RTCM 4

The last month can be summed up in one word: Hamlet.
We started off with reading, advanced to annotating, viewed, then finally graduated to discussing.
As far as reading went, I think it was slightly more helpful to the main readers. The minor roles were less involving and I think I zoned out more than was necessary. However long we spent going through the entire play was a little much- Ms. Holmes' notes were helpful, but we could have looked at a condensed version or something. Maybe I'm wrong.
Next, annotating. Reading the play again was helpful of course. I thought the articles were interesting this time around. I guess plagiarism is OK if you're already a recognized playwright. The other article threw me a little with the author ranting how Hamlet was the embodiment of evil and he probably should have simply forgiven his uncle and moved on. Except Claudius cheated with his brother's wife. Oh, and then killed Hamlet I. And then plotted to kill Hamlet. All forgivable offences, no? And speaking of, the forums were interesting as well. I actually enjoyed Rimbaud's Ophelia and the Shakespeare in the Bush article. Those were neat.
Viewing! We did enough of that, too. Branagh was the clear favorite. It was the most comedic version. Tennant actually performed the closest to how I imagined Hamlet when reading.
Discussing. I look forward to continuing discussion. Our class got a little distracted last time, but I'm eager to see what everyone has to say when we get a little more focused.
Yes, I have had enough of Hamlet.

RTCM 3

This last month was not so bad.
We started off by finishing Death of a Salesman, which turned out a lot better than expected. I'll say again that watching the movie before reading the book provided some good background and helped with directions etc. Death was not my favorite so far, but I'm sure it is still a good one to know, especially come May. At the pace we're going, I'm beginning to wonder what we are going to do second semester. We're getting through these books pretty quickly.
We also did another practice essay. These ones seem a lot more structured than other APs I've taken. It's a little annoying to me that the leadsshould have that almost cookie-cutter similarity.
Next we did those readings for Hamlet- reading and annotating those for each work we read is coming in handy. I am finding them very useful to reference when some of these plays stop making sense.
Somewhere in here Holmes graded our blogs. I'm going to thank her here for taking it easy this first go around.
And we finished with Hamlet. We still have a ways to go if we are to continue reading it in class as we have been, but I do appreciate the amount we are learning alng the way. Holmes' shared knowledge is helping me make connections that I hadn't before and see how the play is a lot more deeply rooted in its time than I picked up on in past readings.
I learned more about the other people in my class than I cared too through our little beginning-of-the-hour group discussions, thought more about Shakespeare than I'd ever needed to, and am enjoying reading Hamlet more than I ever have. So, again: All-in-all, not a bad month.

Death of a Salesman Analysis

Arthur Miller-

 Miller was a big name in the mid to late 20th century. He was a journalist prior to becoming a playwright, won many awards, has a theater named after him, and, most importantly, was married to Marilyn Monroe. Go get em, Arth. He actually went to the University of Michigan (also the location of his theater).

Setting-

The play is located in Brooklyn, but Willy finds himself on both Boston and Manhattan during his little dreams. In Brooklyn, the Loman house is set in the middle of  bunch of apartment houses. The buildings have blocked out the sun, indicating that the house is trapped and has been cut off from the sun/hope.

Summary- 

Willy comes home one night from a trip to Boston. He is met by Linda, who convinces him to talk to his boss to work in the city so he won't have to drive all day. In another room, Biff and Happy discuss their 'work' and Willy. In the kitchen, Willy flashes back to a young Biff and Happy, both of whom are very affectionate of Willy. Charley and Bernard make brief appearances- Biff is apparently struggling with math and Bernard is very smart and wants to help. Linda pops up, Willy talk about his trip, then Willy contradicts himself with the Chevy. Willy fades out and enters another dream with Woman. Woman and Willy briefly interact, then Willy finds himself in the kitchen with Linda. They talk about Biff and his popularity, then Willy returns to the present. He and his sons argue, then all go to bed. 

Next day, at breakfast. Biff tells Willy that he is going to see Bill Oliver, a past boss. He and Happy offer to take Willy to a nice dinner. Willy is very excited.

Willy appears with Howard. Howard and Willy listen the a recorded segment of Howard's family. Willy finally asks for a local job, Howard refuses and fires Willy. Willy leaves.

Willy goes to Charley's to borrow more money. He sees Bernard and the two talk about Biff's failures and how Willy affected them. Charley enters and gives Willy Money. Willy calls Charley his only friend.

Biff and Happy arrive at the restaurant. Happy flirts with some less than reputable females, Biff reveals that he was humiliated when Oliver didn't even recognize him. Needless to say, Biff did not get a job. 

