As much I as enjoyed discussing Death of a Salesman in class, I did not have as much fun annotating it. We are supposed to use at least three of the DIDLS and connect them to our annotations, but I found that most of the time I was just making comments on the motifs, theme, tone, etc. Finding techniques to annotate was a greater struggle than it was for American Dream. However, after reading the commentaries on Salesman, I saw that Miller said that the only real technique he used was Willy's use of Victorian language. This definitely made me feel better about my troubles with the annotations, and it also made me realize that a book or play doesn't have to be stuffed with DIDLS to create the theme. Of course DIDLS are still necessary and I'm still going to work hard to find them, but now I know to relax if they aren't as frequent as they are in other works.
Now that we are on to Hamlet, I am more confused then I have ever been. Reading along with the text while people read aloud is almost the same thing as tuning everyone out and waiting until Ms. Holmes stops to explain. Even if I knew what all of the different words from Shakespeare's time meant, I would still have trouble following. If something doesn't have straight-forward sentence structure I can't flip it around in my mind fast enough to understand the play as we're reading it. Hamlet is even harder than Romeo and Juliet or Taming of the Shrew because the plot even in plain English is difficult to comprehend. At least I have something to work on! We're only just starting so I'm hoping to improve as we get further into the play.
The other difficult thing about Hamlet is envisioning the staging. I also found this difficult in Salesman, but not so much so in American Dream. So far this year, we've only read plays, and plays do not give very detailed stage directions so the reader is left up to his or her own devices. Staging can greatly affect a scene, and knowing where the characters are in relation to each other affects mood and can even affect tone. Therefore with little stage directions, I feel like I could be picturing and hearing the scene extremely different from what was intended and possibly missing something important. Then again, perhaps that is the point. Forcing us to decide what exactly is happening can help us analyze the scene more closely. With this in mind I'm hoping to take this into account when we really get into Hamlet.
Hey Alison, It's good to be in the same group again! This is a really thoughtful and detailed response to the materials we've covered. I agree with a lot of the things you've mentioned. I personally don't enjoy Shakespeare because it's like reading without understanding. I think you feel the same way. I found out that sparknotes has some good analysis on important speeches found throughout Hamlet, so I hope you find that useful. It's interesting that you thought about the staging. I thought DOS was much easier to stage because we saw the movie before. I do understand that it's much more difficult for Hamlet with all the different styled language and text.
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up a good point with the DIDLS making up the book. Personally, with the Shakespeare annotations this time around I've had to go through several times and look for certain things - first just for explanations and context (so I can actually understand what' going on), then for things that stick out to me, and lastly for DIDLS, mostly at parts where I didn't write a lot. Personally I struggle finding terms and vocab in open-ended text, but I'll do my best! It's pretty much practice for the final at this point. (Yikes!)
ReplyDeleteI agree with you about reading it through as a class. With Shakespeare it seems like everyone is just confused and doesn't know what's going on so reading one play drags into a weeks worth of monotone reading. Personally I like Shakespeare, but I'm more of a fan of the comedies. I've found that if I see a well-executed production of Shakespeare that I really like, the acting transcends all of Shakespeare's words, and everything is engaging and comprehensive, even if I don't know every little detail.