Response to Course Materials

     In class we just finished Ceremony, and now we have started Fifth Business. I personally don't think we spent enough time discussing Ceremony in class. The book is extremely complicated, and many of the symbols have multiple meaning that I never really understood. I felt like we moved on to Fifth Business before I really understood the significant of symbols like the use of cardinal directions in the book. Compared to the other plays we read, we spent much less time on Ceremony, even though it is significantly more complex and difficult to understand than Hamlet or Death of a Salesman. 

     So far I am enjoying Fifth Business a lot. It is a much more enjoyable storyline than any of the other books or plays we read, and I am enjoying reading it a lot just for the story. At the same time, there definitely seems to be an underlying reason the story is being told which hasn't become apparent yet. One thing I noticed that seems very clever and philosophical is the way Dunstan belief about the snowball is made into a reality. If he did not believe he had affected anything, his life would've gone on as normal and he never would have known Mary Dempster, and his life would've been simple.  However the belief that he had affected events in a significant way made him act in different ways, which ultimately made it into a true event affecting his life. Essentially, his imagination became a reality over the course of the story.