So we are reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in class and it is a very um different kind of literary work than those which I’m accustomed to. In class I learned that this play is classified as an absurdist play. It really needs no explanation of why it’s classified as that. Nothing makes sense in the play!!! Everything seems so random and it takes a great deal of effort to understand what is going on. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern seem to be very similar characters and both are essentially lost. They are often without much direction in the play. Consequently, the two characters appear to be lacking a driving purpose—the central theme in an absurdist work. Even though the play is a bit difficult to understand at times, I still really like the play because it makes me laugh. There is a lot of double entendre use in the play, which is very similar to Hamlet. There are a lot of very subtle references to Hamlet. An example is the use of the line “what is the matter”. Many readers would be unable to pick up on this Hamlet reference but matter is a motif that is repeated countless times in Hamlet. I really like the idea of this play as it reveals what happens when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are off stage in Hamlet. This idea of telling the readers what happens off stage reminded me of Grendel. Just as it gave a different perspective on the story, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern does the exact same thing. I want to compare Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. As of now, Guildenstern seems to be the more philosophically and intelligently superior character. Rosencrantz seems to be kind of slow on things like when they were playing that game of responding question with question.
Now that I talked about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I want to talk about the AP Lit exam. I was pretty surprised at my practice score, considering that I was dozing in and out of the multiple choice section. I felt like I did pretty well on my essay part. I got a 7 and 7 on the prose and poetry passage but only a 5 on the open question one :/ I guess it’s true that everyone does bad on the open question. But, we are doing lots and lots of practice in class so hopefully, I will do well when it’s game time! But other than that, I feel pretty confident going in to the exam. I’m choosing Frankenstein, Invisible Man, and one other work that I haven’t decided yet to be the three works that I’m really familiar with. I think I should use Invisible Man if possible because I think that we did a really close reading of the novel in class with all those seminars and stuff. But yeah I think I will do fine when the AP Lit test date arrives!
