Class Notes 3-2

Class Notes  

12/13/10 – 01/07/11

Lecture on Stoppard

Dramatic Horizons of Significance

• "Horizon of significance" is a world ordered by certain normative understandings which, even if they are not ours, enable us to understand what is going on as a coherent and accessible vision.

• The horizon of significance comes to us through what the characters believe and how the story establishes for us a sense of moral meaning.

Theatre of the Absurd

• It has become, in a word, absurd, without logic and without the comfortable reminders of a logical structure: a confidence about time and space and memory.

• It has no reliable meaning. Often, it is featureless.

• This, however, is not the only important criterion of this literary style. The other essential component is that the protagonists' attempts to deal with the world also register as absurd.

• Existential action will not bring us happiness; it will, however, confer human dignity upon us. The Theatre of the Absurd takes from us that dignity.

• Most of the major attention in Absurdist Theatre focuses upon how the protagonists try to cope.

• The emphasis on verbal humor is one of the major attractions of Absurdist Theatre. To acknowledge that these plays are often very funny does not mean that we should miss the desperation underneath the humor.

The Prufrock Connection

• Connection between Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and Stoppard's play: reliance on romantic irony throughout

• Romantic irony: the procedure by which apparently significant gestures or assertions or decisions are made only immediately to collapse. (A great deal of the humour in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead emerges from this technique.)

• At the end of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," the persona acknowledges that he is, in effect, already dead to all intents and purposes. And in a sense we might, considering the title of Stoppard's play, say much the same about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern throughout the course of the action. In the world in which they inhabit, there doesn't seem to be a very firm line drawn between life and death; the latter is merely an exit, casual, unexciting, as insignificant as the details of the lives they live (far less dramatic than death in a fictional performance).

• In a very real sense, Vladimir, Estragon, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Prufrock are all extreme examples of what Nietzsche calls the "last men," the living dead, as inauthentic and non-human as it is possible to get.

A Reservation: The Question of Friendship

• Stoppard's play contains at least one very important element missing in Waiting for Godot and in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": friendship between the two protagonists

• Vladimir and Estragon have been together a long time, and yet they do not seem to express any particular friendship for each other. They need each other and are petrified at the thought of being alone. So their relationship is based upon a deep individual anxiety rather than upon anything expressing a positive value, such as friendship.

• Prufrock gives us no indication that he has any friends.

• With Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, however, the emphasis is different (certainly in the film this is brought out). There is a sense of comradeship about them, a genuine affection and closeness (which is occasionally physical).

• Beyond this point, there is also a sense that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have more of a specific identity than, say, Vladimir and Estragon. They are Elizabethans, with a certain amount of money. So there is something of a historical identity, and the similarity between them and the people they encounter suggests something like a common cultural basis. In Beckett's play, by contrast, the characters have names which suggest that they have nothing in common (Vladimir, Estragon, Pozzo, Lucky, the Boy), and their clothes tell us very little about their specific origins, least of all that they share some common historical or cultural milieu.

Outside Reading 3-3

Date: Jan. 9^th
Title: Teacher Training, Taught by Students
Author: Winnie Hu
Type of reading: Newspaper piece
You can find the actual article I read from the website below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/nyregion/15metjournal.html?ref=education

Editorial columns, features, and other magazine and newspaper pieces with clear points of view and strong voices—how does the author craft a narrative persona and a “voice” here, and how do these elements impact your response to the content of the piece? If this piece were AP essay, would the speaker be appropriate? Why or why not?

             I really liked the title of this article; it was really heart-warming to me somehow.

             When I was reading the article, at first I thought that there was no clear voice in this article. However, I thought if so the article was saying something, then there should be a voice. And I found out that the author was creating the voice through other people. By “through others,” I mean that the author is not expressing his or her own opinion. Most of this article is about how people reflected to this issue and what actually people said about the issue, and through those the author is telling us how people felt about the new way of teacher training.

