In the past few weeks, we have been mainly working on Hamlet. First we read through the play, which took forever, and then we began to watch different films to compare. The biggest impact reading Hamlet had on me was realizing how much ambiguity could be in one piece of literature. We've now read, discussed, and watched Hamlet a million (approximately) times, and I still have conflicting views over what actually happened and how things are supposed to be acted out. The three major relationships I can't explain are between Hamlet and Ophelia, Hamlet and his mother, and Hamlet and the deceased King Hamlet.
For homework we annotated Hamlet and two essays on Hamlet. Annotating it took a much shorter time than I originally imagined and I caught and understood many more of the jokes and hidden meanings the second time through. The two essays discussed some of the major disagreements about Hamlet, including whether the ghost is from Heaven or Hell. I thought this was slightly stupid because the ghost tells Hamlet that he is burned during the day to purge away his sins, so he is definitely not in Heaven. One interesting thing that was included was that Hamlet is based off of Amleth, a much older play.
In class, we watched the BBC version of Hamlet with David Tennant, the Olivier version, and the Branaugh version. I liked the one with David Tennant the most, mainly because I felt they added their own twist to it.
I like the diction you use in your paragraph, like the word ambiguity. I agree with you on the fact that it is still hard to pin point what actually happened in the play, there are many things that are hard to decided on. While talking about the David Tennant version of the play you do not really say too much, I think you could add more detail about what made it different than all the other movies and what the big twist was. I do not think you mentioned the forums that we had to do for homework you might want to add something about those. Lastly, you might think about adding something about what is so confusing about the three relationships that you mentioned, Hamlet and Ophelia, Hamlet and Gertrude, and Hamlet and his father. I thought you did a great job of being concise in your post.
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ReplyDeleteHey Alice,
Good job on this post, I agree with you that there is an extreme amount of ambiguity in Hamlet, that’s why it has remained so influential and interesting over the years and why it’s still relevant today. I also think that the three relationships you described are confusing, but further class discussion and analysis will help flesh these out. Annotating Hamlet after reading it also helped me, it was easier than expected and helped with further understanding. I think you should elaborate on why you liked the David Tennant version better than the other movie versions, what different twist did they add?
Overall, great job, have a good break!
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ReplyDeleteHey Alice. You covered everything here, so I don't have anything to criticize. I agree with how useful reading it through a second time is. I also agree with what you said about the "Tragic Balance in Hamlet" essay being very confusing. I don't think the ghost's origin was ever really up for debate, so the essay really felt like 12 pages of wasted time to me. I also agree with you on the Tennant version being the best. This seems to be the general opinion. I noticed that you have some pretty anti-Branagh sediments, and I don't understand this. Maybe it more so came from Alex, but either way: what exactly do you have against poor Kenneth? And did you have anything against him personally or was it his performance in that play in specific?
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