Literary analysis might sound scary or difficult but it actually isn't when breaking it down into smaller parts. Which is what we are going to do. We are going to break down the literary analysis into four basic parts and take a look at what should be included in the four points.

1. Plot

The plot is basically the story itself, the events that occur and how they are organised. Are the events put into a chronological order or not? Explain what happens in the novel, film, you name it and in what order the events happen.

2. Characterisation

Characterisation might be e bit more difficult than plot since characters can be difficult to understand fully. The basic things included in characterisation is of course the characters and how they are represented, i.e what do they look like? What are their personality? You could also say, how the characters are portrayed.

3. Setting

Setting is built up of two different parts, (1) the location, where does the story take place? and (2) time, when does it take place? To identify the setting you should look after descriptive language, meaning, descriptions how is the environment surrounding the characters described? Is it described at all?

4. Themes

Themes is the most difficult part of literature analysis since literary work seldom has only one theme, they often contain several themes and it is not always easy to spot the themes. A theme is basically the main subject or message of a literary work. Lets use an example, Harry Potter, which I asume most of you are familiar with has multiple themes throughout the series, but the main ones are love, friendship, evil vs. good and so forth. 

When analysing literature try to use these four basic points and your analysis will be great, but keep in mind not all novels has all of these four points included. Sometimes the setting isn't described at all and then you omit that part, sometimes a novel might not have any characters then you omit that part. In order of making students' lives miserable a literary work ALWAYS has a theme.

I watched one of the most beautiful but at the same time the most horrible film I have ever seen yesterday. The film is called Desert Flower and is based on the self-biography with the same title written by Waris Dirie, and tells the story of a young girl from Somalia and how she made it through the world and became a fashion model. The story does not only tell of her days as a fashion model but how she had to travel through the desert to get away from an arranged marriage to an old man when she was only 13-14 years old. The story continues in London where she lives on the street until she meets Marilyn a women who agrees to help her and at last she tells the story of women in Somalia how they get circumsiced at a young age.

This is a film I believe can be very useful in the classroom since it deal with political and societal issues as well as human rights and women's rights. Using Desert Flower in the classroom can initiate discussions about inequlities in other cultures and how different life can be for people. This is particularly portrayed in the scene where Waris, the girl from Somalia, believes that all women in the world get circumcised and is very confused when she realies that this isn't the case. She has a hard time understanding why it has happened to her but not to other women.

Today almost all classrooms are multi-cultural and understanding other cultures makes it easier to understand the people and what they believe in. It also takes away the stereotypes we have of other cultures, which is beneficial for our multi-cultural society today.

It's Saturday today :D The plans for today is to watch a film for our teaching plan we are going to do next week. My group decided to go with The Little Mermaid and talk about etnicity, gender and class. So, that's what I'm going to do before starting to get ready for the party tonight. We decided to go with The Little Mermaid since it is a film that all of us had seen at least once and because we thought it could be beneficial to use a film the students have seen before, since it might make it easier for them to read the film and not only watching it for entertainment. But more about that after I have analysed the film!

Tonights party is a gala dinner at the university and I'm going with the same dress as I did the previous one, it's way to expensive to get a new one but I have to consider that when I go home to Stockholm over Christmas. There are a lot more dresses to choose from there and a lot cheeper since there are more stores and not only one who has monopoly on dresses. 

I have been doing a lot of writing the past few weeks. All my exams are write a paper about this and that and we are also going to do the exakt same thing orally just to make you life a living hell :D and to make things even more fun we always do the same thing, write a lesson plan about this. Sometimes you feel, do you even know how it looks like in schools today? It's not possible to write a 10 page lesson plan for every lesson you have and who the hell cares about what Harmer or Lundahl says about listening, writing, grammar, speaking or anything for that matter? As long as you can explain why you do what you do that should be enough right?

At least for the next paper I write I don't have to do a lesson plan but I have to write a minimum of 2000 words about using film in the classroom. I decided to write about stereotypical women in Game of Thrones focsuing primarily on Daenerys, Arya and Cersei and compare the three and then argue why it would be a great idea to use this in the classroom, how it is better to use film instead of books for teaching about stereotypes and so on. I have an idea, now I just have to make it happen and deadline is in one week. Wish me luck!

Okey, I know the week started yesterday but I didn't have any lectures yesterday and thus didn't need to leave my appartement. Today, on the other hand, I had a lecture in Film didactics and we basically watched a lot of clips as examples about what the teacher talked about. We discussed stereotypes and norm critique in films, focusing on native americans and how they are portrayed in film.

We also talked about what rights a teacher has when it comes to show films and clips in the classroom. What is legal and what is not legal. SVTplay and TV4play is legal to show while films are a bit more difficult since the school is an institution. When it comes to films a teacher is not allowed to show film or series from a private account on for example Netflix or if he/she has borrowed a dvd, youtube is not allowed either. However, almost all teachers uses youtube or other media to show films and clips that the institution itself doesn't have the rights for. 

I think that as long as you can validate your choice of film and you have a clear purpose of using that film I don't see a problem with it. No one will sue you for using film in the classroom for educational purposes. Basically, film in the classroom and where you get it from is on your consious as a teacher and if you are fine with downloading then download, if you are not you can find clips and films on youtube and it is possible to "download" them to you computer thorugh various free programs you can find on the internet. 

I'm going to add another chategory to the blog. Since I watch a lot of films I'm thinking that I will write about them and give you guys a short film review. I will try to connect the films to the novels I read and then of course both see the film and read the novel and compare the two. I might also write something about TV-series but mostly I will write about film.

The first film for this new chategory will be Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, I saw it this weekend and I loved it, but then I'm also a Harry Potter nerd and love everything Harry Potter. Okey, back to the film, I was surprised over the turn the film took, I though it would be about Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) catching different magical creatures but it was so much more and you got to see many of the creatures that exist in the magical universe that we didn't get to meet in the Harry Potter series. I think they had a great twist to this one and there will be another film,  at least I believe that since Johnny Depp was in it in the last minute as Grindelwald. This can be really exsiting and I believe Grindelwald is a role that Johnny Depp suits for.

About the film, there was a lot of jumping due to the apparation (a traveling method), but I think that also adds to the film in a way that wouldn't be possible without it. In one way you really understand that, okey it's serious when they need to disappear fast and then they apparate. Yet again, some viewers think this is confuding and disturbing. I think that is a lot about how much you know about the Harry Potter universe and understand all the things that happen and the spells and everything. I think this film would be very confusing if you haven't seen the other films or read the books.

All in all, I think this film is really good because of the way they introduce us to the magical creatures and the ending with Grindelwald. I would have liked more background of Newt Scamander, maybe how he came to start collecting and writing his book about magical creatures, why he was expelled from Hogwarts and so on. There is a lot of thing we just don't know and I really want to know these things since I think it is really exciting.