DRJ#4: Hamlet Act IV

Initial Reaction:  I feel pretty bad for Laertes.  First his dad killed then his sister.  I can see why some people think that Gertrude killed Ophelia though.  Still more build-up in this act, I’m ready for this thing to be done with.

Character Analysis:  Laertes is a nice parallel to Hamlet, but contrasts in his drive for revenge.  Laertes actually seems like he’s going to do something.  Plans have been made, it’s going to happen.  Hamlet is just now ready to maybe kill Claudius if the moment is right.  I see in Laertes what I want to see in Hamlet.

Theme Analysis:  I’m really having a tough time with the theme here.  I think that Shakespeare is showing us that revenge can be a bitch.  He is about to anyway.  With Claudius’ and Laertes’ double plan to kill Hamlet it seems like a sure thing.  Here is a quote, “Revenge should have no bounds.”  One thing we do know for sure is that this unit is soon to be over and I can come up for air again.

DRJ#3 Hamlet Act III

Initial Reaction:  It finally feels like something is happening.  Tension keeps building and building and soon it’s gonna get crazy.  I felt like a lot happened in this act.  Hamlet is a dick to Ophelia, the play happens, Hamlet kills Polonius and goes off on his mom.

Character Analysis:  Going with Hamlet on this one.  Hamlets fatal flaw is that he is a little bitch.  I’m sorry, but he is.  He doesn’t have the sac to kill the king yet, and when he gets his opportunity to do so he doesn’t because Claudius is praying (and will thus go to heaven upon death).  And to get himself “pumped up,” as I believe our teacher said, he verbally abuses Ophelia for the better part of a scene.  Nice move asshole.

Theme Analysis:  This play is driving me insane.  Shakespeare is using imagery to prove that anyone can go mad from reading one of his plays.  When Shakespeare has Claudius say, “Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven. It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t,” Shakespeare is really commenting on his act of writing this play.  Shakespeare is toying with us all.  He knew that people would be arguing over the meaning of his writings for centuries if not millennia. “Have you eyes?” He is insulting us now.  He thinks we are blind to his trickery.  “Sense sure you have, Else could you not have motion. But sure that sense, Is apoplexed, for madness would not err.”  So. Done. With. This.

As for the negative tone, I’m really not in the mood to do this right now I just need to get it done, so I’m sorry if you actually read this.

DRJ #2: Hamlet, Act II

                I had a tougher time with this act than the first act.  I found myself having to reread passages over and over, mostly to no avail.  I think it’s kind of messed up that Hamlet’s uncle-dad is oblivious to his pain, and how controlling Polonius is over his children.

                Polonius is quite the antagonist.  He seemed to be pulling all sorts of strings with his kids, and then trying to with Hamlet.  It seemed like he was sucking up to the king and queen when he came to rat out his daughter and Hamlet, but then again with the hierarchy from peasants to kings it would probably be the right thing to do.  His plan to prove that Hamlet is crazy because Hamlet is in love with his daughter should be pretty interesting to watch unfold.

                I thought it was clever when Shakespeare wrote,

“Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his own conceit

That from her working all his visage wanned,

Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting

With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing—“

The irony here is just awesome.  I really do hope that Shakespeare had his actors in mind when he wrote this passage.  I think that Shakespeare is using this irony to show that passions exist within different mediums.  Shakespeare’s is obviously with the pen (my girlfriend made me watch “Shakespeare in Love” which subsequently makes one an expert on everything Shakespeare related), and the players in his play Hamlet are giving every emotion they have at the whim of some Danish prince, exhibiting their passion for their craft.  Did you guys have a hard time with this act?  Because I felt like I was in the weeds the whole time.

DRJ #1: Hamlet, Act I

                Thank god for “No Fear Shakespeare,” that’s what I want to say first off.  I’m actually enjoying reading this, which I never thought I would have.  I remember when I was a kid; my sister and I would think that we saw ghosts in this house we used to live in.  They ended up being nothing of course, but the first scene here reminded me of that.

