideas that are hidden in the play, one large idea being that "...[Grandma] embodies and speaks the truths associated with America's earliest and best impulses" (Beck, p. 2). After reading this and that the Young man represents the new and upcoming America, the entire play made so much more sense to me. I could understand that it represented the shipping out (quite literally in the play) of the old ideals and the bringing in of new ideals in America. (By America, I mean North America, the United States, not Canada or Mexico or Brazil or any other countries who have their own literature and harsh realities to deal with.)

You would think that analyzing why things are funny wouldn't make them funny anymore, but I feel that just the opposite happened. I felt it enlightening to finally understand why I would think it's funny for my brother to slip and fall down the stairs with a grunt of pain and then proceed to limp to the dinner table, but then not find it funny that my great-aunt slipped and fell down the stairs and broke her hip. This is due to the fact that in situations where pain is inflicted, humor is only present when it is "...perceived by the observer as harmless or painless to the participants" (Theories of Humor and Comedy, p. 1). So my brother was fine, just uncomfortable (and apparently able to sing in soprano tones-- puberty might be thanked for that though) which is why his situation was funny whereas my great-aunt breaking her hip actually caused harm and was not funny. This also makes sense when you see someone get sand in their eyes at the beach that you laugh at their misfortune, but when you find out that they have seriously damaged their corneas and have to go in to the hospital and get medication for it, it suddenly loses its humor quickly. Now I know when it's appropriate to laugh in movies and when it's not. (And if I find something funny that no one else does, I'm either smart enough to understand it at the intellectual level, or don't understand and should probably bite my tongue and hope I didn't offend anyone.)

As we continue, as I assume that we will all year, our close readings of works or our studying of vocabulary, I continue to, now almost subconsciously, analyze most everything I read. "What does the author really mean here? Why purple and not blue? Why this word and not that?" The vocab we continue to study helps to put a name on things, as well as makes you look smarter to people not in AP Lit. Knowing that there's a word for "preaching or lecturing" lets me say "I feel that this has a didactic tone, don't you?" This is especially helpful when close reading a work and there's an indirect reference to another work, we can all as a class recognize the "allusion" that we see.

It's been a rough couple of weeks as I'm still trying to find a good balance of study habits for AP Lit along with keeping up in class. Analyzing ideas is not an easy thing to do, and as my good friend William Wordsworth says in his poem "The Tables Turned" in stanza 7: "Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;/Our meddling intellect/Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—/We murder to dissect" (Wordsworth, ll. 25-28). Bring on the complexities. Bring on the symbols with multiple meanings. The figurative language with its tricks and cons. (My lovely use of anaphora.) Here on Team AP, we are now learning in the ways of analysis, and we murder to dissect. (But not literally-- please note that the last sentence is referencing Wordsworth whom I just quoted from and is figurative. Literal would be: a- illegal, b- disgusting, and c- not something we would learn how to do in AP Lit.)