Profound Text.
Non mortem timemus, sed cogitationem mortis
For the past couple weeks, the primary area of study has been focused on tragedy. I think I have a pretty firm grasp on what makes up a literary tragedy; what it's about and what usually goes on inside a tragic story. The most profound thing I have learned regarding the significance of the tragic arts is that the story is supposed to teach a lesson that reveals some truth about human nature, be it the response of the main hero to whatever tragic thing that happens to him or her, or the audience's sympathy to the characters. Personally, while I can see this happening and see why it is important, this is seems to apply to me only partially. Throughout this tragedy unit, the things that I have learned from the most have been the TED talks and the and the documents explaining what tragedy is. I think this is both good and bad. The good part comes from the fact that I learned something. The bad part comes from how I don't think I learned much from the actual tragedy piece we have read so far, Oedipus Rex. While Oedipus was a good example of what I have learned about tragedy, I don't feel that I have learned any new profound truths about human nature. Whether this stems from me being not yet able to comprehend the message in Oedipus or me already having known the message and not realizing it, I don't know. This is something I hope to find out as I read more tragedy. In terms of the TED talks, however, they helped me see what tragedy has to offer, which definitely helped my understanding about the topic.
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This week I basically just continued to learn and write about the elements of literature. What I found particularly interesting was how there were elements of fantasy in The Most Dangerous Game. While I was first reading through it, I thought there wasn't any. There wasn't any magic, nor unicorns, or anything of the sort. Those were the things I thought pretty much defined a fantasy story. While I was writing my essay, however, I realized The Most Dangerous Game had more fantasy in it than meets the eye. A lot of the plot draws parallel to what can be encountered in a fantasy story. In addition, I felt some things within the story referenced traditional fantasy. Things like how the protagonist shows up to an actual castle to receive his quest. If castles aren't fantasy, I don't know what is. Or how he is greeted at the door by a giant. A giant in a castle seems extremely fantastical.
Beyond these references to fantasy, however, there isn't a whole lot more. Everything afterwards in the story just logically runs its course. What I learned from doing this is that there are a lot of parallels within different pieces of writing that I probably often miss. I'll try to be more observant when I read in the future. That being said, I'm not sure how important recognizing these parallels are. With The Most Dangerous Game, even though I know that it has the basis of a fantasy story, I don't think it really adds anything to my experience or comprehension. This something I think I will find out by reading more. The thing I found most interesting this week was what James Jackson said about just sitting down and finding a place to write. I don't personally have a designated place where I write; I just sit on a couch somewhere in my house with my laptop whenever I have something I need to write. I think that I'll probably get around to finding a designated spot and see if it helps me write. I also thought what Jackson said about the statistics of who will like your writing was interesting. I liked how he talked about how he was still confident enough to keep writing books, even though statistically, only a quarter of his readers would actually enjoy them. I personally have an irrational dislike of letting people read my writing; I think partially for fear that my writing will be judged. The most important takeaway from his message for me is to just keep writing no matter what other people think. It's a good message that I'll keep in mind as I'm writing in the future, and with the other things I do, since the message can apply to many other things.
In addition to hearing from James Jackson, this week I also learned more about the short stories and elements of fiction. After reading the pieces with humor as a prime element, I didn't find them to be particularly funny, at least in the traditional sense. The story about rape fantasies was only funny because of how weird it was, and The Drunkard was sort of funny in a corny, ironic way. That being said, they were funnier than most other Lit-y stories I've read before, and I can definitely see how the humor makes the stories merely weird, not super weird and dark. This week in class was pretty much just carried over from last week, so it doesn't really feel like I learned anything all that new. That's not to say that this week was unproductive, however. I found the time spent on revising my creative writings to be particularly useful. I find that I really hate reading and revising my own writing for some reason, so to have some time dedicated to only that was beneficial to my productivity. Especially since a lot of my creative writing was on my college application essays, it helped kill two birds with one stone. With my revisions, I realize that most of them weren't really revising anything major like the ideas I'm trying to express, but just revising things like word choice and phrasing. This seems to correspond with the biggest trouble that I have with writing, which is that I know what I want to say, but I can't seem to find the right words to convey it. Because of this, my writing sounds a bit fragmented or unclear before I revise it.
In addition to revising my writing, I also appreciated the poems by Ross Gay. I learned from them that good poems can pretty much be about anything, that the main topic can be seemingly small and inconsequential but the connections large and profound. I think this particular bit of knowledge will help me be more free in choosing topics when I have to write my own poems in the future. This week I learned how literature is similar to other forms of art. Like paintings, the meaning of a particular piece of literature is up to the reader. The reader can choose what parts of the writing resonates with them, and appreciate the reading based on his or her own tastes.