                I got sort of pissed off at Gertrude throughout this act.  I thought it was a little cold of her to just move right on to her brother-in-law after Hamlet Sr. died.  First of all it’s her brother-in-law, and second it’s only been a month since her ex-husband died.  According to the ghost however, she has a lustful personality and for that she’s off the hook from his wrath.  I don’t think Gertrude causes conflict intentionally, because of what the ghost said, but her son is pretty hurt that she could just do something like that, and I think it’s bullshit.

                Shakespeare is using the idea of loyalty to demonstrate how easily people can be manipulated in times of grief.  Hamlet Jr. is mourning his father, and doesn’t think to highly of his mom and new dad, is ready to explode. 

“Why she, even she—

O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourned longer!—married with my uncle,

My father’s brother, but no more like my father

Than I to Hercules. Within a month,

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears

Had left the flushing in her gallèd eyes,

She married. O most wicked speed, to post

With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!

It is not nor it cannot come to good,

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”

 All that the ghost has to do is rile him up a little bit and he’s ready for action.

“Haste me to know ‘t, that I, with wings as swift

As meditation or the thoughts of love,

May sweep to my revenge”

When emotions are running wild people are easily susceptible to suggestion.  Maybe that’s why Gertrude is off the hook from Hamlet Sr.?  Do you think people are vulnerable and easily coerced in times of grief?

SSRJ#2: Carver

After reading Popular Mechanics I felt uneasy.  It bothered me, so I read it again.  It’s only about a page so I read again and again.  It’s weird but I just can’t get over how short this story is and how much of a bang it has.  I felt like I was in this couple’s house watching the whole fight unfold, and the tone and the atmosphere are what really took me there.

Carver sets the mood to dark immediately, he’s pretty forceful right from the get go.  The dark setting of this story along with the aggressive tones prepare the reader for an inevitable explosion in which Carver is showing us the price of winning may not always be worth it.  Without this setting I think the story would have much less of an impact as whole, and the reader could possibly come to conclusions that Carver did not intend.  Repetitive use of the word “dark” solidifies in the readers that nothing good is every going to come.  Light descriptions and heated dialogue contribute to demeanor of Popular Mechanics as well.

Do you think that the man is at fault here?  Is anyone at fault here?  While in the end the man is the one who “pulled back very hard” and “the issue [is] decided,” the woman also wouldn’t let get and she was very determined.

SSRJ#1: Walker

Reading through Alice Walker’s Roselily brought me back to a time when I was a little boy, 5 years old, lost in a supermarket.  It was a horrible feeling of confusion and terror, much like what the young woman is feeling in this story, and much like I felt reading through it.  I didn’t get it.  I still don’t completely get it, but I guess that’s the point.  This story scared the hell out of me.  Even though she’s up on the porch surrounded by people she is still all alone, unsure of things to come.

The literary element I believe holds the most weight in this story is structure, specifically the conflict occurring in our central character’s head.  Also I like the way the story is broken up and how each verse relates to its italicized caption.  Through our central character’s inner conflict I think Walker is making a statement about gender and the role of a man and a woman in a marriage.  Here she is, independent woman with 4 kids (3 whom she takes care of) marrying a man whose beliefs are contrary to her way of life.  She’ll be moving from a Christian lifestyle down in Mississippi to a Muslim household in Chicago.  The narrator repeats the idea of her wearing a veil, robes, and covering her head and emphasizes her uncertainty of the situation.  A couple lines that hit me were, “Her place will be in the home, he has said . . . Her hands will be full.  Full of what? Babies.  She is not comforted.”  And “She does not even know if she loves him.”  Can you imagine?  Committing yourself to someone you don’t even know if you love?  Scary stuff.  In the end she makes a full transformation from our single mother to dependent wife even though “She feels ignorant, wrong, backward,”  and the thought is reaffirmed when the story closes with her just following behind her now husband as he doesn’t even look back.  I got the feeling she was just being led like a lost puppy.

Obviously the situation has its pluses and minuses.  At the climax of the story she seems to just go with it.  She doesn't even hear anything past “his peace” and just follows.  Is she happy?  Does she think she will be or is she doing this for her children?  

Hi everyone I'm Jordan and this is my blog for English 301.