Hamlet Summary and Analysis

·         Author: Shakespeare-baptised April 26, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, died April 23 1616.  Married Anne Hathaway.  Is seen as one of the greatest English Writers and is famous for several plays such as Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet.  Most of his plays are tragedies or comedies, but some are histories.  He also wrote some poems.  He was a part of the King’s Men 

·         Setting: Denmark-Elsinore Castle-the home of Hamlet.  Hamlet hates Elsinore and believes it to be a terrible place.

·         Plot-the play opens outside of the castle with some guards. Marcellus and Bernardo are guards who get Horatio to witness the ghost of Old Hamlet.  We learn that Old Hamlet defeated Old Norway and his son, Fortinbras, wants to take over Denmark.  Meanwhile, in the castle, Hamlet is unhappy about his mother’s marriage to Claudius, his father’s brother.  Horatio tells Hamlet to go see the ghost.  Laertes prepares to go back to school in France.  He gives Ophelia advice about Hamlet.  Hamlet sees the ghost and talks to it.  The ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius killed him and asks him to get revenge.  Polonius asks his servant to spy on Laertes and Ophelia tells him of Hamlet’s strange behavior.  The King calls on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to figure out why Hamlet is acting strangely.  He also learns that Fortinbras has been ordered to not attack Denmark but to go to Poland.  Hamlet refuses to tell anyone anything, speaks in “riddles” and discovers that many people are betraying him.  Players come, which Hamlet uses to see if Claudius really did kill Old Hamlet by having them stage a play similar to the way he thinks Claudius killed Old Hamlet.  The play proves Hamlet’s thoughts.  He goes to his mother’s closet and makes her understand how terrible it was to murder her husband’s brother and murderer.  He kills Polonius during this because he was hiding behind a curtain.  The King decides to send Hamlet to England.  While he’s going there, Ophelia becomes crazy and Laertes storms the castle.  Hamlet comes back from the trip to England by changing the letters of his death to be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s death, and goes onto a “pirate” ship.  At Ophelia’s burial, Hamlet talks with the two clowns about Yorick.  Laertes and Hamlet encounter each other and fight in Ophelia’s grave.  They have a duel.  Laertes and Hamlet poison each other with a poisoned sword, the Queen drinks a poisoned drink and Hamlet forces the King to drink the poison and stabs him.  Hamlet gives the throne to Fortinbras.  They all die.  Fortinbras comes, takes over the country.     

·         Significant characters:

·         Hamlet:  the main character who suffers from having his father killed and his mother married to his brother/murderer.  Throughout the play, he struggles between deciding whether to kill Claudius or not.  He wants to uphold his father’s wishes and avenge his father’s death, but struggles with the moral implications.  However, he kills Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern before he finally kills Claudius.  He is very intelligent and believes that Elsinore is a terrible place.  He also has struggles about whether life is worth living. 

·         Claudius: the King of Denmark, the brother of Old Hamlet and now husband to Gertrude.  He killed Old Hamlet and ends up killed by Hamlet.

·         Polonius-the father of Laertes and Ophelia.  He is a rather scheming man but not the brightest.  He seeks to gain more power and uses anything to try and gain an advantage.  When Hamlet insults him, he doesn’t realize it and thinks Hamlet is just crazy.  He sends his servant to spy on Laertes, spies on Ophelia and Hamlet, which ends up getting him killed.

·         Ophelia-the love interest of Hamlet.  We don’t know for sure whether she has slept with Hamlet, but we assume so.  It is also suspected that she might be pregnant.  She stopped seeing Hamlet because Polonius told her to stop.  She also sets Hamlet up to be spied on.  After Polonius is killed, she goes crazy and sings.  She then drowns herself.

·         Laertes-the son of Polonius.  He goes to school in France.  He is a foil to Hamlet because when he learns of his father’s death, he comes immediately home, stages a revolt to overthrow Claudius who he thinks is the one that killed his father.  He kills Hamlet and dies by the same sword.

·         Style:  There isn’t a narrator, but the play mostly comes from Hamlet’s point of view since he has the most lines.  The author’s style is from a time where Christianity are coming into a world of Pagan beliefs.  There are many references to myths, but also to Christianity as well.  The tone shows a reflective attitude towards the world.  Hamlet has a lot of ideas and insight into the world he lives in.  He struggles with the Christian values and what he thinks is right and wrong.  He also doesn’t know whether life is really worth living or not.  There are many images of maggots and dead or dying things which adds to the motif of something being rotten in Denmark. There aren’t really any symbols except for Yorick’s skull, which emphasizes the presence of death and decay throughout the play.

·         Theme: Life is unexpected and difficult so all you can do is do your best at living your life.

·         Quotes: “Something is rotten in the State of Denmark” This quote is the base for a lot of the thematic elements in this play.  The multiple images of death and decay help to show why Hamlet has such a struggle with living in Elsinore.