The lesson I got out of this fact is that I have a choice when determining what I enjoy reading. I used to think that if a piece of artwork was well liked by everyone, then I needed to appreciate it as well. I think that's why I never understood the point of art. I used to think that there is only one way of looking at a painting or a piece of literature, and that if I couldn't see why other people thought a particular piece was so great, it was something wrong with me. I now know that I have a large say in whether or not I can see the point of a piece of literature. While this may seem pretty obvious, that one gets to choose whether or not they like something, it has some lasting effects on me. I used to not like reading literary pieces because they didn't make sense to me. Now that I know that part of the meaning of the work is up to me, I think I will enjoy reading literature more because it's more fluid and up to interpretation than I once thought. This week I learned that the story and literature aspects of a novel can be clearly differentiated. While they both play an important part in a piece of writing, they are concerned with different things. The story part is more concerned with driving the plot and the events in the writing, while the literature part is concerned with setting the feel of the story and giving a deeper meaning to it. Both aspects complement each other to produce the effect the writer is trying to create. I can clearly see this difference between story and literature in the book I am reading, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. In the book, he claims that many of the events that he wrote about actually did not happen that way or did not happen at all. He states that while the actual event may not be true, the feelings and thoughts that the events evoke are absolutely true. I think that this provides a clear example of how the two aspects of story and literature a piece of writing can be different to the point where one is true but one is not, yet they both work together to give the reader a sense of what the writer is trying to say. I think that's the point O'Brien was trying to make when he said that a bad war story could be true in the 'story' sense but be completely untrue in the 'feeling' sense, yet a good war story could be untrue in the events that it tells yet is true in the feelings it evokes. All in all, I now understand what the difference is between a regular piece of writing, where the plot-driven story aspect plays a prominent role, and a piece of literature, where the inside details play a huge part in helping the story. This week in class I learned about the TP-CASTT of poetry analysis, which is a systematic way of looking at a poem in order to be able to understand the poem more easily. I find myself to be a person that is able to do things best when I have a clear plan about what to do, and I found it much easier to follow the TP-CASTT system than trying to glean information by simply reading the poem over and over. The TP-CASTT system tells me exactly what the important things are to look for in order to understand the big picture in the poem.
Not only has the TP-CASTT system taught me what to look for in a poem, it has also taught me to appreciate poems. Up to this point, I have never understood what the big deal is with poems. Yeah, sure, the ones that rhyme might be clever and sound good and all, but what about the ones that don't rhyme? Those made absolutely no sense to me. They seemed to be inefficient ways of telling stories that either don't make sense or don't sound incomplete. Now, knowing the TP-CASTT system, I can appreciate poems for their complexity and deeper meaning. Before, I would read what poems say on the outside, but I would never really read the deeper meaning. Thus, I couldn't appreciate poetry for what it is, a neat, clever way for the author to express themselves. This week, when we read The Eagle by Alfred Tennyson, the TP-CASTT method helped me appreciate the literary elements used within the poem. Had I read the poem without TP-CASTT, I would have thought something along the lines of yeah, so what? An eagle with hands falls off a cliff. So what? With TP-CASTT, however, I could see that the eagle isn't actually an eagle, and could appreciate the beauty of the image the author painted. I could see how the poem is complex from the way it contrasts ideas. All in all, I learned the value of poetry as a form of writing that can express ideas on multiple levels. Nobody ever expects to learn anything on the first week of school. After all, much of the time spent right after summer break is just getting back into the habit of things, and most of the stuff happening in class is just review in preparation of new material in the following weeks. So it is quite interesting to think that maybe I have learned things on the first week, even if I don't realize it.
I learn things all the time. I just don't always notice it. Information tends to sort of become common sense as I learn it, and I can't tell it from things that I already know. Either that, or I know something but I never really know it. That's what happened this week. I thought I knew why I was taking AP Lit, but I've never really truly thought known my actual reasoning until asked about it. It's a case where I had to learn exactly why and put words to a feeling I've known. It's the same with when I was asked about myself as a reader and writer. Sure, I know when I read something I like or don't like, but I've never reflected in general about my reading habits. I've had to learn how I am as a reader in detail. I've learned even more about myself as a writer, because writing is something I don't do very often and never think about. All in all, this first week has taught me that I'm learning things all the time. I look forward to a year full of learning and reflection. |
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