Revision #1, open prompt #4

1980. A recurring theme in literature is the classic war between a passion and responsibility. For instance, a personal cause, a love, a desire for revenge, a determination to redress a wrong, or some other emotion or drive may conflict with moral duty. Choose a literary work in which a character confronts the demands of a private passion that conflicts with his or her responsibilities. In a well-written essay show clearly the nature of the conflict, its effects upon the character, and its significance to the work.

                  In Stephanie Meyers’ The Twilight Saga, we are introduced to an entire different world. One filled with immortal creatures living within the same city lines as normal human beings. Bella Swan, the main character, is torn between two choices that could either end her life permanently, or end her mortal life for a split second, until she comes back to life as a vampire. Bella has to choose between staying with the love of her life, Edward Cullen, or living the rest of her life out normally for the sake of her family and friends. The decision of joining the immortal world is showed throughout the whole saga, it changes Bella and everyone around her, and it shows great impact for the novel, for without the conflict there wouldn’t be a novel at all.

                  When Bella Swan moves back to Forks she reconnects with Jacob the werewolf. Jacob has an unrequited love for Bella, but she is head over heels in love with the vampire. We all know that vampires are not living, they are dead and their souls are no longer there. Edward is in love with Bella, and he has to make the choice on whether or not he should change her into a vampire so that they can be together forever, or if he should have her save her life and let her grow old and die while he is still right there by her side. Bella doesn’t want this however; she is worried about her own happiness. By being faced with such a big decision, Bella has to question her entire life within a couple weeks almost. She has to leave her family behind without telling them anything, is that what she really should do? She clearly isn’t mature enough to make the right choices, but making the wrong choice is what gets the novel going.

                  Bella is a dynamic character; the biggest change being her mortality. In book one she was an awkward teenager, and by the end of the series she was a grown and mature vampire. She has to make life decisions that none of us could even imagine. She is forced to tell her dad that she died, and she tells her mom the same thing. Every one of her old friends thinks she dies, and the only people that know her secret are the vampire world and the werewolf pack. She will always live with the decision of not having closure with her other loved ones, and she seems perfectly happy with that decision. She is forced to put her real life to an end, and let her fake life begin. Though she is happy in the end because she is with her soul mate forever, she had to make life-altering decisions to get there (literally). She gives up the responsibility of being a grown woman, a woman who lives the average life we all dream of. All of that gets thrown away for one man: her love.

                  Without this decision, there would be no series at all. Bella would never be a vampire, and there would be no battles over her love and the reality of her child. There would be no Vulturi to almost kill the Cullen family, and Bella Swan would be living her life with Jacob, unhappy. Giving this big of a decision to an eighteen year old in high school was a very smart play on Meyers’ part. She makes Bella seem vulnerable, and selfish by doing only what she wants, and not thinking about her friends and family. Without all of these problems, there would be no series. These novels greatly show the conflict that Bella is faced with and all of the ways in which it affects her life and her moral decision, and all of that is what contributes to the significance of the story.

Summary and analysis of Hamlet

Author: William Shakespeare

Setting: Elsinore, a city in Denmark. The action happens within the castle of the King and Queen.

Plot: The play starts out with some guards of the castle and Horatio, Hamlet’s friend, seeing a ghost figure. Horatio knows who the ghost is, and tried to talk to the ghost, but he only wishes to speak to Hamlet. That being said, Horatio runs off and tells Hamlet that he has come see his dead father, and previous King of Denmark. Hamlet is surprised by this piece of information, and goes immediately to speak to the ghost, his dad, that night. While Hamlet and Old Hamlet were talking, the ghost informs Hamlet that Claudius, Old Hamlets brother and now King of Denmark, had murdered him in hopes of taking the throne. Also, Claudius married Old Hamlet’s wife, Gertrude. Old Hamlet wants one thing of Hamlet, to avenge his father and kill Claudius, and Hamlet eagerly accepts this task.

            Hamlet then proceeds to act a little bit crazy, and forces the guards and Horatio to swear upon his sword that they have not seen anything. Hamlet keeps up his crazy spell, and this forces Claudius and Gertrude to recruit some of Hamlet’s old friends from childhood, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to spy on him. When they meet with Hamlet, he immediately can tell that they have been sent by the King and Queen to get information from him, and thus he refuses to tell them anything. Meanwhile we have Ophelia entering the madness of Hamlet. They are ex-lovers, and Ophelia is torn between Hamlet and her dad knowing about their love and greatly disapproving of it. While Ophelia and Hamlet are having a rather physically violent exchange, Hamlet realized that Ophelia’s dad, Polonius, and the King are spying on them. He then confesses that he once did love Ophelia, but he no longer does, and he tells her to go to a nunnery. At this point, we start to see that Hamlet truly has gone mad.

            Next, Hamlet wants evidence that Claudius killed Old Hamlet, so he puts on a play that is an exact replay of all the events that have happened in Elsinore. Hamlet is focused on Claudius’s reaction, and once that part in the play happens where the King dies, Claudius is appalled and stands up in disbelief: he has been caught. Hamlet then goes to kill the King, but doesn’t because he sees that he is praying so he would go to heaven. Then he goes to Gertrude to try to talk to her about it, but Claudius knows the connection between mother and son, so he sends Polonius to spy on their conversation. Hamlet sees the curtain behind which Polonius is standing moves, and believes it to be Claudius, so he instantly went to kill. Too bad it was Polonius instead of the King. Then the ghost appears again, and Hamlet tries to get Gertrude to see it, but she can’t. He is truly going mad.