In AP essays, it is good to have some references to support our own opinions. However, the point of AP essays is to appeal our own thoughts about the literary works, so this kind of voice would not be appropriate.

As a fellow writer, to talk about the writing of this article, I felt it was a well organized article. Above everything, the opening line of the article arouses the reader’s interest in the first place. The readers would wonder when they read the line, why teenagers are so sleepy in the classes. And then they would keep reading to find the answer. And then it is transited into its real topic smoothly by indicating that the teacher, Ms. O’Bryant, found the answer for the wonder from her student. Followed by the “informal” introduction, the author “formally” introduces this new teacher training program and shares how the program is being spread out and how people feel about it. The organization of the information is logical and straightforward and I think it helped forming the voice. If the passage was not as organized, then the voice could have been unclear.

From a rhetorical point of view, the author’s quotation of actual speech of people increased the credibility of the information; the concise and grammatically perfect sentences made the article more readable but also more formal at the same time; author’s use of parentheses, quotation marks, dashes and rhetorical questions gave the readers more fun reading the article, but the author also limited the use of those “special” punctuations so the article would not lose its formality.

The language, not the voice, of the author, in my opinion, is applicable to AP essays for it is formal but not as hard to read through and also does not cause loss of interest of the readers.

Outside Reading 3-2

Date: Jan. 9^th
Title: Helpless in the Face of Madness
Author: Bob Herbert
Type of reading: Reflective Essay
You can find the actual article I read from the website below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/opinion/15herbert.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Reflective essays—what tone have the author adopted? How does the author create this tone, and how does this affect your response to the content of the piece? Would this tone work for an AP essay? Why or why not?

             It was short column, but it had a clear message: we need gun control. The author of the article is claiming that the society is going into a terrifying madness and that people are being helpless and irresponsible about the issue. He asserts that we need a proper leadership to oppress this madness to prevent any further tragedies from happening.

             The overall tone of the passage was serious and criticizing. The message, the examples, the concise sentences and word choices all help to create the tone and the tone makes the readers to reconsider the message from a more serious point of view.

             Firstly, it was the overall message of the article helped create the tone of voice. Because the passage was dealing with a serious issue, so the tone could not be light or humorous.

             Secondly, it was the examples. The examples provided were not only fitted well in the topic, but all of them were very tragic. From the opening of the column, the author applied the actual example of Virginia Tech shooting incident. And the description of the situation by a student who was at the actual scene made the article more convincing and even tense. Another example of Dallas Green also induced the sympathy of the reader, and recalled people’s sense of responsibility towards the community.

             Thirdly, it was the syntax of the article. The sentences are not very long and the word choices are also very simple. By being concise, the article became more formal and that helped the serious tone of the writing.

             And lastly, it was the details made the article more persuasive. For example, the actual numbers provided in the article about how many people die from gunfire every year clearly tell the readers how severe the problem is. Also, a detail like the word “warm” from the line “Goddard remembered being shot in his left knee and feeling the blood, warm, seeping down his leg” is a good device that made the article more effective on persuading readers. A word “warm” is a very simple word, but exactly because it is so simple and common the readers may actually imagine the “warm blood seeping down” the leg, and so they would be more able to sympathize with the victims about the terror.

             The tone, I believe, would work well for AP essays, for we need to deliver clear message and impression to the readers through our essays.

Outside Reading 3-1

Date: January 7th
Title: Woman’s Work
Author: Meg Wolitzer
Type of reading: Book Review
You can find the actual article I read from the website below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/books/review/Wolitzer-t.html?ref=review

Book reviews—what critical perspectives are at work here? What connections between this piece and other course material or readings (or course material/readings from your previous English classes) do you see?

             The article was a review for a book called “Being Polite to Hitler.” As the tile of this book review, the author of the book is a female. The first paragraph of the article summarizes what the book is about, and I really liked the paragraph for the reviewer could concisely put all important things about the book in it with a poetic language.

