Response to Course Material- 9/27

            While we are only a few weeks into AP Literature, I have learned a few valuable aspects about the course that will certainly help in the future. Our first big annotation assignment was on The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by Michael Harvey. We had ample time to complete it, and although I was well aware that it was fairly long for reading in a single sitting, I still ended up starting the day before it was due. While I regret this decision because of the unnecessary stress it brought me, it did not affect the appreciation I had for the content of the piece. I especially enjoyed Harvey’s breakdown of the “pompous style” and how using too many nouns and linking verbs can prove fatal in academic writing. It made me reconsider my own style of writing and whether I hide behind the same clumsy phrases that clouded his examples. In many cases, I find that there is usually a much clearer way of stating something using simpler language, which can then more effectively develop truly complicated ideas.

            The academic skills emphasized in The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing contrast sharply with the other focus of the class so far, which is the “theater of the absurd.” We were first introduced to this through a general article describing the history of the practice, and have begun to analyze its use in Albee’s The American Dream. The dialogue is almost disorienting in its lack of meaning and direction. Conversations in the play never mean what is spoken, never amount to anything, and always fall into incongruity and non-sequiturs. The irony in this style is that deeper existential meanings hide behind the utter lack of consequence in the script. The absurdity discussed in the article seems to exist in order to hide a rather sophisticated commentary. This is the kind of play that only an already understanding audience could appreciate, because the true entertainment lies beneath the surface of the scene, setting, and even the characters. Sometimes as we read it in class, it can be hard to not laugh at the ridiculous contradictions that arise. It is actually fairly interesting how we would transition from reading something like Harvey’s book, which focuses on making the purpose of the writing more explicit, to Albee’s play, which goes completely in the opposite direction.

            The other article that we annotated, Susan Glaspell’s “A Jury of her Peers” had very different messages from both of the other pieces. To me, this story used plain but direct language to illustrate the lack of equality between the sexes in an early 20^th century rural setting. The men in the story only consider the women useful for comforting one another and worrying about trivial domestic tasks, when in fact they use their mutual understanding of the situation of another woman to deduce her involvement in a gruesome murder. I found it intriguing how they hide the evidence, as if to say that the events that led her to commit the crime, mainly linked to an abusing husband, were enough to justify her actions through the eyes of her “peers.” As with The American Dream, I look forward to the class discussions where we will be able to share insights into these works with one another, deepen our understanding, and form a variety of interpretations.