Sunday, January 13, 2013
Response to Course Materials
Hamlet. Haaaaaamlet Hamlet Hamlet. For the past....what feels like 5 months, class time has been dedicated to reading and annotating Hamlet. I really actually enjoyed reading it in class, I thought it was really interesting and I liked when Holmes would pause throughout our class readings and explain what some scenes and words meant. When I began to detest Hamlet was during the movie watching. We were able (cough *forced* cough) to watch three different interpretations of Hamlet, only the first interpretation being the one we watched all the way through. Personally, I liked the last movie (with David Tennant) the best. I found his interpretation of the character Hamlet to be the most entertaining, and I liked the mix of modern in it, while still remaining in a way that made the movie still Shakespeare. I think reading and talking about Hamlet definitely was beneficial in terms of helping us as students to better understand and be able to point out themes in literature, such as insanity vs. sanity, betrayal, incest, etc. Semester 1 is almost over!! Time for AP prep.
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Lauren, I also thought that it was really helpful when Holmes would pause during our class readings of Hamlet to talk about the scenes and some significant moments in them. That really helped with me with the annotating that came later. There was a lot of things in the play that I think I would have missed if it wasnt for her explaining and pointing things out.
ReplyDeleteAs for the movies, I also liked the last one the best. I thought the fact that it was so modern was cool, but it also stayed true to the play at the same time. Overall, I agree with you that reading and analyzing Hamlet was beneficial to us in terms of pointing out themes because Hamlet was probably the longest play we have had to annotate yet and there was so much to analyze in it.
I also found Ms. Holmes' explanations really helpful because I honestly had no idea what was going on when we were reading because I couldn't understand any of the speeches. I actually think the movies ended up helping me to better understand those lines because of the emotions and expressions of the actors. Also, I like that you mentioned how Hamlet is going to be helpful when it comes to the AP exam because I hadn't really thought about that, although I should have considering that is sort of the goal of the class. There were so many themes and hidden meanings in the lines of the characters, and now that we know how to identify them I think doing this on the AP exam will be much easier.
ReplyDeleteLauren, I also had a mixed experience with Hamlet, but I think that the majority of my bad feelings came from the annotations (which truthfully wasn't all that bad, I just need to procrastinate less). I also felt that the movies weren't very helpful, but I think I liked the one that you're referring to (not sure of the actor). The explanations we got in class were extremely helpful, and I'm sure I would have struggled without them.
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