First of all, I don’t see any direct connections between the book and the materials we have learned in classes; however, for the book is analyzing much about human lives and human nature, I could see some similarities in personalities of characters. For example, one of the students of Agnes Scofield, Sharon Kuhlman, used to think that athletes were an anti-intellectual pursuit. But later, she fell in love with a college baseball player. People do not see the big picture of the future and many times they like to affirm some things. However, like Oedipus who has had no idea about who the man he killed is and has affirmed the prophet is lying; things can turn out the most unpredictable and the most dumbfounding way and make people be aghast. Another example I detected was that the protagonist, Agnes Scofield, is a widowed woman. Many female figures in the literary works we have read were widowed also even though most of them remarried very soon. Though, because I have not read the book (“Being Polite to Hitler”) yet, so I would not be able to compare them in details.

Secondly, the main perspective of the reviewer towards the book seems to be that the author’s ideas about the society, people’s lives and people’s ideas are well melted into the book. According to the reviewer, the author of the book is called a “quiet” novelist for she is an observant writer whose language doesn’t seem to be able to compete with the increasingly loud noises around her. However, according to the reviewer, the author is actually widening and tightening the views of the readers at the same time.

About this reviewing article, I thought there should be some more transitions between paragraphs. Even though I think it could be a higher level of writing to have no clear transition (the main idea should be clear for sure) but for me at least, it was slightly confusing and was hard to follow the flow perfectly. But I think it was a good piece of article in overall.

Class Notes 3-1

Class Notes

November 29^th – December 10^th

Topic 1 Opening Scene of Hamlet

Opening scenes of the plays usually have a very important impact on the play. Hamlet’s opening scene is

Topic 2 Ophelia

Ophelia has been a symbol of beautiful, innocent but tragic woman to me for a long time. In Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Ophelia,” the poet also depicts her as a guiltless, fragile girl whose tragic love led her to death. However,

Topic 3 Existentialism and Hamlet’s language

Existentialism

Definition: “free will, choice, and personal responsibility”

Individuals must take their own choices without help from such external standards as laws, and the freedom of choice is necessarily accompanied by responsibility. People try to escape from the responsibility by ignoring it, but then they succeed only in deceiving themselves. Existentialists insist that individuals must accept full responsibility for their behavior, no matter how difficult.

Major Themes of Existentialism

Moral Individualism – One must choose one’s own way without the aid of universal, objective standards. The individual must determine what is right and wrong in a world of moral chaos.

Subjectivity – Existentialists stress the importance of personal perspective, passionate individual action, and acting on one’s convictions in order to arrive at truth. Also they stress that every choice must be a personal one.

Choice and Commitment – Existentialists believe that one creates his or her own nature through making choices. And one must accept the risk and responsibility of making free choices.

Dread and Anxiety (Angst in German) – The responsibility for making those choices create feelings of dread and anxiety.

Meaning and Absurdity – Meaning must be constructed through courageous choice in the face of this absurd situation.

Authenticity – We need to make decisions courageously; the key is to accept our own limitations and realize we cannot achieve certainty when making decisions.

Major Proponants

Kierkegaard(1813 – 1855): Founder of modern existentialism; he reacted against the absolute idealism of the 19^th century and stressed the ambiguity and absurdity. He advocated Christian way of life.

                  Here I have a question: Christian belief and Existentialism are not very similar; the core of two ideas are almost the opposite.  -----

‘Dread is God’s way of calling each individual to making a commitment to a personally valid way of life.’

Friedrich Nietzche(1844 – 1900): He rejected the entire Judeo-Christian moral tradition in favor of pagan ideal. He espoused pessimism and individual will that opposes conforming to the morality of the majority.

                  I have read his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra and was totally confused.

Martin Heidegger(1889 - 1976): He argued that human beings can never hope to understand why they are here. Instead, each individual must choose a goal and follow it.

‘Anxiety leads to the individual’s confrontation with nothingness(death being the ultimate nothingness), and with the impossibility of finding ultimate justification for the choices he or she must take.’

Sartre(1905 - 1980): He declared that human beings require a rational basis for their lives but are unable to achieve one.