Willy enters the scene and expects good news. He gets yelled at by Biff for being obstinate, and is taken back. He falls and Biff helps him to the washroom. Biff storms away, Happy following with the girls. They leave Willy in the washroom with his latest flashback. 

Biff basically walks in on Willy having an affair (at some point in the past). Biff is horrified, burns his U Virginia shoes (his dreams go up in flames), and runs away. Willy comes to and hurries to a seed store. 

Biff and Happy return home, where they are confronted by Linda. She yells at them. Willy is out planting a garden. Biff apologizes and cries on Willy's shoulder. Willy decides to kill himself so his family can have the insurance money. He crashes his car and dies. 

At the funeral only Linda, the boys, and Charley are present. Linda tells Willy that they are free. End.

Symbols-

Stockings (wealth/ease of life)

Seeds (hope)

The American Dream (why not)

Motifs-

Abandonment

The American Dream

Betrayal

Theme-

Entitlement for the idealized American Dream of financial and social prosperity can lead to tragedy.

Miller uses the city setting of a house surrounded by apartments to show how The American Dream has corrupted and choked out hope for a bright future. The entitlement is shown in characters' lack of effort to achieve their goals.

Quotes-

"I’ll see him in the morning; I’ll have a nice talk with him. I’ll get him a job selling. He could be big in no time."

"You've just seen a prince walk by. A fine, troubled prince. A hard-working, unappreciated prince. A pal, you understand? A good companion. Always for his boys."

Close Reading 11/9

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-parker-election-math-20141109-story.html

    The article above is about the frequent inconsistencies found in a two-party political system- or, more directly, how to break it. Matt Parker, the author, offers a few strong solutions to what he describes as "the two-party deadlock", reinforcing these ideas with details, structure, and language.
    The weakest of the three is language. Still utilized efficiently, the language Parker uses backs up his point well. From the beginning, Parker assumes an authoritative tone, which can partly be explained by his career choices. His bio states that he is the unlikely combination of mathematician and stand-up comedian. With that in mind, his writing can be considered extremely precise and calculated with an underlying whisper of sarcasm- like he's making fun of the topic that he's treating so seriously. Through his sort of colloquial explanations, Parker's choice of language convinces the reader that he knows exactly what he's saying and why, and that any argument against his could be easily discredited.
    Next comes details. Parker starts his article off with a series of statistics.
"Republican Rick Scott won the Florida midterm election for governor, but 51.8% of voters did not want him."
This excerpt is the first sentence of the piece. It is followed by another percentage, then readers see four more in the third paragraph. It may seem insignificant, but go read the article. Every stat is used to illustrate a point. The author does an excellent job of using facts to create ideas. He makes his thoughts on the matter sound as irrefutable as the details they are surrounded with. Parker uses these statistics to make readers believe that the two-party system is actually hindering progress and that his argument is more relevant than the parties themselves.
    Lastly. structure. The article does a good job of keeping readers interested with varying sentence length, but it also engage readers in other ways- Parker asks rhetorical questions, he provides answers to questions that haven't been asked, and he even occasionally baits readers. The varying sentence length is obvious, but another aspect of that is his use of different types of punctuation. I haven't seen much of it in past editorials but Parker's analytical thoughts are pronounced with colons, dashes, and quotes. The ways he forms his sentences keep the reader thinking about each point and transition smoothly into each other. Parker's article is very easy to read and remember as he uses precise structures to keep the reader in the article and up to speed with his own purposes.

RTCM 2

So, let's see. We finally finished The American Dream, began and completed The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing, and watched Death of a Salesman. That's a lot of italics. But it's all good, because we learned that next year, for the AP Exam, we're going to need all the italics we can remember. Seeing 3 in one month makes me feel pretty.. productive?
Beginning with a final analysis of American Dream, I think I'm writing a thought everyone else has already written in that it makes more sense now. It's actually kind of disturbing how much sense such a bizarre piece can make. But that's old news.
Next was Nuts and Bolts. I agreed with that book a lot more than HTRLLAP. And I know Ms. Holmes told us all that you can't disagree with either book, they're gravity, it's just how it is, but here's the thing about gravity: No one knows how it works. We know how to manipulate it, how to computate it, and (in the case of our books), how to annotate it, but I can still be as obstinate as I want until I hear an explanation. So I accept the rules found in Nuts and Bolts, but while I respect the ideas in HTRLLAP I can't always agree with them. But I suppose that that too is old news.
Finally, Death of a Salesman. I did enjoy the movie. In this case, I even agree that it was OK to watch the movie before reading the book. I think there is a bigger spoiler in the title than there could have been in the movie. So it was no surprise that the salesman died and we knew it was going to happen the entire time. Anyway, a good movie, and what promises to be a challenging book. All in all, not a bad couple of weeks.

