Drama Drama Drama...

During the course of the year we went on field trips to go watch two plays- Antigone and 27 Miles. In my opinion the two plays were very very different. The way Antigone was set up, you followed multiple people and listened to their soliloquys through-out the play while in 27 Miles, it was really mostly the main girl's thoughts that you got to hear. An obvious difference would be that the actors in Antigone all spoke in Shakespearean while 27 Miles was so modern that some of my friends kept a count of how many times certain curse words were mentioned. Something interesting that I didn't really notice about the two plays has to do with the tradegy comedy work we've done recently. Antigone would probably be classified as a tragedy due to the fact that almost ALL of the characters die by the end while 27 Miles would be more of a comedy becuase everything ends well though the journey was difficult. Nevertheless, I enjoyed both plays, however dramatic or mildy confusing to understand. The actors did an excellent job of portraying their characters' emotions for the audience to witness.

I cried..

I still can't believe that the movie Tuesday's with Morrie was based off a true story. I'm not positive but I think the reason we watched that movie was becuase we were in our memoir/autobiography/biography unit. One thing that I defnitely didn't know before that unit was that those sorts of books/movies can actually be really interesting. Fairies and make-believe don't always have to be involved for a story to be enrapturing like I used to think. After we finished watching the movie, there was a class discussion about multiple points of the movie including how we think Mitch changed as well as why he decided to keep going back to visit Morrie. In addition to my own views, I now had multiple people's perspectives on Mitch's thought processes.

We also had to write a memoir, which I learned is a true story about only a certain part of someone's life, about a life changing experience. I chose to write mine about when I moved to the US of A and really enjoyed imitating the writing of Daniel Tammet, I read his autobiography for an assignment recently, by attempting to recreate exactly how I percieved things at the time with imagery and tons of other literary devices. Ex. There were still brown cardboard boxes crisscrossed with stamps crowding the hallway.

Learning about Symbolism

The most in-depth project we had to do featuring symbolism was writing the Mistletoe Essay. It definitely opened my eyes a great deal to how much we actually see symbolism and not recognize it. Some of my favorite interpretations of symbols in the story were:
Mistletoe- love, freedom (it was growing wild)
Lover's stroke- abrupt ending of the main character's happy life
Trip to the location of the mistletoe- The woods themselves reminded that narrator of the happy times she used to have. When she lead her husband to it, the secret location seemed to represent her long over affair and how his coming disturbed the peace/happiness in the affair.
When I finished writing that essay, I felt like I really understood the story Mistletoe inside and out. I even was able to figure what I thought was the theme of the story which was that memories can take over your life unless you focus on the present. All in all, this assignment definitely fulfilled it's purpose which was to help me really understand symbolism and theme as well gain the ability to recognize them in stories.

Romeo Juliet Movie Comparison

Over the course of our drama unit we watched a total of three movies each being different versions of Romeo and Juliet.  There was the Zefferelli (Zeff) version, the Romeo Must Die (RMD) version and the Leonardo DeCaprio (LDC) version. All three movies featured two people from completely different surroundings that fall in love and end up secretly getting married.  The conclusion to all the movies is also that the lovers die trying to be together and the opposing families find a way to live in peace.  But, the whole reason we watched the three movies was because they were all so different so obviously there are a lot of differences.  The most obvious difference is the time periods.  The Zefferelli version took place during the Renessaince and both of the other version were in modern-day.  The common difference between families that both the Zefferelli version and the Leonardo De Caprio version share is that Romeo's family is usually the less wealthy and definitely more relaxed family.  Juliet in the RMD version was the most independent as well as the Juliet that was the closest to her father.  Overall, I found it really interesting to watch all the different versions even though I could definitely predict what was going to happen, how the director interpreted the story and gave it it's own little twist was mighty fun to watch.

Poetry Anthology

When the poetry anthology assignment was first introduced to us, I gave an inward sigh of dismay  towards the mountain-load of tedious work coming at us.  But, I soon came to find that I really enjoyed looking through websites for poems that appealed to me because they were witty, said something i agreed with or was just plain fun to read.  The part that most enlightened me was writing all the reflections.  They made me notice the details of the poem especially the use of literary devices, most commonly imagery and similes, in almost every poem was very interesting and I never would have noticed them if I didn't have to write the reflection.  Lastly, it was very satisfying to be able to take home a bound copy of the anthology and have the pleasure of opening it up to a random page to encounter a poem that I truly love and reread to introduction to reopen my eyes to the amazingness of that particular poem.

Favorite Movie of the Year!

I have to say, the best movie we've watched this year is definitely the Dead Poets Society. Not only do I love Robin Williams' acting, he also did a great job portraying a teacher who teaches outside the box at an all boys private boarding school.  The director also did a great job with incorporating symbolism into the movie. An example we discussed in class is when Neil stood in front of his window bare-chested and with his Puck crown on.  We concluded that Neil was remembering the moment when he was truly happy and was able to be at peace with the world seeing who he really was.  The poetry part of the movie was also very moving because you gain a respect for poetry by witnessing how all the boys have so much fun gathering during the night and sharing their innermost thoughts through poetry.  Although, my favorite part was when shy Todd stood up on his desk and connoted back to the beginning of the year when Mr.Keating told everyone to call him "Oh captain my captain" and yelled exactly that.  I will definitely always keep this quote with me though: "I sound my barbarious YAWP over the rooftops of the world." -Robert Frost

Freitag Pyramid Unit

I think the best way to begin this blog of the year would be to organize everything into a Freitag Pyramid. Now you may ask, "Wait, I thought Freitag's were only used for graphing books, movies, or plays!"  But if you think about it, those are all about real life which exactly what this year was.  This way, I can also prove how much I understand Freitags although, do keep in mind that Freitag's are subject to opinion.  

Exposition- All those introductory handouts on what we're going to do this year and the reviewing of the summer assignment

Inciting Incident- When we finally turned in the last character map based on our summer reading book.  

Rising Action- The language unit- research blogs complete with visits from guest speakers. Persuasive essay unit where we also went and saw Antigone. Memoir biographies and autobiography unit. When we read night or Maus and had a discussion on Mistletoe.  Lastly, the poetry unit where we all created poetry anthologies.

Climax- The climax in my opinion was watching all the different versions of Romeo and Juliet and then finally when we wrote the tragedy to comedy reflection about how  we would alter the story.  This project felt like it was the last big unit for the year and afterwards you can just picture how everything is going to begin winding down.

Falling Action- This synthesis project probably is all the falling action for this year not because I don't like it. It's only because it's bringing everything to an end and closing the year out by summing all that we've learned up.

Resolution- This hasn't happened yet but I'm pretty sure this will happen when we take the final and close out the year for good.

One reflection on this Freitag Pyramid is that it is quite untraditional in the sense that the climax is more towards the end as opposed to in the middle of the story.  I feel that the climax for this year was determined less by how much I liked the assignment but more like when the year is close enough to ending that the tension of the year is easing and people are starting to get excited about summer.