Connecting With Romeo and Juliet

While it has clearly cultivated a mass following amongst the teenage youth of the world, I feel absolutely no connection with Romeo or Juliet. Knowing the story and just a little about cerebral development, it is difficult to perceive their actions and emotions as anything less than hormonal. While the writing of the story is undeniably beautiful, with lilting and captivating prose, I find the protagonists unconvincing, little more than silly caricatures of people with equally shallow perspectives. As dignified by Romeo's hopeless love for Rosaline, their drastic and melodramatic feelings make me more irritated than anything else, abandoning the plot as a horrible teenage cliche rather than an epic Shakespearean tragedy. Give me Macbeth or Twelfth Night any day. Those stories we can at least appreciate beyond their contemporary remakes and interpretations.

As for the reading, I think its definitely easier than I expected. It helps to be taking foreign language, because those skills can really be applied here. The more I read, the more I am able to appreciate the intent and nuance of Shakespeare's technique. I am unable to define whether the in class reading is redundant or not. There hasn't been a day yet where we haven't read in class. However, I believe our time might be more efficiently directed towards comprehension activities, where we would be able to exercise our provided roles that have seemed a little underused thus far. Because students are so confident about being able to read in class, some might not even be reading on their own, which could be seriously detrimental later in high school where AP English classes assume their students know how to interpret difficult language without classroom review.

Wrapping Up Great Expectations

Like so much literature, Great Expectations is undeniably complex. So, as an extension, it also harbors equally complex themes. Perhaps even fitted with multiple greater messages, these perspectives are largely based upon personal opinion and experiences. One student, equipped with an entirely individual childhood and upbringing, could take something away upon the novel's conclusion that entirely contradicts the greater message that another peer settles upon. So, without labeling my interpretation as the "correct" one, I will extend my perspective with full knowledge that it is absolutely and completely subjective.
Throughout the novel, Dickens makes his study of people quite clear. They are a diverse bunch of miscreants that defy conventionality and evade prediction. And yet, we come to love and appreciate each of them. Like the foundation of a building they provide texture and complexity to the story, in turn making it both fascinating and multidimensional. It is for this that I believe Dickens was trying to portray the social aspect of happiness. True happiness lies within one's acceptance of his equality to those around him. Once we see everyone in this light, we are able to appreciate their individualism and their potential. If you think about it, every single one of us is extremely special. We have each been snagged from millions of other hypothetical existences, and so (in extension), harnessed and overcome the most daunting odds of them all. Thinking about the bleak future of those nonexistent people makes you appreciate being alive a little more, huh? No matter our personal differences: intelligence, melanin content, humor etc, we are all composed of the same matter and of the same potential energy. When we deny our similarities with those around us; fail to appreciate the global power of human possibility, we become isolated and unhappy. When we learn to see ourselves within others, and their traits within us, we can see that the Earth is made of an extended family, and we can truly achieve happiness.