The first time reading Othello, Act I, Scene 3, I honestly didn't think much about what the actual poem was about. When I first read the poem, it confused me how the speaker went from talking about the father to the girl and I didn't actually understand what was going on. In my annotations, I just put generalizations about the text and didn't actually expand and consider complex thinking because I honestly had no idea what was going on.
After reading through the poem a second time, paraphrasing, and doing the TPCASTT assignment, it became easier to understand what was going on in the text and understanding the meaning behind the poem. After going through the TPCASTT assignment and doing the paraphrasing stage, I was able to grasp what was actually going on. From the beginning of the poem, the speaker was referring to the father's daughter and how he always asks about the speaker's past and what he has done. Then, the speaker transitions into speaking of the daughter whom he loves for not judging him on his past. I came to the sense that the overall meaning of this poem was the idea of prosperity. Othello's origin of his name comes from the meaning, "prosperity", and that's what the whole idea of the poem seems to be: Othello reflecting on his life and what he has done.
The questions were what I struggled on the most. I had a hard time with questions referring around the idea of the structure of the poem. For example, for question 43, the question asks about the passage's iambic rhythm. I don't know what an iambic rhythm is and how it is used in a poem. Another question I really struggled on was question 37 where it asks how I would best paraphrase the lines. I'm really bad at paraphrasing and understanding what a poem or passage is really about. Therefore, it took some time for me to answer the question and I guessed at the end. I need more instruction on the structure and paraphrasing questions because those are the ones I typically guess on. For the questions I'm perfectly fine with and barely need help with, are the questions which asks about what a certain word means. Those questions are typically more easier for me to deal with and I usually don't guess because I can easily refer to other words in the poem.
Overall, I feel as though the TPCASTT helps me to better understand the poems we have gotten to read and also makes me use complex thinking.
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