IOP Thoughts (5)

It's the day before. I'm finalizing my powerpoint and finding relevant pictures. Could it be? I'm having FUN! I'm excited to share my ideas with the class. Yeah, my argument of happiness within The Stranger is..."different"...considering the other IOPs we've had this week--proving existentialism, analyzing absurdism, even examining the name--but hopefully it will be a refreshing and lighten-ing change!

Journal No 3

The final act of this play, like the rest of the work, is largely symbolic. Commentary on the developing events is given by three Woodcutters who speak to each other about the events much as a Greek chorus would speak to the audience about Oedipus and his moral frailty.

Journal No 2

Several ideas stand out in Act II but most vividly for me is the poetry of this act. And the main kind of poetry in this act could be called the epithalamion (also epithalamium)--which is a poem or song written or performed in celebration of a wedding.

IOP Thoughts (4)

The New York Times says, recently, "Levels of social trust vary enormously, but countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth and less fear of crime (regardless of whether actual crime rates are increasing or decreasing)." [30 March 2010/David Brooks]

Journal No 1

Minimalism. This is Blood Wedding, so far. Each character is reduced to elemental or minimal signs. It's like a Christmas tableaux. A silhouette.

IOP Thoughts (3)

Historians use the word presentism to describe the tendency to judge historical figures by contemporary standards. As much as we all despise racism and sexism, these isms have only recently been considered moral turpitudes, and thus condemning Thomas Jefferson for keeping slaves or Sigmund Freud for patronizing women is a bit like arresting someone today for having driven without a seat belt in 1923.

Journal 4

RELL. [to Gregers] Yes. Yours is a complicated case. First of all there is that plaguy integrity fever . . .

RELL. While I think of it, Mr. Werle, junior—don’t use that foreign word: