Monday, April 18, 2011

Final Blog

As the final blog for this class, the assignment was to read the first two acts of Twelfth Night written by William Shakespeare. Throughout the play, the scenes alternated between Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia residences. The play starts off with Duke expressing his love for Olivia who has sworn off men while she grieves for her father’s and brother’s deaths. Along comes Viola, who has survived a shipwreck and has been separated from her brother Sebastian. Viola decides to dress as a boy and work for Orsino. Orsino sends Cesario to talk to Olivia for him and eventually Olivia ends up liking Cesario. Also Viola (dressed as Cesario) starts to fall in love with Duke, which makes matters even more chaotic. I am assuming as the play goes on, the characters confuse Sebastian with Cesario and even more drama will unfold especially when Olivia finds out Cesario is a girl and Viola likes Duke. As a form of communication, the characters either travel to the person’s residence or send letters. Orsino makes Cesario memorize his love letter to Olivia and Maria (Olivia’s chambermaid) writes a fake love letter to Malvolio (Olivia’s head servant) from Olivia as a prank. Besides symbolizing love, the letters also represent dishonesty. When Cesario delivers the message, Olivia thinks it is insincere and refuses to think it is filled with compassion. Maria’s letter is simply fake to begin with as it is a joke. Another major part of the play when there is dishonesty is the fact that Cesario is actually Viola in disguise. Viola decides to disguise herself and work for Orsino because she is foreign to Illryia and wants to figure out more about Illryia and the citizens. As a man, she has more rights and is allowed to more than if she was a woman, showing readers that Viola is bold for risking her identity and is willing to overcome challenges presented to her.

After reading a couple of scenes, I remembered one of my favorite movies, She’s the Man is based off this play! Although a few of the characters are different in the movie and play, I found it easier to understand which characters were which since I could visualize the character’s face with the name.

Another part of this week’s blog is to address the most surprising thing I’ve learned. Reflecting on this past semester I am most surprised I have more appreciation for poetry. I never liked poetry and I honestly thought I would dread reading all of the poems listed in the syllabus. As the semester went on and I began to learn how to understand the language, content, form and meanings I started to appreciate it more. Because I was able to grasp and comprehend them, I found myself relating the themes to real life situations and experiences. I liked that we had to write blogs comparing our outside of the classroom service to the poems assigned. Now that it is the end of the semester I feel I can connect with poetry better and have a greater appreciation for it.

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