So I saw sort of a trend of people using their last blogs to remember all of the good times during AP Lit, so I thought I'd join in on this for my very last blog ever (which I'm proud of myself for even doing). Honestly, AP Lit was really fun, if you leave out all of the work and stress and procrastination when considering what fun is. This class has taught me a lot about symbolism (and that sounds totally fake and horrible but its true and I know I won't forget some of what I have learned for a very long time). For the first couple of books this Frankenstein and Winesburg  mostly, I totally was not feeling this class and as far as I can remember, I did not start to really feel this class until Hamlet. That play changed all works of literature for me forever. Everything really is Hamlet, even Invisible Man is Hamlet. Invisible Man is the other book that really changed everything for me. There was just SO MUCH to that book. Too much. Its like now I am analyzing movies and tv shows and everything I read. It has even gotten to the point where I have started considering the connotations of words that people use when talking to me. Likeeeee. This class really affected me, probably more than most of my other classes. It has both ruined me for any other book I will ever read ever, while also allowing me to realize just how much there is to book s and plays and poems and everything. All in all, I really liked this class and now that I am at the end looking back, all of the work and stress was totally worth it. I would do it all again.

Time has finally caught up with me

So I guess I can't just do poems for all three of my blogs, no matter how much I want to, so I'll have to talk about some book now. The last one I read, A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, was so fabulously good that I went to Barnes and Noble and tried to buy another of her books, but they were out so I bought a different one that the lady assured me was sort of similar called The Interestings which is good so far. Anyway, the Goon Squad was a good book. I don't think it was very AP Lit worthy, especially compared to all of the other novels that we have read this year, but I think that it might be able to work for some prompt at some point, however I know that I will write about Invisible Man almost definitely for the exam this Thursday. This book was ordered so strangely and there were different weird points of view and narrative styles and it was all so complex and seemingly unconnected but then it ended up all being tied together. Juilee thinks it was a cycle but I totally disagree. One thing that I thought was weird was how in the first part of the novel Lou was like seemingly super important because he came up a lot but then in the second part he wasn't there at all. But then there was Lulu which sounds an awful lot like Lou and they were both pretty similar. Lulu is like the less greasy, more respectable version of Lou. They both have the innate ability to influence and almost control people. So that was weird. And then the way that the book began and ended with Alex, a character that did not appear in the novel anywhere other than the first and last chapter. That was weird too because what was that supposed to mean? Something like how even if you think you have just a small part in the world you actually have a big part and you are at the beginning and end of someones story??? I don't know. There are a lot of things in this book that I do not really totally understand. Like the general's chapter (which for the record was my favorite chapter) how did that fit into anything? I get where Dolly and Lulu and Kitty fit in but why did it all need it be centered around a dictator? I don't even know. Maybe this book was totally lit worthy and I just didn't try hard enough to analyze it because I enjoyed it too much. Hm. From now on I will never read a book the same way I did before this class. I will always connect fire with knowledge and point out the light and dark parts and it will annoy me forever, but I will always remember this class.

Sonnet Double I

Sonnet II

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held: 
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days; 
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
   This were to be new made when thou art old,
   And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.

Shakespeare man. Shakespeare. I like Shakespeare now way more than I liked him before this class. Its totally because of Hamlet. Knowing that whoever Shakespeare was was able to put so many meanings into literally every word (even if I do not always believe there is as many purposeful layers as it appears there are) is just mind blowing. I also really enjoy his sonnets and sonnets in general actually. Love poetry makes me very happy. I wish I lived in a time where courting was a thing, except that's totally not true because I am way  impatient in general, but I wish my girlfriend wrote me love poetry. Well anyway, yes Shakespeare is good yes. Last month I did Shakespeare's first sonnet, so this time I decided to do his second one (which I have not even read yet but swagever). So for a quick recap of what it says, its basically like "when you are really old and wrinkly and people ask you where all of your beauty went, wouldn't it be great to have a child and say that's where it all went and then he could carry on your life when you are dead." If this poem is really addressed to Shakespeare's young man friend, then its super sad since they can not have children together. This actually kind of feels like a "we shouldn't do this because you can't have kids this way and I just want you to be happy" poem. Which is super sad but also super sweet because it shows how much Shakespeare loved this guy. Anyway, the whole theme of this sonnet, which for some reason feels shorter than most other sonnets, is growing old and having something to survive after you. That seems like a theme that is present throughout several of Shakespeare's sonnets, dying and having something left afterwards. That's sad. Shakespeare makes me sad. Unless I am totally missing it, there actually doesn't seem to be a couplet tie in this sonnet? There aren't any repeated words so. The volta is at the third quatrain where it changes from sad death to wishful remembrance or something. Basically this poem was way sadder than I thought it would be and now I'm sad.