Reading these texts, I felt the weight of life's synchronicity. Because I am taking DW’s World Religions Class right now, we have been grappling with the same concepts that Milton, Ovid, and many more have written about for ages. We have spent many classes contemplating, and we have questioned human life, form, and consciousness. Taking AP Lit at the same time as the World Religions Class has forced me to grow in ways I did not think school could make me grow. I have learned to make connections between texts and real life experiences, and I have forced myself to live in a space of uncertainty. In the texts were were assigned to read over break, I found connections of many forms.
To aid my process, I began by flipping back through the pages of my common place book and identifying key concepts that we have talked about this year. This allowed my reading process to be slightly more free because I could read and commonplace each text, and then have a board of concepts to come back to and draw connections as a second step. Overall, the theme that I think connects all of these pieces - and perhaps all art in general - is people trying to reconcile being alive. Our summer set of readings was mainly focused on the systems that control us and how we interact with them, but the thanksgiving set was about origin. It addresses the question of where we came from, and what good and evil are. Genesis and Paradise Lost felt the most similar to me. Paradise Lost felt like reading the unabridged version of Exodus that I had never seen before. Being someone with Baptists grandparents, I am relatively familiar with most biblical stories, so it was interesting to reread Genesis for school, but also, I found myself mapping the bible onto every single one of the texts. In terms of rhetoric, I found this reading to be extraordinarily beautiful. I particularly enjoyed Ovid's Metamorphoses. This is because there were moments that struck me without explanation. For example, “It is when heat and moisture join as one that life is generated; all living forms originate from these sources; for even though they are at odds by nature, the two of them create all living things, and their discordant harmony is suited to foster varied offspring in abundance.” ( lines 595-601) Not only is Ovid's language colorful and lively, it has a way of sparking a fire in the reader. Something inside of me feels comforted when I read the words “all living things.” The certainty of the language satisfies my need for connection to the world. At the same time, it makes me feel the need to live a life with eyes wide open. Ovid’s Metamorphoses felt more inspiring than the other texts. Perhaps it is because I am less familiar with it than the more biblical stories, but reading Metamorphoses, I felt what Stephen Greenblatt describes.“ I felt [....] a growing sense of excitement: not so much a governing ideas as a feeling of something brewing.” In contrast, the other stories made me feel uncomfortable. I found myself comfortably submitting to Ovid, but I resisted many of the others texts because they felt too authoritative. Moving forward, I am most interested to see how my perception of these text changes.
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AuthorElizabeth Finley is a 12th grade AP Lit student. She enjoys theater, dance, singing, playing the piano, and watching movies. If she could only do three things before she died, she would go on a Safari, sky dive, and visit her grandparents at church and help them work in daycare. Archives
December 2019
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