Thursday, April 23, 2009

Gifted English II: Continue with poetry; "Mother to Son" by Langston Hughes, followed by figurative language.

AP Literature: Continuation of Eliot and Conrad, followed by a brief screening of two scenes from Apocalypse Now. Francis Ford Coppolla translates Heart of Darkness into the Vietnam War, and we're going to watch 1. the sequence in which Willard (our Marlow character) receives his mission, and 2. the infamous "Valkyries" sequence in which a beach is obliterated so a group of Army Rangers can surf there. I highly recommend this film, but not for the faint of heart--it is truly a confrontation of the awful darkness in each of us, and forces the viewer to reframe his or her understanding of war and human emptiness. The film opens with a drugged-out (in real life, he was actually drunk) Martin Sheen portraying an Army officer on the brink of madness, and the film descends from there. Willard is sent into Laos to find the errant Kurtz and "terminate his command with extreme prejudice."