Open Promt 11/11 edit

1988. Choose a distinguished novel or play in which some of the most significant events are mental or psychological; for example, awakenings, discoveries, changes in consciousness. In a well-organized essay, describe how the author manages to give these internal events the sense of excitement, suspense, and climax usually associated with external action. Do not merely summarize the plot.

     In the novel Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen creates an engaging plot revolving around the social and love affairs of young women of the upper-middle class. The majority of the action isn't what you would consider physical action, as in many novels, because it all happens with the dialogue, thoughts, and the relations between characters. Austen manages to make these as exciting as gunfights or car chases by making the characters relatable yet still exaggerating the drama past what is realistic to make it seem bigger. 

     The way Austen makes characters more relatable is a key element in making the action exciting. Simply talking about two people who are suffering from heartbreak is somewhat boring, but feeling like you yourself or someone you are close to is suffering makes you want to know how the pain will resolve, and so you are more engaged in the action. Austen makes this possible by giving the characters traits that you can see in yourself (idealism, emotion, romantic vision, extreme judgement, a shoulder to lean on), and then gives each character a love interest that you may sympathize with or despise, therefore giving you a reason to root for one or the other to succeed or fail in their courtships. 

     The internal conflicts of the story are made more engaging by Austen's way of making them more dramatic than would be realistic. For example, there is the tale of Colonel Brandon, the 35 year old married-once military man who falls in love with Marianne, the younger of the two sisters in the story. At first, his attentions to a naive, silly, idealistic 16 year old seem odd, but as Austen unravels his story, you start to sympathize with his pain. It is filled with dramatic twists-the promising of his childhood love to his older brother, who then abused her and left her penniless with an illegitimate child, and as she died of tuberculosis in the slums, he promised to take care of her child and forever bear the heartbreak. His past is almost shocking, engaging you immediately and heartbreakingly, making you want to read on to find out how he deals with it.  

     Jane Austen successfully makes internal conflicts as interesting as external ones by making the characters relatable and the events dramatic. These techniques make the reader get involved with the characters and get them curious about the events, even though they all are just simple dialogues and relationships. A relatable character draws one into the story because you start to put yourself in their shoes and desire to see how things work out, while making events more dramatic give them a scope outside of what you are used to, engaging you in how they are resolved. 

R&G are DEAD

Author: Tom Stoppard wrote this in 1966. He is a post-modernist playwright.

Setting: Well, the setting of this play is ambiguous. There really doesn't seem to be a defined setting, which I believe is the point. It emphasizes the, again, ambiguous nature of the play, as well as defines the confusion that follows throughout. Sometimes, however, we have a defined setting, and that's when this play transitions into Hamlet.

Summary:

Two Elizabethian men, R & G, are in a unknown setting, flipping coins, which always come up heads for some reason, Rosencrantz winning each time this happens. They recall that they are travelling because a messenger sent for them. The encounter the Players, who are actually prostitutes in a way, and say the men can "participate" for a fee. Guildenstern, thinking about the coin flips, uses it to his advantages and proposes a bet, and the Players must perform for them because they cannot pay. (also we are then told the coin landed tails up).

Now they are in Elsinore, bam. They watch as Hamlet and Ophelia leave stage and they meet Claudius who mixes them up. They realize what is going on, and practice questioning him. They overhear Hamlet speaking in "code" to Polonius. They talk to Hamlet and fail with their plan to question him. The Players arrive. There will be a play the next day. Hamlet tells them what they have to play.

They rehearse the play which, obviously, mirrors Hamlet. When they perform it, Claudius is upset, and sends R&G and Hamlet on a boat to England. Hamlet switches the letter they were carrying. There is a comical scene with pirates and then Hamlet is gone. The players mimic death, they talk about death, then it switches over to the end of Hamlet .

 Characters: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern- two men finding their purpose in life. One is philosophical and jaded while the other is childish and idealistic. They flip kinda.

 Alfred- that poor boy.

 Player- cunning, witty, confident, desperate. For the rest, see Hamlet post.

This play is written in a way that is very specific about the actions the characters perform, how they perform it, and where on stage they are when they do them. However, in contrast, the setting is rarely that specific, except when they're in Elsinore, which essentially is specific to follow an interpretation of Hamlet. The often vague, float-y language helps us visualize how hopeless the characters sometimes are.

Symbolism:

The way the coins always land on one side represent how many things they took to be true are no longer in effect (such as probability, time, and randomness), and tell us perhaps the characters are not in charge of their own fate.

Quotes:

"GUIL: Well…aren't you going to change into your costume?
PLAYER: I never change out of it, sir."

This kind of shadows the idea that the characters are in a play within a play, and that the Player knows so. It also shows how people don't need to "act", persay, because they are always acting, and prepared to do so. 

Theme: 
Death is not to be feared, nor is it something to be welcomed. Fate brings all to the same end, nothingness. 

These themes are emphasized throughout the play by 
a) the philosophical discussions about death being just dissapearing, just nothingness. 
b) how the things they do are predetermined (by the plot of Hamlet)
c) the ending, how the characters just fade away

(somewhat unfinished post)

Response to Course Material 3/10

In class, we've started to read Ceremony. I like it a lot, actually, because it's nice to have a change of pace from the plays we've been reading. It has a unique structure, it's almost like someone broke a mirror and as the story goes on, you see each piece of the mirror as it's put together, and as it progresses, the mirror is less and less fragmented. I see a lot of symbolism in this story, and I'm excited to see how it pans out.
We've also been doing some writing practice for the AP, which is a good thing, seeing as I'm not to great with essays when I'm on a time crunch. In other classes, we've practiced essay writing so differently, because we're usually writing papers- not writing AP essays. AP essays seem to differ in the ways that a) they are timed and b) you need to synthesize more information, with less prior knowledge and no research into a smaller package. It's a challenge, to be sure, but I think I'm getting the hang of it.