·         “The time is out of join.  O cursed spite that ever I was born to set it right.” This shows Hamlet’s struggles in responding to the society, his desires and his morals.  He feels that he needs to set it right, but he is conflicted with all the different ideas and opinions in his mind.  This conflict with himself continues throughout the play and is not resolved until he kills the king as he is dying.

Open Prompt 1970 revised

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen is a novel about the Bennet family, and more specifically, Elizabeth Bennet-the headstrong, rebellious daughter of the family.  In this novel, Elizabeth explores the meaning of love and finds love for herself.  Along the way, she discovers the limits and constraints of living in a world strictly governed by society.  The standards of the society affect all the characters in the novel, which Jane Austen uses to create a satire of 19^th century English society.

                Elizabeth Bennet lives in a society that is extremely concerned with appearances and treat women merely as objects of affection.  Most of the characters in Pride and Prejudice follow with society’s expectations, including Mrs. Bennet and Elizabeth’s sisters.  If they don’t follow the societal norms, they risk being criticized by the other members of society.  For all the young women, the most important thing in life is to search for a husband to be able to start a family.  Even Mrs. Bennet believes that her only job is to raise her daughters and marry them off to wealthy men.   Every year, there are several balls in which the ladies seek out potential husbands.  As a result, the women are not valued for their intelligence or abilities, but instead for the way they can charm a man.     

Because of their desire to meet a potential husband, the women of this society are rather shallow.  They spend copious amounts of time socializing, meeting as many people as possible and trying to get invitations to balls.  The young ladies don’t care about anything except fancy dresses for the balls and meeting handsome, rich men that they might be able to marry.  Lydia is an excellent example of such a character.  She craves parties and attention from men.  She marries early, even though she doesn’t know the man very well.  Love is often not a factor in marriages, all that matters is that the man has money to support the young lady and is willing to marry her.

                Elizabeth Bennet, however, goes against society and refuses to be obsessed with parties and socializing.  She is one of the only characters that thinks for herself and does what she wants, not what is expected of her.  She enjoys spending time reading and prefers to take her time finding a husband.  She is even offered a hand in marriage from a man who is relatively wealthy, but she refuses it because she does not love the man.  This is almost unheard of in society and causes her mother to become furious.  Sometimes, Elizabeth’s actions even cause the other members of society to feel horrified, such as when she chose to walk to the Bingley’s house and dirtied her skirt.  Despite Elizabeth’s defiance of the societal norms, she finds true love and ends up happily engaged. 

                Austen uses the contrast of Elizabeth’s actions and society’s actions to effectively create a satire of nineteenth century British society.  Elizabeth represents the reasoning and intelligence present in all people, but the actions of society show how that reason is pushed away and replaced with the constant desire to impress and follow all of society’s rules.  When seeing Elizabeth’s reason against society’s standards, the audience realizes how silly the society seems. 

Response to Course Material 1/13

This past month, we have covered a lot of material.  Probably most notably, we have read, annotated and watched Hamlet.  The annotating was especially tedious in this play because the language of Shakespeare is so different from our normal speech.  It was also hard to find specific diction and syntax examples because I wasn’t sure whether something was significant or if that was just the way they were supposed to talk.  The two versions of the movie we have watched have been very different.  The first version was very traditional and simple.  It was put on similarly to how I imagine it would have in Shakespeare’s time.  The actors mostly focused on the lines of the play and the meanings of the lines.  There were also very few props, costumes and scene changes.  The second version was more modern and had lots of fancy costumes, elaborate sets and different camera shots.  There were also several directorial choices that were different, such as the interpretations of relationships between different characters (incest, etc.).   The second one was more enjoyable as a movie, however, I think the first one made me think about the play more and interpret it in my own way.

In the text book, we read several poems in Chapter 5.  Then, we did some forum posts.  I liked these forums because we had to post three times, but it had to stay on the same thread.  This created a longer thread that was more like a conversation, rather just a post with two or three comments like it usually is with forums.  I posted on the thread about Anne Bradstreet’s “Before the Birth of One of her Children.”  We talked about the theme and how the poem relates to a character in one of the plays we have read.  Most people in the thread seemed to think that the narrator was most like Willy Loman, but now that we have analyzed Hamlet, I think that the attitude was more like Hamlet.  The narrator seems uneasy about the future, but she accepts whatever happens.  Hamlet is similar to this in that he accepts his fate and just does whatever he needs to get revenge for his father.  I didn’t think about this while I was doing the forums, but I didn’t so I posted it here.

Lately, instead of tone words, we have started to do mood/atmosphere practices.  I really like these exercises because they combine what we have learned about diction, imagery, and syntax and give us a chance to apply them.  Also, when we did the tone words, I often didn’t remember them the next day, but with the mood/atmosphere activities, I can remember the picture and what specifically we did.  For example, we had a gray-scale picture of an alleyway surrounded by houses.  For diction, we used, simple, low-energy words; for syntax, we used plain, simple sentences and for imagery, we emphasized the gray and white bleakness of the picture. 

All in all, this has been an information packed month!