I thoroughly enjoyed Hamlet. I actually found the writing extremely interesting and the themes very poignant. With Kirk reading them I often found myself trying to read it before he got there so I could better understand them (even then I failed occasionally). The majority of the meaning, came out of the class discussions. My personal favorite passages were the now infamous "To be or not to be" sollioquoy and the passage about "the fall of the sparrow"
To me they really exemplified the language and themes of the play. In the passage "To be or not to be..." Hamlet really explores the meaning of life and suicide, which often leads to actors over-playing the speech, and in "the fall of the sparrow" he discusses fate and the inevitability of death, which in itself is kind of a throw back to the "To be or not to be..."
The meanings behind these two passages leads me to a question though, why has every book we read since Jane Eyre dealt with suicide, at least theorhetically? I mean, Madame Bovary Emma kills herself, Flaubert's Parrot Braithwaite's wife killed herself, Mrs. Dalloway Septimus kills himself and Clarissa considers it, The Hours Richard kills himself, Laura Brown considered it, and Virginia Woolf killed herself (although that is a historical fact), and now Hamlet Ophelia kills herself and Hamlet considers it many times. I'm just trying to figure this out.
Back to Hamlet, I have to acknowledge that supplementing the reading with watching Kenneth Brannagh's version really helped.
4 comments:
Glad to see someone else appreciated Shakespeare as much as I did. Seems like you were able to comprehend the writing well too
I like the observation AJ. It has proven to ring true, to a degree. Although, I believe that you could broaden this to say that every book we have read/analyzed has dealt heavily with the theme of life and death, maybe even mortality in general. Suicide is definitely a recurring theme, it just seems far too narrow a subject to base an in-depth thought process on, especially when dealing with a Shakespearean work.
True enough Clayton, but I was just curious as to the suicide subject in general, it just seems weird. The one I'm having the most trouble fitting in with this observation is Jane Eyre, though Bertha does kill herself in that as well. I know that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is going to deal with death as well so i'm interested to see how that works. Also, why is Jane Eyre the only book we've read that we haven't read a book about it?
AJ, I think that while your idea of suicide is a good one that you can easily run with for an essay i think that you need to create a more narrowed and focused idea of what Hamlet means by when he explores life and death. He certainly does do an excellent job of it, but what is his point? I'm curious to see how you play this idea out.
Also, the reason that Lavender keeps having us read books about suicide is because he's trying to kill us so the class size is reduced by using subliminal messaging. Be careful!
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