Response to Course Material #4

              Over the past few weeks, we have finished up reading and analyzing Death of a Salesman. I thought that watching the movie and discussing it the second time really helped push my understanding of it further. I noticed things that I hadn't noticed before. However, as we continued studying this play, my annoyance for Willy grew. As a pessimist, it was very hard for me to see how optimistic and unrealistic Willy was about everything. I honestly just wanted to punch him and tell him to wake up. I am quite glad we are about done reading this play because I don't think I could handle Willy's personality and actions any longer. Other than Willy's character, I thought the play was very interesting. I could see how readers could relate to some of the characters because everyone has family issues at some point. I think that the father-son relationship that Willy and Biff had is common in many people. The father wants the son to follow in his footsteps, while the son just wants to do his own thing.
             This past week, we have just started to read Macbeth. Although I didn't particularly like British Lit last year, I feel that it helped me a ton with regard to reading Shakespeare plays. However, I still think I have a long way to go in analyzing these plays and this fact was reinforced by my struggle to read and annotate the play at the same time during class. Maybe this was because I had to use sticky notes for annotations instead of just writing in the book, but I am not sure. I think the old English language is the main reason why reading this play is more difficult than the others. I find that reading Sparknotes before each act helps me understand what is going on much better.