Winesburg, Ohio

I first encountered a story in Winesburg, Ohio when Ms. Graham was absent from
class. Our assignment was to read the Grotesques and answer some of the following questions.
Like most work that are assigned when teachers are absent, I thought
that this task would also be a breeze.
But of course, what on earth was I thinking? It's AP Lit.
Overall, the passage was understandable. Although it wasn't an easy read, most of the
parts made sense. I understood that there was an old man and a carpenter. There were also the grotesques
who were the imperfections of the world. I was dealing alright with the passage until I came to the
questions. After I read the questions, I realized how much analyzing I had to do, and how much
of the actual story I misunderstood. At first, we thought that the old man symbolized "knowledge."
He was the only one who knew the truth and therefore tried to stay away from the corruptness of the world.
However, soon enough, we were able to realize that the old man symbolized "God."
Although he didn't symbolize perfection, he was a God-like figure in that he had the knowledge
to know about the existence of grotesques. The rising of the bed to see outside the window was an
analogy to God rising up to look over his people. The carpenter then, of course represented Jesus.
It said in the short story that the carpenter was the closest thing to truth in the world and
that showed how the carpenter was a separate being from the grotesques.
Because our class has been talking so much about religious analogy, it was a lot easier to
figure out the representations. Especially when the carpenter came out, it made a clearer
point to me that the passage must have some sort of religious analogy that went along with it.
After discussions with fellow students, we were able to conclude that the old man represented God
and the carpenter represented Jesus.
The All the King's Men socratic seminar was a failure for me. For one, i'm not a great speaker; and
to try to find a good point to talk about with other students who probably have so much more
insightful findings than I do was so challenging. I was afraid that my speech would ruin the flow of
a great discussion that would soon hit the climax. After this seminar, I learned that I should prepare
A LOT the day before and be a lot more insightful in my thinking.
Oh, how much I hate socratic seminars!
If there's one positive aspect of the seminar
is that I learned so much more about the book from it. There were comments made by students
that were almost mind-blowing and made me understand the text so much more.
Honestly, I can't wait until we move on to the next novel. Not Winesburg, Ohio because it's
not an actual full story, but one that would make more sense to me as a whole. :P
AH AP Lit is so hard :(

Welcome to AP Lit

First week of senior year was so much more hectic than I expected it to be.
Everyone has been telling me that once junior year was over, life would be
so much easier and enjoyable.
...
I should have been smarter to realize they were just lazy bums who took their
final year in high school the easy way out. I wish I could do that. :(
But since I already decided to try my best to get into my dream college (Emory),
I don't regret signing up for all these hard courses my senior year.
I'm not going to lie, AP Lit is a pretty hard course. In my junior year, I had
seriously contemplated on taking College English instead of AP Lit because I heard
it was so much easier and could also get AP credit for schools in Georgia.
Nevertheless, I chose to take the challenge and take AP Lit, which I'm not sure
was a good idea after taking the All the King's Men's quotes test.
Honestly, the book itself was very confusing to me. Unlike all the details we pulled
from the first few paragraphs in class, I didn't realize that the idea of the
entire story was stored in the first paragraph when I was reading it during summer break.
The whole concept of the Great Twitch was hard to grasp, maybe because I didn't
fully agree with it-maybe not.
And once again, I was painstakingly reminded of my lack of comprehension about the
book while I took the quotes test today.
Yes-unfortunately, I don't think I did too well. D': This is probably because I wasn't fully
concentrating on the text while reading the book over the summer, which I find very
unfortunate. Hopefully, the in-class essay tomorrow on our second choice reading
will go more smoothly.
Other than that, I really like our class because of it's small-ish size, even though
it grew a little over the past week. OH. One thing I am a little worried about are the
Allusion Presentations. I'm not worried about if i'll be able to cover the topic
well. I know I have enough time to gather good and thorough information on it.
However, I also know that I'm not such a great presenter and I'm worried that if my
presentation does end up being horrible, my classmates won't learn anything
from it........fail. I guess practice will be the only way to get rid of my "stage fright-ish"
symptoms. Heh, good luck to all of us when our time comes to present. :)
Despite a rough first week and first test, I believe that this year will be a
fantastic one! Ms. Graham seems like a very exciting teacher with a good sense of
humor. :) I hope that my average rating of 6.5 will rise to be a 10.1 soon enough.
I plan do end my high school career with good grades. Well, BETTER grades than
last year.
Yay, leggo AP Lit.
Leggo seniors. ^.~