American Dream Summary/Analysis

We all have an analysis of The American Dream somewhere. So please excuse the comparatively short post- I feel like everyone's probably Dream-ed out by now. Or maybe it's just me.
This play, on the surface, is a bunch of nonsensical phrases strung together in a low budget setting with blank characters and... well, no plot at all. However, by the time we finished discussing, we'd decided that a possible theme was how American society and structure have been corrupted by consumerism. How? Well, here's the summary.
Mommy and Daddy are chilling and talking about nothing in particular when Grandma enters, laden with boxes. Then the three of them chill for a while and talk a little more about nothing. Noteworthy quotes up to this point include:
(Mommy on the boxes) "Whatever are they for?"
(Grandma) "That's nobody's damn business."
Continuing, after another god bit of nonsense, Mrs. Barker enters. The only one the entire play who seems to know why Mrs. Barker appears is Grandma.
As the four converse, a few interesting remarks are made. First off, Daddy is a woman now. Mommy is a controlling freak who has certain... preferences. Mommy has total control of the household, pointing to a motif- emasculation. The men in this play (what few there are) have no power over the women.
I think this a good place to talk about tone. Referring back to my first sentence/second paragraph, there is no tone. I take that back. There is such a complete lack of tone that a tone is almost present- abstractness. The narrator is entirely detached and seemingly uncaring, yet seems so much so that they are attempting to make a point. this goes in line with the author's other works. Theater of the Absurd and whatnot. Albee's background, which we all know now, is deeply rooted in the play.
OK. After a good while, Young Man enters. He seems to be the new American Dream as much as Grandma represents the old. Young Man is clueless and self-absorbed- proud of his handsome looks, but unfeeling and hardly present. This is explained by Grandma to Mrs Barker, when Grandma reveals Barker's reason for being there.
The play's dramatic ending comes with another good quote by Grandma:
"I've got to go into my act now".
Grandma is the only really present character the entire play. The 'conclusion' also show the audience that Grandma is the only character of substance.
That's not it. But it's all I have. Thanks for doing the assignment and reading it.

Close Reading 10/12

http://news.sciencemag.org/funding/2014/10/1-million-will-ocean-science-quiz-program-survive-tough-times#disqus_thread

The article in the link (above) was published as straight news. But I really wanted to use it so take what I say with a liberal spoonful of salt.

DIDLS can be applied to straight news. We were told it was a bad idea, and it was a trial, but of course I managed to do it. Looking at the article in question, it could possibly be thought that the author might have maybe editorialized a tiny bit- basing my post on a study of diction, structure, and details.

First comes diction. The words the author uses drives the point home by... well. being really good. Take the first paragraph, the lead.
"Ocean scientists are working to keep afloat a 16-year-old U.S. competition aimed at encouraging young people to appreciate marine research and join their field."

Now read it again. Pretty doggone clever, right? I chose a great lead to analyze! An article about a struggling oceanography competition, and they use the word "afloat". Like in water and stuff. and later on in the same paragraph- go read it for yourself- the author uses the word "scramble". Like EGGS? Like fish eggs? Is it a stretch? I don't know- how do eggs come out of a fish? They're squeezed out! Look back in the same sentence for that word! The same way the squeezing comes before the scrambling! Is it a coincidence? Am I crazy? Does the author actually mean for all this to matter? Aren't we supposed to not care? The author always means everything we think they do. That's straight outa Week 4. I could also tell you the author is a female and probably blonde, judging by her style. Don't believe me? Go see for yourself. By the way, crazy thing about fish eggs? Most of them float. Just like NOSB is trying to do.

Next, structure. The author does an acceptable job of varying sentence length, which maintains the reader's interest. The author also does neat work when it comes to paragraph length. Cut off at just the right time and place, each paragraph is succinctly finished. The thoughts that come through the reader's mind in the space between each paragraph are attributes to this article's profoundness. Try rereading the end of paragraph and pausing when finished. Think about the given statistic. That is a sad fact. Now go on. And do the same for each final period after- stop and think about what the writer is trying to say in those one line spaces between each phrase. I really chose structurally strong article, didn't I.

(This last a picky aspect, and the only reason I'm mentioning it is because I'm having trouble coming up with other areas of this article to create. But I guess you could say that goes for this entire post.)