            The King desperately wants to get rid of Hamlet, but he knows all of the Denmark people love his so it will be hard, so he gets sent to England. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern arranged to have Hamlet killed via letter, so Hamlet interrupts this message to the King and sends a new one saying to kill them instead. Ophelia has then drowned herself in sorrow of crazy Hamlet and the death of her father. Laertes, her brother, finds out about the whole scandal and plans to kill Hamlet. They soon begin to have a battle, where Laertes puts poison on his sword so that Hamlet will instantly get killed. Incase this plan doesn’t work; the King puts poison in a cup that he bet to the winner, aka Hamlet. Hamlet gets stabbed by the poisoned sword, and realizes it was poison so he was dying. Meanwhile, the Queen had just drunk from the poisoned cup, so she was dying. Furious, Hamlet stabs the King with the poisoned sword. So the sword kills Hamlet, Laertes, and the King, and Gertrude is also poisoned. Horatio goes to kill himself, but Hamlet doesn’t allow it. The final thing Hamlet wishes for is Fortinbras to be King, and that soon happens.

Characters:

Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, son to Old Hamlet and Gertrude. He is struggling to avenge his father the entire play by killing Claudius, and he goes crazy. He is slow to take action throughout the entire play.

Ophelia: Hamlets old lover, she is torn between Hamlet and listening to her fathers wishes of staying away from Hamlet since he is up to no good, just royalty. Once her father dies she goes crazy and drowns herself.

Claudius: Brother to Old Hamlet, but he killed Old Hamlet to become King and soon after his death marries Gertrude. He is terrified of Hamlet, and tells Laertes to kill him so he doesn’t have to. We often wonder if he truly loves Gertrude, or if it’s all just an act.

Gertrude: She quickly remarries to Claudius after her husband has been killed. She has a strong connection with Hamlet since he is her son, and she convinces him to stay in Denmark and not go back to school. Soon she ends up turning on Hamlet and siding with the King.

Horatio: Friend of Hamlet. He often helps Hamlet with good decision-making, and he is seen typically as a good character throughout the play with seldom flaws.

Polonius: Father to Ophelia and Laertes. He always gives them advice and he strongly disapproves of Hamlet and Ophelia’s relationship. He is soon killed by Hamlet accidently.

Narrative tone/style:

Since it is a play, we don’t have to worry about the narrator’s opinions throughout it. We can see everything exactly how it is, through each characters perspective. This way we don’t have any biases. The tone of the play is serious, and we get the feeling of this through all of the conflicts between characters and all of the drama that is created. We also get a feel for all of the craziness throughout the play, and those are intensified through Hamlets never-ending monologues, soliloquies, and asides. There are also tones that suggest anger, revenge, and mischief.

Theme: In order to make something happen, there has to be action take, and logical reasoning behind it.

Quotes:

1)   “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (Act I, Scene IV)

~ Marcellus says this while Hamlet and Old Hamlet are conversing. It is obvious that this line sets up the rest of the play and foreshadows what is to happen.

2)   “To be, or not to be: that is the question” (Act III, Scene I)

~ This is spoken by Hamlet. Throughout the entire play, a theme is death and contemplation of death by Hamlet. He struggles with this internal problem for a long time, but realizes that is he uncertain of the afterlife, and he fears what can happen.  

Response to Course Materials #5

     Well another month has gone by since we have written our last response to course materials, and we have pretty much been deciphering only one piece of work this entire time: Hamlet. This is such a long play, and for me, it was very difficult for me to even get sort of an idea of what the heck Shakespeare is trying to say. Maybe I should have taken brit lit after all, but even that probably wouldn't have given me all the help I seem to need. I do admit though, going through the first time and having Ms. Holmes there to help explain to us each scene was VERY helpful, and I wish I could have just had her there the whole time while I was annotating! Watching the movies has also helped, sort of. The first one was kind of very boring for me to sit through, and it only dragged on for about two weeks it seemed. I think this was because of the boring scenery and lack of true emotion. As we all saw in the second film we watched though, the emotion was 100% there. No doubt about it. We saw the sorrow in the ghosts eyes, and we saw the craziness in Ophelias cries. If we would have watched that one first all the way through and the older one second, I think that would have been a lot more bearable for me. I can honesetly say I'm kinda glad we're almost done with it though! But we all know what that means...

     Finals. They are about to kill my grade. That terms test was the death of me, and that's pretty much what our final is going to be composed of (yay). Luckily for me, I realized I needed to change how I studied for it the second time around, and what I did helped! So if I just do that on steroids, I think I will be maybe okay, maybe. Hopefully. 

    Finally we have started class off with a new exercise. I enjoy looking at pictures and making our own descriptions of them, even if our class does do it a little too analytically ..I think they are more exciting and capturing, and I hope we keep doing them for a while! They also help more with our writing, because before all we really had to do was write a sentence or two, these require full paragraphs. Ms. Holmes helps us see what we do wrong too and how some words we choose falsely represent the word we have chosen, and that is a great help to all of us.