English III

New Juniors,

I’m sure by now you have sufficiently psyched yourself up that this year will be a very unique experience, and by no means are you wrong.  If you have not had Mrs. Duke before, you are right, she is like no other but it is not always a bad thing to be different.  If you have had Mrs. Duke before then you are in the same boat that I was in, and I advise you to enter with an open mind.  I know that you are thinking that this year will be tough and with that again you are not wrong, but I do want to give you some pointers that will hopefully help you out. 

1. Homework is crucial.  If you don’t do it, it hurts you in the end.  There are a lot of points awarded for homework and they add up fast.  Some of it may be time consuming, and you may not want to do it, but trust me that if you want an A, you must do your homework.  Mrs. Duke is very fair with her acceptance of late work, but I do not recommend taking advantage of that.  Do it on time, even better do it when it is assigned as opposed to when it is due.  This will make you life easier because it will lighten the stress load.   

2. Classwork is helpful.  For those that are quiet, get used to a long road to breaking out of your shell.  I am usually fairly quiet and I try to avoid talking in class, and when I first had Mrs. Duke my participation grade suffered because of it.  It helps to answer questions and try to add to group discussions.  Also I have found that this helps with remembering what is said.

3. Blogs are a lot of points.   Do them. They are worth it in the end.  I know that doing them all on Sunday seems like a good idea, but it isn’t.  It takes a long time to do them all at once, trust me, I spent many Sundays doing blogs.  Always do them on time, it will help out you and your classmates because they will not have to stay up forever to wait to comment.  It is just good for everyone to do blogs early and comment often.

4. Vocab is not ordinary.  In most classes you can get away with just knowing the definition, but not here.  When you are told to use the words, actually do it.  I know, “why not just study them?” because it won’t work in the practical test that are given.  In this class you need to actually KNOW the words.

5. Last I want to say a little bit about those of you who have trouble with reading comprehension.  I know it seems really hard to have to read all of the novels that we read in this year.  It is no walk in the park I agree, but make sure that you pay attention to detail and make yourself sit and think about the reading as you are doing it.  It will help you out a lot when you are asked to do stuff with the readings.

Don’t worry too much about this class.  Work hard and put some thought into what you are doing and you will be just fine.

Your interpretation is sort of what I went off of for the whole play.  I felt that you had great emotion and it seemed as if you had become Hamlet when acting it out.  At times i did feel that the emotion seemed to take over which had its good and bad effects to the audience.  Though it was good to see the emotion because I’m sure that Hamlet was feeling a lot of different things in the play, sometimes I felt it went a little overboard and made him appear whinny.  I felt your interaction with other characters in the play was very good, and I feel that every conversation had a good point behind it, which made it easy to listen to because there was no long boring conversations. 

I felt that along with the actual words and emotion behind them that the spacing and rythem that you used to portray different emotions.  This helped get the tone of a scene or statement.  I felt that when there were pauses they fit because they allowed for reflection of what had happened.  Also when you spoke quickly there was emotion that was building, in suspense for what would happen next.  Overall I felt that you did a very good job with your interpretation.

I feel that you video was unique, at least Act one Scene one was.  As for your character of Hamlet, I felt you were very emotional.  It seems that at times that may have taken away from the actual words of the play because it was difficult to get past the motions and whispering or yelling.  I also would not have made your character look so sketch.  I felt that he looked ready to rob someone because of the slick blond hair and the mustache,  I probably would have rethought that.

About the whole directing part of the play, I would not have made all of the same decisions as you.  All though I thought that making the ghost actually appear had a point, I do not think that I would have made him actually look like a man.  If I were you I would have made him more of a wind or shadow.  I also would have downplayed the music because I found it slightly distracting to listen when there was loud mood setting music in the background.

Overall, I felt that your play was a good version of Hamlet.

This is a really sad ending, and I knew it was going to happen.  I feel that the fact they knew that they were bound to die was hard.  Also not having any true reason or cause of death I didn’t like.  I yet again knew it would end like that though.  I just still wasn’t quite expecting such an abrupt ending to suck a seeminglyhappy story.  Ros and Guil seemed up in the sky most of the time, but in this reading they were more scared and confused about their situation.  I was not expecting them to figure out their destiny so that was an interesting twist for me.

In this reading I found more quotes about realizing destiny and writing about writing than ever before.  One line I found interesting was when Guil points out “Then what do you expect? We act on scraps of information…shifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instincts” pg. 102 and Ros says ” Incidents! All we get is incidents! Dear God, is it too much to expect a little sustained action?!” pg 118 I thought these were very representative of the play because it is written off of such a small part of Hamlet.  Also Ros says ” We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good’s a brick to a drowning man.” pg 108 and Guil says “…we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.” pg 121 I think this is representative of Ros and Guil’s certain future.  Ros also says ” We don’t question, we don’t doubt. We perform.” pg 108 This shows that they are charcters in a play. 

Exigence: At this point in the play, Hamlet need some convincing about what he should do next.  He is wondering if he should continue with his ideas of revenge or if he should just give up.  He is torn between the two sides, and he is giving himself almost like the pros and cons of each side.

Audience: The audience of this soliloquy is first and foremost Hamlet because he is the one who is trying to resolve the issues within himself.  He is the one who needs help, and he is the one that is giving advice so to speak.  And also I think that he is talking to the audience of the play, but i’m not sure if that should be mentioned.

Purpose: Hamlet is convincing himself that he should continue his play.  Since he commonly has had trouble deciding things in the play, it would make sense that he needs to think things through.

Appeals:

Ethos:

He seems up in the air about what he should do.  I think that this shows that he is aware of his indecisive nature.

“Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep–/To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,/For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,/When we have shuffled og this mortal coil.”

