public.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/decon.htmlThis week we pretty much spent all of our time watching plays that were written by William Shakespeare. We could either chose "King Lear", or "Macbeth".

It did not involve simply watching the play, however. First of all, we were asked to form a small group to work as a team. Then we had to chose a play and a critical theory to apply to the play. So, we had to think about how we could apply our chosen critical theory to the play as we watched it. We took notes during the movies to help organize our thoughts as well. 

My group chose the play "King Lear". To go along with that, we decided to choose the critical theory of deconstruction. We found that particular critical theory to be a little difficult to understand. It is basically the reverse engineering of a story. It basically breaks down why everything happens.

This theory can easily be applied to "King Lear", because we can look at why the two older sisters played along with King Lear's plan, and why the youngest daughter would not play. It is possible to look at the reason behind everyone else's actions as well.

Not only would this theory be interesting to apply to "King Lear", but it would also be intereseting to apply it to everyday life. It can help people to understand why people to what they do, and what affects their actions have.

Throughout this past week, we looked at two different poems. Those poems were "Sonnet 146 (Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth)", by William Shakespeare, and "Ozymandias", by Percy Bysshe Shelley. We looked at how these two poems were similar and different from eachother in what they were saying about death and legacies.

"Sonnet 146" was basically saying, why waste time on earthly things when none of that matters? The author was also talking about how our bodies will die, but not our souls. In that case we should stop trying to improve on our things, but instead we should try to improve ourselves. 

"Ozymandias" was talking about how even though something may be a big deal on earth at one time, eventually that importance will die out and never again will that thing be important. The author used a broken statue to describe something that was once powerful, but means nothing anymore. 

Both of these poems have a theme of impermanance. So that was basically the theme we discussed in class this past week. We talked about nothing lasts forever. In "Ozymandias", the question of "What does the title of the poem add to message of impermanence that the speaker describes?". We talked about how know one knew the name of Ozymandias, and therefore, nobody cared. That showed how nothing lasts forever. 

This week we also had a fourty minute essay to write about these two poems. It was easy to compare the two pieces of writing, since they were quite similar in the way that they were practically saying the same thing. However, it was a little more on the challenging side to complete the essay within that time.

Large multiple choice test can be difficult. Especially when there is a set amount of time you have to complete the test in. Time management then becomes an issue. During this past week, as a class we took a practice multiple choice test for the AP test. It was fifty five questions about different short pieces of wrting that were given to us. We had about one hour to complete it. So we could not just take as much time as we wanted for one question. 

Through this experience we learned to move quickly while taking our tests. A stradegy that I learned that could be of some help in that situation was to skip over the questions that are more difficult, and just answer the easy ones first. Then You can go back to those questions later. That way, you are likely to get more answers right. 

Another stragedy we talked about was to look at the questions before reading the passages. That way you know what to look for while you read the writing. 

Taking that practice test was very useful because we are now a little more prepared for the AP test than we were before, and we now know what to expect for part of the AP test. Not only does taking practice tests prepare us all for the AP test fr AP Literature, but it also helps to prepare us all for other large multiple choice tests we might have to take, especially any other AP tests.