Response to Course Material- 10/25/15

Since the last prompt about the course material, a lot has happened. Perhaps the most challenging assignment we had so far was the foster annotations. I enjoyed reading the book, but sadly made the same mistake as I did with The Nuts of Bolts of College Writing and I started my annotations far too late. However, this time it was not entirely due to my own inertia when it comes to starting long assignments. The entire assignment just slipped my mind. I have actually owned this book since eighth grade, when I started reading it in response to the tedium of my actual middle school lit class. At the time, I did not appreciate the applicability of Foster's interpretive suggestions. Reading this book again with an understanding of archetypal analysis already helped considerably. My assigned chapter was about the importance of season to the events in fiction. I thought it was amusing how he connected this to the lyrics of the Beach Boys, and so naturally I chose "Surfin' USA" as my corresponding popular culture reference. Overall, I enjoyed reading How to Read Literature Like a College Professor, and I don't believe I will be able to read another work of fiction without looking for the hidden, deeper intentions of the author.

In addition to the Foster, I enjoyed our discussions of American Dream.  I feel that we came up with a fairly all-encompassing theme statement, and that we were able to point out a lot of the main messages Albee wanted to convey. Of course, I was not thrilled taking the exam on American Dream, but I at least took comfort in my own understanding of absurdism and my ability to apply it under such stressful circumstances. The idea of a "theater of the absurd" was not even something I had heard of before this course, and yet now I feel it is crucial for accurately describing a large amount of contemporary literature.

My favorite new activity in A.P. Literature is probably the use of vocabulary.com. I found this site extremely useful for learning new words and broadening my understanding of words I thought I knew by introducing them in unfamiliar contexts. I will certainly continue to practice with this site to expand my verbal skills and maybe just for fun as well.

These three topics help with writing and analysis considerably, especially when used together. Understanding the general intentions and allusions that recur over and over again in literature is necessary for anyone interesting in fully appreciate the work of the greats. In addition, keeping in mind the possibility that an author may be implementing ideas from the theater of the absurd may be completely necessary for understanding more esoteric text. Those two skills combined with a generally superior vocabulary are bound to make me a much stronger scholar, for both this class, and down the road of higher education.