Pathos:

When Hamlet directs the line to everyone when he is discussing how when we think to much we get scared and do not go through with what we want.

“The conscience does make cowards (of us all).”

Logos:

When Hamlet breaks down why we are scared of dying by saying that we do not know what happens so we tend to be scared of it.

“The undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveler returns, puzzles the will/And makes us rather bear those ills we have.”

Figures of speech, Imagery, diction, syntax:

Mainly I see Hamlet using metaphores in his writing, for instance when he says “…we end/The heartache and the thousand natural shocks”  I think that this makes the audiance feel what he is feeling because of the descriptive way that he decscribes his pain.  He also used listing as a technique that made his points stand out to me.  He said “For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, /Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely /The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, /The insolence of office, and the spurns /That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, /When he himself might his quietus make /With a bare bodkin?” I feel that this makes your feel like you understand why he would not want to bear such pain, and it puts the audience in a position to feel for Hamlet.

My opinion:

In this soliloquy, I feel tThat Hamlet is put in a tough position,  I understand that he does not want to live through this pain, but at the same time he wants to get back at everyone that has done him wrong.  At first I thought this was just a suicide speech, but looking deeper, I can see how he is torn when deciding how he should act next.  It shows Hamlet’s indecisive side, which I feel is very appropriate at this point in the play.

IN this reading of Ros and Guil are dead, there was a lot of metafiction.  The player is the source of most of it.  First he says “it brings out the poetry in them.” pg 77.  Then he continues saying”…we are tied down to language which makes up in obscurity what it lacks in style.” pg77 I think that this particularly relates to Ros and Guil because they do not make that much sense most of the time.  They also use fate and death often in this section of reading.  The player says, “over your dead body…” pg 79 when talking to Ros.  Also Ros questions the player saying “Is that all they can do –die?” pg 83.  I found this as foreshadowing and dramatic irony because we know that in this play all Ros and Guil can do is die because they are already part of another play.

I found this reading interesting because we got to see what Ros and Guil felt about having to get Hamlet after he killer Polonius.  We were able to see their fear of him.  This gave an insight to how they did not really want to be there, but they were called on so they went.  It also shows the fear of Hamlet going crazy as well.

In our third reading of Ros and Guil are dead, we again got a lot of non sense.  Once it began relating to Hamlet, I found that it related to the part in Hamlet when Ros and Guil were called to see what was up with Hamlet.  They discussed for a while weather or not he was crazy.  Because this is one of the commonly asked questions in the play, I found this interesting.  They questioned if talking sense to yourself makes you crazy, or if that is okay because it makes sense.  They seemed not to have an answer for that question as they continued to talk nonsense to each other about Hamlet.

This reading made some things become very apparent, like hit you in the face. For example the fact that they are in a play.  Guil says “somebody might come in, it’s what we’re counting on after all.” This shows that they are performing, and it gives some dramatic irony in the play.  Also they discuss death again.  They talk for a long time about how it must be intuition of a person from the time they are  born to know that they must die.  This is dramatic irony because we know that Ros and Guil end up dead, hence the title of the play.

So, this begins to take place once the king asks Ros. and Guil. to come talk to Hamlet.  In Hamlet, it seems like they were excited to see Hamlet, and find out how he was doing, but in Ros. and Guil. are dead, they seemed worried.  They seemed to not know what to say, and they even practiced with one of them being Hamlet, and the other one asking questions.  I found this to be an interesting contrast to what I imagined them to be like when we read Hamlet.

It showed its post modern elements when it became all jumbled up.  They began not to make any sense with what they said for a while, and the end of the act.  I feel that this was said with sarcasm because they did not seem to have much point for a while at the end, and in a way I feel that this related to Hamlet because some of his soliloquies do not make much sense as he rambles on in misery.

So so far this seems to be a very unique play.  I feel that their style of speaking is much easier to understand that Hamlet.  I also enjoy their short statements to each other.  I find it easy to read, because I can imagine two guys talking short like that to each other.  Other than that, I am sort of wonering how Hamlet is going to come up in this play, at the end of the reading he was mentioned, but it seemed like a quick little thing, not someting that would make an entire play.

As for the plot, I am slightly confused.  Though I found it easy to read, the plot just didn’t make much sense to me.  For example, was the coin supossed to mean something, or do they just like to bet on thing.  Was it really two sided, or did they just bring that up? Because odds are they didn’t get that many heads in a row.  Also the Unicorn thing was really random.  I don’t think that it had much significance.  The player and Albert to me just seemed to be thrown in there as well, so basically I am having trouble pieceing this all together.

Okay, so this weekend is pretty important to my soccer team.  If we win our two games in Birmingham we will automatically be invited to regionals this summer.  There is two ways we can go to regionals, one is by winning RPL league, which is what we are going to finish in Birmingham, and the other is to win state.  We have come to expect to win state, especially now that we have merged teams with Mandiville, who was our biggest rival.  But there is always that chance that we could have a bad game and get beaten.  So winning this weekend to us is vital. 

I am pretty excited about this because this year will only be my second time to go to regionals.  My team has been twice already, but one of those times I had just had surgery on my second knee, and I could not play.  To get to go this year would be a great ending to what has turned out to be a great season so far.  We are only about a month into season, and I feel like I am back at home playing.  I still can not play a whole game, but my knees are slowly allowing me to do more and more.  Also, the girls on my team have come to be like sisters to me.  I have known some of the since I was 4 years old and we have grown up together.

This year is the last year we have with our core group of girls that have been with us since the start.  We have 2 girls that are graduating, and though they can come back next year to play in state and regionals, it will not be the same without them at practice every day.  This is why I am hoping this weekend goes well so that we have a certian spot in regionals this year!