Oedipus

I do see the story of Oedipus as a tragedy. He is a tragic figure in this plot line. Being a tragic figure means that he must have had a position of importance that had a fatal flaw that brought his downfall.  Oedipus is a good king, but he had a flaw of being too proud. He misread his wife's attempts to stop him from furthering his understanding of knowing his heritage. Because he misread her attempts and saw it as her questioning his royalty, he becomes overly proud, which brings about his downfall. It does end gory and sad as most tragic figures must. 

Moral Issues In Dramas

As far a problems there were in translating a moral issue into a drama, I would just say that the morals might have changed with time. Things change and the terms they used back in those days were not exactly what we use today, which does make some of the deeper meaning lost if you do not understand the language.

I do definitely find this presentation of a moral issue much more effective than a lecture. Lectures can only go so far. Words cannot paint a picture in someone's mind. Also, one's mind can wander during a lecture while when there is a story as interesting as a drama, one's mind cannot wander.  When the players can paint this picture for people, the audience can understand something much easier and the picture remains in a person's mind for much longer than anything else.

As a drama, moral issues come across very strongly. The point and importance of the moral issue is exemplified in the drama.

A new understanding of "Out, out - "

I wrote on "Out, Out -" and I had already had a good understanding on this poem.  Having written on the poem in previous classes, I have a good amount of points to make with the point. Also, when we had conferences, I wrote down everything she gave us and pretty much wrote on that. I did research and found out that Frost's theme of a loss of innocence of young boys reflects his loss of a childhood thanks to WWI that happened when he was a child.  I should have written about this, but I already had plenty of good points, so i chose not to do use it.
 robert frost

In general, I have seen the rhythm and the beat of poetry and have a good appreciation of what poetry is all about.  It makes sense why we would need to read poetry.

The Poetry

This was a fairly good collection of poems for us to read and I usually liked what we read, but some were somewhat difficult. I felt that the "Flea" was difficult to understand due to the language it is written in.  None of the poems were really that hard to understand as long as I could decipher the language, which is sometimes difficult.  Shakespeare always makes it difficult for me to understand what he is trying to convey.
 I do feel, though, that they are kind of failing as a writer if they cannot convey their point because their language is too strange.  I do get that it is that time period, but it still just does not make sense to me.  "The Last Duchess" was somewhat difficult in the fact that it did not grab my attention. I got bored after a few lines and it became difficult to press on.

Now, even though there are some hard poetry out there, there was some easily understood and enjoyable poetry that we read.  I found that the "Unknown Citizen" was really entertaining and grabbed my attention immediately.  It was easily understood and the satire was incredibly interesting. I found what the poet had to say important for society to hear, which, to me, is what makes a good poem.

A New Understanding?

I do not really think my view changed that much during the writing process of our first paper. I did a lot of pre-writing thinking in order to isolate exactly what I wanted to speak about particularly in "The Chrysanthemums" and "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place".  Because I put a great deal of thought into the paper before i even started writing anything down, I did not really need to change my opinion all that much, if at all. I do know,since poetry is my weakest part of English, that I will have a lot of changing opinions when it comes to analyzing poetry critically, but i could surprise myself depending on the topic.