Response to Course Material #5

These past few weeks have served to wrap up Hamlet and begin working on how to write in a certain tone. 

In class, we have watched two different version of Hamlet. At first I thought that this would be a waste of time and would not help me to further understand the play, but once again I was proven wrong. I like that the two versions are extremely different so I am able to compare and contrast the different scenes. I like that in the second version we watched the ghost was much more realistic which lends to a feeling that it is indeed real that resonates with the reader for the whole play. In addition, the second movie effectively uses a set so it is much easier to understand what is going on in the play.

I also finished up annotating. The first 20 pages were a drag to get through but as the play progressed I was able to make more connections and understand the play at a deeper level on my own. For example during class I didn’t think that it was possible for Hamlet to be gay for Horatio but with further inspection I can so how this is true. Hamlet confides his biggest and deepest secrets in Horatio and his plan to murder the king.  I was also able to make connections back to Death of a Salesman. Both are about broken families that have lots of father-son troubles. In Death of a Salesman Willy and Biff never agreed with each other similar to the father-uncle relationship that Hamlet and Claudius have.

This week we began learning how to writing in a certain tone. We have to look at a picture and then pick a tone word and write in that tone. I like this because now I can actually put the words that we have learned to use. It is easy to memorize the words but it is another to understand them enough to apply them.

I also learned this week that our final is going to be a terms test. This makes me nervous because we have not practiced these terms since the last terms test so I will be studying a lot for that.