This week, we continued the tragedy unit. Having defined and explored the idea of what a tragedy is, it only seemed natural that we transitioned into look at examples to prove the point. The first example we explored was modern society. We watched a TED Talk about how our society indirectly tells those who don't achieve the success that it was their own fault. The "American Dream" of hard work overcomes all obstacles means that their is no reason for besides yourself. I felt a direct connection to "Tragedy and the Common Man" while watching this talk, since they were both about not achieving your preferred image in the world. This video also helped me to understand the scope of tragedy, since it was very relatable. It helped me to understand how tragedy different to every person, since everyone has different goals in life. We also looked at the performance version of tragedy. For a summary of the play, watch this. The story of Oedipus Rex is almost as close to the definition of tragedy from Arthur Miller as possible. It was very easy to see Oedipus’s descent into losing his self-image, and the result was very extreme. Analyzing the tragedy of this piece of literature felt very satisfying, as it directly related to the theory of tragedy. Most of what we read involving the ideas of tragedy would talking about the play version, so to actually read a tragic play really helped my understanding. I think I have a pretty good grip on tragedy now, so I am ready to continue this unit while feeling confident.
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Having finally finished the Elements of Fiction unit, we moved on to a new one: Tragedy. The goal of this week was to really discover what “tragedy” really meant. We used two ways to start discovering this. The first was by looking at Wikipedia’s page on Tragedy. I enjoyed this activity, as it allowed me to explore around the page at my own pace. It was also a good way to see the many interpretations of what a tragedy is throughout time. The second activity we did was reading “Tragedy and the Common Man” by Arthur Miller. Having seen this piece on the Wikipedia page, I was interested about what the author would say. It had many great insights into what tragedy is, mostly focused around the idea that tragedy can happen to anyone. Having done both of these activities, I’ve takes bits and pieces of each idea and forged them into how I think of tragedy. Tragedy isn’t the only subject that we’ve talked about this week. We analyzed some writing by looking for three ideas: illustrating, authorizing, and expanding. These three ideas form the point of every sentence in an essay. Illustrating describes sentences that contain the main ideas that the writer wants to cover. Authorizing describes sentences that pull proof from the original piece, often times through quotes. Expanding describes sentences that explain the writer’s thoughts and ideas. Expanding should be the most common type of sentence. I thought that covering all of this was very help to myself as a writer. I instantly started drawing connections to my previous essays. I noticed that the essays when I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing mostly didn’t have these types of sentences, while my good essays only had these types of sentences. I definitely feel like I will use this information as a writer. |
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April 2017
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