Hamlet and Death of a Salesman. Those few words basically sum up what we've been and are doing now in class. Watching the movie of Salesman before reading the actual play was really helpful, so that while reading and annotating, I could picture scenes from the movie while it was happening during my reading. Finally, we watched the movie again, but this time after we had completed our annotations, so we could pause after major scenes to compare the staging/acting/script to the script we had read. The movie was overall really true to the script, and the staging and acting choices were much more easy to understand after we were finished reading.
Hamlet is kind of a different story. There were definitely some sort of cryptic phrases in Salesman we as a class had to hash out so we could understand underlying meanings/etc. But Hamlet isn't really just a few cryptic phrases here and there, it's the entire play. It's Shakespeare. I'm really glad right now we're taking time during the in-class readings of the play to pause and get help from each other and of course Ms. Holmes to kind of translate the unfamiliar language into more modern descriptions we can understand. Still, I'm wanting to be able to read and comprehend the play as we're reading on my own, instead of relying on the help from Ms. Holmes. I think for this one I'm going to have to get onto Sparknotes for the No Fear Shakespeare, so when I go back to annotate further, I can understand more and have more things to point out and analyze.
I like how you talked about the Death of a Salesman movie helping you with the reading, because I feel the exact same way. I could imagine the scenes while reading the play and helped paint a picture in my head. When talking about the staging and acting choices are there any ones in particular that stand out? I didn't think there were many differences in the movie. Shakespeare. I think everyone is glad Ms. Holmes stops to help us understand the play better, and I also want to be able to read/understand Shakespeare without help and I think we're going to get there by the end of the year. Is there anything other than the language that makes this play hard to read? For me the language was hard and also I couldn't really tell the character's tone in the play so watching the movie helped a lot.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it was helpful in many ways to watch the Death of a Salesman movie prior to reading through the play ourselves, however I thought in some ways it was counterproductive. Instead of forming our own interpretations of the play we were shown someone else's. I think that although this was helpful for annotations it made me view the play the way the creator of the movie viewed it. On the AP exam we will have to interpret literature on our own and answer questions about it. We won't be shown someone else's opinions first. I do think however the movie was very good as it followed Death of a Salesman nearly word-for-word. I also agree that it was very beneficial to have Mrs. Holmes stop our reading of Hamlet every so often to clarify details, provide some background, and clear up all of the confusion as Shakespeare is very difficult for me to interpret. The language is just so different than the language I am used to seeing and it is completely foreign to me. I wish I was able to comprehend Shakespeare better on my own as well.
ReplyDeleteGoing over Death of a Salesman so many times helped me significantly. I had already seen it last year too, so that was even more helpful. It really made me do a good job on my annotations, and I feel like I really understood everything there was to understand about that play. Like Neha said, it was beneficial to all of us to have Ms. Holmes there by our side when we were reading Hamlet together. It really helped put things in easier terms, just like in Death of a Salesman or The American Dream. For me though, that's just because I know I struggle with Shakespeare, so like you I found myself on No Fear a couple of times when i was doing my in depth annotations!
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