 ‘Nausea is the individual’s recognition that the universe is indifferent and the word anguish for the recognition of the total freedom of choice that confronts us at every moment.’

Existentialism and Literature

Fyodor Dostoyevski / Notes from the Underground: Human nature is self-destructive; only Christian love can save humanity from itself, but such love cannot be understood philosophically.

Franz Kafka / Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Castle: He presents isolated character confronting vast, elusive, menacing bureaucracies.

Albert Camus / The Stranger

Theater of the Absurd (TOTA)

Christianism and Existentialism

                                  

Hamlet’s language (toward different people)

Three personalities of Hamlet:

-Wilting flower Hamlet (“Tragically defeated by life” Hamlet)

-Rage Hamlet

-Cold, clinical and logical Hamlet

Topic 4 Allusions in Hamlet

1.       Old Hamlet died in an orchard and he proclaimed that a serpent stung him. This is obviously an allusion of Garden of Eden from Bible, and he is saying that Claudius is a Satan.

Topic 5 General analysis of Hamlet

We can ask ourselves a series of questions while reading Hamlet:

Is the murder of Old Hamlet only Claudius’s scheme? Why would Claudius have killed his own brother? Is it for the throne or for love? Is Gertrude totally innocent? Can Gertrude be seen as an allusion of Eve? Then who is Adam?

Topic 6 Hamlet in Film

We have different personas in different situations. And as I mentioned before, Hamlet also has very different personas and that made Hamlet one of the most difficult characters to act. There are several Hamlet movies,

1948

1990

1996

http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/TheHamletSite/films.htm

Class Notes 2-5

*Clarification(?): I have missed 2 days of school – Nov 22^nd and 23^rd, so I looked at other people’s notes for those two days’ notes; and also this is why I upload my note so late.*

Class Notes

AP Multiple Choice Questions

Types of Questions:

1.      Rhetorical Function

• Need you to explain purpose of a sentence/ stanza/ paragraph

• Try to ask yourself what the selected part of the passage or poem does

2.      Context

• This type of question asks meaning of a word in the context of a passage

• Need to identify the meanings of the words correctly (in the way the author uses it)

3.      Antecedent

• This type of question asks you to identify the meaning of a word used in the context of a passage

• “EXCEPT” questions!

4.      Style

• This type of question asks you to consider style choices the author has made

• If the answer combines two answers in one, make sure both of them are correct

5.      Tone

• This type of question asks you to identify the tone of the passage

• If there are two parts in one answer, make sure both of them are correct

Things to Remember:

1.      Read the questions slowly

2.      Read the whole passage first and then work on the questions

HAMLET

Background:

• Based on a Norse legend by Saxo Grammaticus in Latin around 1200 AD

• Amleth is Hamlet’s original name

• In Saxo’s Hamlet, “Claudius” murders “Old Hamlet” to marry “Gertrude,” but later “Hamlet(Amleth)” revenges and becomes a rightful new king

Seneca:

Aristotle Tragedy -> Tragic error

Seneca -> Tragic flaw(more free will)

             ->Revenge

The plot of the Senecan tragedies can include:

• hero’s hesitation

• hero’s insanity

• hero’s contemplation of suicide

• multiple levels of intrigue

• able scheming villain

• abundance of philosophic soliloquies

• sensational murder on stage/ exhibition of bodies

Audience encounter

• the offense; can be maximized by injuries

• antagonist

• clarification of strategy and marshaling of resources

• series of delay; anything to retard momentum

• some unforeseen development that almost thwarts the scene

• the showdown- revenge carried out

• intensified form is called “tragedy of blood”

Class Notes 2-4

Class Notes
Nov 8^th – 12^th

♥ Writing a Thesis:
T hesis
A nswers
P rompt

♥ Every prompt includes this question: “How does the author use technique to create meaning?” Remember to answer this question!

When writing a thesis, remember:♥ Make it clear!

♥ Include meaning, the hidden SO WHAT question.