Response to Course Material #3

These past few weeks have served to finish up The American Dream, begin our new play Death of a Salesman, and learn how to approach the AP Exam's multiple-choice section.

After completing the close reading of The American Dream, I understood how its underlying theme of the failure of the American dream and Albee's usage of the major rhetoric devices (Diction, Imagery, Details, Language, Syntax) affect the work as a whole. During class, we took all our thoughts to the next level by discussing questions that opened our minds to different and more interesting aspects of the book. For example, when answering the question what role Mommy played in the emasculation of Daddy, the class went in a direction for direction in how different rhetoric devices affected what the readers conveyed from Mommy’s almost abusive nature to Daddy. Mommy repeats “so masculine” when Daddy questions his own masculinity, this implies that Mommy is sarcastic about what she is saying and almost wants to “get” Daddy out of the way in order to get what she wants.

Instead of reading Death of a Salesman in class, we watched the movie. At first I thought that this would not be helpful and I would be more confused after it. However, I was proven wrong. The movie attached certain images to my brain and now that I am doing the close reading assignment I am able to revert my mind back to those images in order to better understand what is going on in the book.  For example, if I had not seen Willy physically act in an abusive and harsh nature toward his wife, Linda, I would not have picked up on their abusive relationship as quickly in the book.

While annotating Death of a Salesman, I was also able to draw some similarities and differences between the new plays that we have read. The most interesting, in my opinion, is the emasculation of the two main male characters in the book. In The American Dream, Albee portrays Daddy as childlike; he is incapable of work, follows orders from Mommy, and almost has to report back to her when performing any task. In Death of A Salesman, Willy is also treated like a child by his wife Linda. Immediately after Willy comes home from work, she tells him to take an Advil and eat some cheese, almost as if he is a young boy who needs to directed by his mother. Another aspect that I find to be quite similar is the amount of respect and importance Mommy and Willy put on social status. When Mrs. Barker criticizes Mommy’s new hat in The American Dream, she immediately returns it to gain respect from the “most” important woman. Willy always places the most importance on being “well liked,” for example, when Biff says that his father is chastised and Willy over hears he is immediately offended and asks who thinks that he is not important. These comparisons that I have drawn may be helpful for the AP Exam when writing the close readings.

Addressing the multiple-choice section during class was quite nerve-wracking. Over the summer, we took a practice AP exam and I did very poorly. I was worried that this class was going to be too difficult for me but I stuck with it.  I am glad I did for I learned that there are certain tools and strategies that one can employ in order to perform well on the exam. The first is to read the passage one for an overview and then go back to closely read it and annotate. We also learned that some answer choices are misleading and one must closely look to see if they are too drastic, too broad, or even repeat the question being asked. We took a practice passage after learning this and I did much better with just learning these techniques so I am positive that with some practice I will be able to master this section.

These past weeks have been an excellent way to apply all that we have learned this year and also begin new topics.