One fact that the article does not explain is the reason for recent funding cuts. With the aid of details (a part of which being what the author does not say), the article is leaning toward helplessness on the National Ocean Science Bowls' part.
"...federal budget cuts are putting a squeeze on the effort..." (Paragraph 1)
" ...the automatic 2013 budget cuts known as the sequester slashed education funding at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NOSB’s main financial supporter." (Paragraph 3)
These quotes indicate that NOSB is on the chopping block- and while there is no question about that, there is no explanation as to why, other than general funding cuts. This kind of pits the reader against the government and the budget cuts, only revealing how they have effected the organization itself without the cause of the cuts.

Not a big deal at all. The article, only slightly flawed, did an excellent job of bringing attention to the minor yet resounding effects of federal budget cuts. Small organizations (and large ones) are suddenly caught without their former one major source of income. Though a little slanted, the author does a good job of providing news of change within a surprisingly widespread effort and gateway for young enthusiasts.

Man, did I choose a great article or what.

RTCM 1

It's interesting that the topics we didn't cover in class seem to be sticking in my head the longest. Yeah, I get DIDLS and all that. It makes me want to DI but it comes pretty easily after studying it for a while. It's the Existentialism and Theater of the Absurd that get me really thinking. Not those really smart, deep thoughts that the smart, deep kids have, but sort of simple observations, mainly about existentialism. So I'm focusing on that. But before I do, please don't come to me and say "You misinterpreted the entire reading!" This was studied outside of class.I know I'm probably wrong. Or maybe we're just thinking about it differently. Anyway, here goes.

Existentialism is messed up. In a lot of ways. Specifically the part about making choices independent of morals, laws, ethics, etc. Maybe a little more than that. The part about considering the negative consequences on the society around you and accepting responsibility for your actions. You all read it, here's my question. If our choices are free from any outside influence, tangible or in-, then by what standards do we judge an adequate punishment for our actions? That is, every choice is free. But if every choice were truly free, why consider the negative consequences on society? Is that really a free choice if the weight of taking responsibility is on the shoulders of the chooser? If existentialists are supposedly making decisions without influence of law or morals, then by what guidelines are they assuming responsibility for their actions? There is no right or wrong affecting their choice. Why is there suddenly right and wrong when the decision has been made? Isn't  right and wrong decided on the effect these choices make on society? How can the chooser ignore the fact that he will be punished (perfectly reasonably by death) for whatever choice he makes? 

I don't know. Maybe I'm too far in. I won't agree with everything and not all of it will ever make sense to me. Now I've checked my email and the Literary Cat (look it up on Tumblr, it's not what you think) too many times on the last few minutes to continue writing anything of note except this- According to our reading, a claim of existentialism is that some things are simply absurd or irrational, without possible explanation. Well, one of those things is existentialism. Welcome to philosophy.

Close Reading, 9/14

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/opinion/what-will-finally-doom-the-death-penalty.html

     Danielle LaChance's article "What will Doom the Death Penalty?" offers heavy opinions regarding capital punishment. The article influences readers most profoundly through diction, details, and structure.
     First, details. LaChance proves that she is knowledgeable about the topic by providing specific examples of deaths-gone-wrong and other flaws in the system. Take, for example, the top of the third paragraph.

"In 1972, the Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutionally unfair, but left the door open for states to come up with new laws to remedy the arbitrary sentencing criteria it found troubling."

     This example displays one of the facts about the death penalty LaChance researched. She goes on the explain how different groups tried taking advantage of that particular ruling. Her use of these periodic facts (others can be found in paragraphs six and seven) lead to readers assuming that she is learned on the subject. Readers that haven't done the research LaChance has may be impressed by her insight and could be attracted to her arguements simply because they assume she knows more than they do. 
     Another rhetoric LaChance exercises frequently is imagery, or what the reader feels/sees when reading. See the last lines of her first paragraph- 

"...voters will finally see capital punishment for what it is: an intolerable affront to human dignity."

     Sentences like these tend to sort of inspire readers. They create a feeling that goes with the article. This specific example leaves readers with a feeling of offense with the rest of the article. Intolerable? A reader sees that something may be intolerable and synonymizes it with something bad. An affront to human dignity? Readers are usually proud. They may go right along with Lachance's description of capital punishment. By the time they reach the second paragraph, LaChance has already planted a feeling of disgruntlement. More examples can be provided, but really every other line contains another one. Diction at this level leads to images that can very easily sway readers to seeing from LaChance's point of view. 
     Lastly comes LaChance's diction of the article. Focusing on what Lachance didn't say rather than what she did, the story is lacking a different point of view. As an editorial this can easily be expected, but discrediting the oppositions arguments can often do more to persuade readers than simply offering your own. Lachance provides many examples that support her points and says plenty about her subject, but a reader may begin to wonder why she never included or addressed an opposing view. She makes her thought very clear, but that's about it.