APEnglish–Los Al

Period 5

Hello period 5!

It was a short period today because of the CST testing, so not too much happened. First we talked about the books we’re going to be reading for the rest of the year. We’re definitely reading The Great Gatsby because its required. But its pretty easy and its probably something you could write about next year in AP Lit, and we’re not going to have very difficult assignments for it. Even though he can’t technically make us read it, Mr. E. wants people to read this book that I can’t remember the name of. Its about a man-eating monster that gets shunned and is really philosophical – so we might all “accidentally” be reading the same book and “accidentally” have discussions about it in class. If you want to buy it, Mr E. said he’d reserve it for us at Barnes and Noble.

After that, and after discussing the merits of LOST, we continued to watch the Japanese short dream films to look for diction and syntax and imagery. This one was equally if not more creepy than the fox one from yesterday. It was about an army commander who is walking through a dark tunnel ( which could symbolize death), who gets attacked by a rabid dog. He finally gets through the tunnel, but by then it becomes night. Then this dead soldier walks behind him out of the tunnel, and the commander has to convince the soldier that he is dead, even though the soldier’s family didn’t believe him. But then, the entire troop comes marching out of the tunnel because they too are dead, but they can’t accept it.

During the battle that they were killed in, the commander ordered them to fight, and he was the only person not killed. I think that all of the soldiers and the dog symbolized the emotional turmoil that he still has from sending them to their deaths. The man got through the tunnel, so he escaped death himself, but he is still haunted by what comes out of the tunnel. Even though the movie was strange, it was a good representation of visual tactics that authors and directors use.

Have an excellent rest of the weekend!

Love
Michelle

Period 4

So we started out class discussing the next few weeks of class: we’re going to be reading The Great Gatsby.  Also, Mr. Eldridge has a philosophical novel titled Grendel that a few people have expressed interest in reading.  It’s a “mind-warping novel” and it will question what we believe is true…
BTW..Mel brought up another interesting fact. If the universe is expanding..but the universe is everything? What can everything expand to?

Then we watched Part 2? or a similar version? of the movie that we watched yesterday.  Today, it had a Army Commander whose dead soldiers (their faces are painted an “eerie” white/blue color) come back to haunt him.  For me, the film depicted a strange variation of time/location when the Commander was walking up into the tunnel..because Nicki D. and I weren’t sure if he was walking in place or actually walking..due to the strange camera angel and colors of the picture.
There was a lot of emotion depicted from the Commander, but his troops remained loyal to him, no matter that they were dead.

Have a great weekend everybody!

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