02.07 Free Choice Blog

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Act I

Summary:

          The scene opens up with Egeous, the father of Hermia who is in a love triangle. Demetrious has permission to marry Hermia, however, Lysander, who does not, is also in love with Hermia. The two suiters personalities juxtapose each other One thing that they have in common is their love for Hermia as they try to discredit one another. Hermia is in love with Lysander and as much as she wishes that her father would see it the way she does, her father claims her as his property and her only options are to marry Demetrius, become a nun, or be killed. Last but not least, Hermia's best friend Helena is in love with Demetrius and as the saying goes love can make one do stupid things. In the end of the act, introduced was a play meant to be acted out on the day of Theseus and Hippolyta's marriage.

What was your personal reaction to this reading selection?

          I had numerous reactions to this first act. For one many of my predictions were correct and I was ecstatic. For example, after making plans of escaping to his aunt's place outside of Athenian rule Hermia tells Helena of this plan and I predicted that Helena was going to tell someone. She did, however, it was the person she told that shocked me. Instead of a guard, Helena told Demetrious and it shocked me because that was unexpected. Secondly, his love triangle is confusing and thus it makes it interesting, Helena is in love with Demetrius but Demetrius is in love with Hermia. Hermia curses and hates Demetrius yet he loves her. Helena loves Demetrius and he hates her. Helena will not give up on his love and so that is why she told Demetrius of Hermia and Lysander's plan, or so I thought. At last, the play introduced at the conclusion of the act, I predicted was going to ironically transfer over to the real lives of Hermia's love triangle, her rival, and the marriage.

If you were to create notes to help you remember the most important points from your reading, what style of notes (lists, outlines, thought bubbles or webs, etc.) would you use and why?

          I did create notes to help me recall some of the important information presented in the act in order to complete this assignment and the style of notes that I used was a list. I divided the list into three categories: the main ideas, Interesting verbiage, and words that I was not familiar with. I chose this method simply because it allowed me to have my commentary of the main ideas as a sublist and everything could be in chronological order.