We read The American Dream, Pride and Prejudice, Ceremony, Death of a Salesman, and Hamlet.
The American Dream
• Mommy, Daddy and Grandma all live in a house.
• Centered around satisfaction
• Theatre of the Absurd
• No one can remember the recent past in accurate detail
• They don’t recognize people
• Mrs. Barker plays a universal role
• Grandma enters her day old cake into a competition and wins money because they love it
• The Young man is replacing Grandma in the house
• The new shiny and appearance based American dream in replacing the old American dream of depth, happiness and old fashion values.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• Elizabeth, Mr. Darcy, Jane, Mr. Bingley, Charlotte, Mr. Collins, Lydia and Wickham
• Elizabeth is prejudice against Mr. Darcy
• Mr. Darcy is too prideful to admit his fancy of Elizabeth
• Elizabeth is always true to herself and comes out on top
• Jane isn’t as true and comes in second
• Charlotte sells out and gets Collins
• Lydia basically ruins herself and gets Wickham
Ceremony
• Live at Laguna
• Pueblo nation
• Tayo and Rocky go to war, Rocky dies, Tayo comes home and is messed up. Tayo lives with Grandmother, Robert and Aunite. His friends are Harley and Leroy (they’re always drunk). Josiah is his dead uncle whom he loved to death.
• Emo = evil sorcerer. His full name is Geronimo. Geronimo is the hero of the enemy clan aka the enemy of the
• Thought-Woman and Sun Father are the parent gods
• Sun Father is like yellow and
• Thought-Woman = lady making the web of thoughts
• People like (Ts’eh) function as deities too
• Loose NA language = loose NA culture
• Medicine man = Betonie
• Huge circle motifs → the whole book moves in a counterclockwise circle to counter the sorcery of Emo
• Circles in weather or season, in direction, in wind patterns,
• Betonie encourages a combination of the cultures for survival (oral tradition and book; modern NA medicine techniques; ect)
• Gallup = evil town where the NA live dirty and drunk on the streets, too proud to go home to their reservations or too addicted to leave
• Night Swan = Mexican whore that seduces Robert and Tayo along with other NA men
• Lots of nature descriptions and flowery words
• Tayo finds Josiah’s cattle, steels them back from a white guy (who he thought would never steel because he is white) and meets Ts’eh
• Ts’eh = Mountain range that helps try to cure Tayo. Also his lover
• TAyo is very caught between the white and NA worlds
• Huge motif of the stories being created, born, kept in the belly
• Stabs Emo in the end to kill the stories that are evil
Death of a Salesman
• Willy, Linda, Happy, Biff
• Unsatisfactory consumerist lifestyle → things are often referred to as being good one moment and then sucky the next
• Idealized past → Willy claims a lot of things about the past but none of those actually happened
• Capitalism takes its toll → dumping Willy on the streets when he’s too old kindof treating him like the appliances and other commercial goods that we throw away with out a care or that don’t last as long as they should
• Willy obsesses over being well liked
Hamlet
• King Claudius kills Old Hamlet and marries Gertrude. Hamlet is not happy that his mom married his uncle and when the Ghost of his dad comes back to tell him that Claudius killed him it gets ugly.
• Denmark is corrupt and that’s why everyone has to die in the end and Fortinbras can then take the thrown and purify it.
• The first scene is a mini set up to the whole play
• Reality vs non-reality
• Hartio is the skeptic
• Hamlet is set up as a kindof Jesus figure
• Denmark is compared to a human body, with the crown being the head, it’s a repeated analogy
• This is all I have on Hamlet for right now because I’m still annotating ☺
Your summary of the works we have actually read is great for study, especially because they can be used in the AP exam for open prompts. A thorough understanding of these classical works could prove invaluable.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if you do intend to study these works for use on the AP exam (as you would if you thought it prudent to include them here), you may wish to also include a few direct quotations to memorize so you can make use of them on the exam. They always add volumes to your work and make the technique-effect-meaning synthesis so much easier.
Other than that, your analysis of the message and themes of these respective works is good, but for some (like P&P/American Dream) there seems to be more plot summary than discussion of those items. Inclusion of those things would make calling their messages to memory while essay writing on the AP exam much more efficient and accurate.
Your summaries are great, it was very clear, and main point are pointed out. If I didn't know any of these stories, and by just reading your summaries, I feel like I could have learned a lot by just your summaries. It was good.
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