november 17

JOURNAL TOPIC: [today's tunes: "The End" by The Doors]

Long before we met, and long after you've passed the AP exam and gone on to greater things, in the end literature is an act of self-expression.  It is the human record of how we create stories for ourselves and others. And, as we've discussed, literature also serves as an artifact of how individual authors observed, critiqued and were influenced by the times and cultures in which they lived. As Marshal McLuhan famously observed, "The medium is the message." As we've also discussed, we'd probably get to know Hamlet in a completely different way if he maintained a blog or posted pics to instagram, tumblr, flickr, pinterest, or...[?] Does the technology we use to communicate change our message?  If our message is self-expression, does it therefore change how we are seen or even who we really are?

AGENDA:
1. Journal
2. Hamlet: Act IV

HW:
1. Read to the end of Act IV Scene 3.  If you get the first couple questions right in conversation tomorrow, we'll have no need for a reading quiz.