Hamlet

Characters
Hamlet: lots of moral confusion, kills a million people but takes forever to kill Claudius
Horatio: sane sounding board for Hamlet, scholar, trustworthy, stops Ham from being too isolated
Claudius: in it for the power and the ladies (Gertrude), kills King Ham
Gertrude: questionable Oedipal relationship with Ham
Ophelia: goes crazy, may be pregnant, loves Ham, obedient to her father
Laertes: example of filial piety, kills Ham in battle, some scandal, foil to Ham
Polonius: murdered, possibly less foolish than he comes across (think advice to Laertes)
King Hamlet: in purgatory! what for!?, good or evil? tells Ham to kill his brother, relationship between Ham and King Ham?
 Setting, plot.
This play takes place in an isolated castle called Elsinore in Denmark. It begins with the ghost of the former king appearing to his son, Hamlet, and telling him he must kill the late kings brother, Claudius. Claudius not only murdered King Hamlet and stole his throne, he also stole his wife and is now married to Gertrude. Hamlet is very religious and is not sure if murdering Claudius is the right thing to do. He pretends to go insane and Claudius and Gertrude try and figure out why. Ophelia is a young noble girl at court who Hamlet has been courting. Her father, Polonius, realizes this and tells her to stay away from him because he could damage her reputation. When Polonius hears that Hamlet has gone crazy, he tells Claudius it's because Ophelia has been ignoring him and they spy on Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet wishes to prove that Claudius murdered his father so he gets a group of actors to perform a play that has the exact way Claudius supposedly murdered King Hamlet in it so he can see how Claudius reacts. He gets very angry and orders the play to end, so Hamlet knows that he killed him. Hamlet goes to confront Gertrude and kills Polonius. Ophelia drowns herself because her father is dead. Laertes hears of this and comes to the palace to kill Claudius because he thinks he is responsible. Claudius tells him it was Hamlet and they make a plan to murder him. Hamlet and Laertes have a fencing match where one of the lances is poisened. Claudius has also poisoned some wine, just in case, but Gertrude ends up drinking it. Both Hamlet and Laertes get scratched with the poison lance and Hamlet stabs Claudius and makes him drink the poison. They all die. Fortinbras comes from Norway to take over.
Theme: Moral confusion along with isolation can lead to paranoia, corruption, and the upset of the natural order.

Response to course materials #4

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.

Response to Course Materials #3

These past few weeks we have started to begin class with analyzing the mood and atmosphere of a picture. We begin by picking an image and a single word that describes it and then writing a paragraph that makes the reader feel the word without stating it. I do think that this has been helpful although I haven't had any immediate way to use this and see what I have learned from this.
My least favorite, but probably the most vital, thing that we have done is practicing writing introductions in short amounts of time. I definitely need more practice with this because I can't seem to understand what answers the question and does not acknowledge the question has been asked. The only other essays I have had to write have been for AP World and APUSH, and the introductions followed a strict format for those. We also did some multiple choice practice. I'm not sure if the section was easier, but the most recent time we did it I did much better than the previous one.
In class we discussed Death of a Salesman more and read some essays about what defines a tragedy and whether Death of a Salesman counts as one. I think this idea of words meaning different things to different people applies in so much of life and I am always so shocked by how offended people can get by a single word. So what if Death of a Salesman is a tragedy? Why does this word hold such intense meaning?
The most recent thing we have done is read Hamlet out loud as a class. I don't think any of us could read it on our own at this point so having the whole class do it is helpful.

Death of a Salesman Close Reading

Characters:
Biff: stops blindly following his father and provides some hope for the future.
Happy:follows in his fathers footsteps, a player
Linda: Madonna, loves Willy and views him as a child
Mistress: whore, gets kicked around
Willy: has big dreams and high expectations, daddy problems
Bernard: actually successful because his father doesn't push him to be something he isn't
Plot:
Willy is a salesman living with his wife Linda and his two adult sons. He is growing older and is not capable of driving back and forth to New England to sell things like he used to. Biff and Happy are disappointments to him, but he also contradicts himself often and says how wonderful and hardworking they are. Right from the beginning of the play Willy has many flashbacks involving his brother Ben, who became very wealthy, and the boys younger days when they adored him. Throughout the play Willy becomes more and more confused and has these flashbacks often. Linda tells her sons this and Biff promises to meet with Bill Oliver and ask for a loan so he can provide for his family. She continues to try and find out why Biff and Willy do not get along, while the audience learns that Biff walked in on his father having an affair. Willy goes to his boss to ask for a job that does not require so much driving, gets fired, and then refuses a job from his friend Charlie who has been lending him money. Willy goes from here to a restaurant where he is meeting Biff and Happy to talk about Biff's meeting with Bill Oliver. This turns into a very emotional scene when Biff tries to stop lying and tell his father that his perception of life is not reality. The play ends with Willy killing himself just as the mortgage on their house is payed off, and no one attends the funeral except the family.
Theme: The sense of entitlement for the idealized American Dream of financial and social prosperity can lead to tragedy.

Quotes:
"We're free" This is what Linda says at the end of the play after Willy kills himself. She is referring to the fact that the mortgage on their house is finally payed off.
"He's liked, but not well liked" Willy repeats this throughout the play showing that he believes a personal touch is necessary is business. He thinks being known and liked is important, but this is proved wrong when he is fired by his boss after thirty years.
 Setting: This is set in urban America in the 1940's, when business began to grow rapidly. The setting is important because the whole play is about the apartments, and business, encroaching and ruining the Loemans lives.
Title: Death of a Salesman. Willy says he wanted to be a salesman because he heard of an 80 year old man who would call up anyone he wanted and sell to them from his home, and could earn a living this way. Willy said this man had the "death of a salesman" and this is what he desired.

Close Reading #3

In recent years parenting has taken on new and completely consuming expectations. In Our 'Mommy' Problem,  Heather Havrileskay talks about how this effects mothers and why it is a problem. She uses diction, figurative language and details, to show how being titled as only a mother can be a negative thing.

Havrilesky uses diction to show that she feels the expectation of mothers to be "moms" all the time is unreasonable. In the first paragraph she uses the word "violently" to describe the change in women becoming mothers but also says one stays the same underneath. The role a mother is expected to take is described as "all encompassing" which is used to prove Havrileskys point that motherhood is now viewed as a task that requires constant attention. In the fourth paragraph the word "mommies" is used to show how a group of women can be classed together only by the act of having children, and also makes the piece less formal. In the next paragraph Havrilesky talks about how mothers are seen as an "alien" breed, cut off from the rest of the world because of their parent status. Diction is also used to display sarcasm, such as jokingly repeating the word "mommies" after discussing how a group of parents were described as this and calling mothers "a strange breed". 

Havrileskys use of figurative language starts in the first paragraph when she relates becoming a mother to a weather forcaster saying that a tornado will give a town "an extreme makeover". She is trying to show that she understands that becoming a parent is a huge change, but then the rest of the essay shows why being a mother is not the only character trait a woman with children possesses. Havrilesky also brings up the "Mommy bow", or the imaginary thing that a mother is supposed to be; one person that can be neatly described and placed in a box as a mother. 

Detail is used in this piece to show specific examples of people being classified as only mothers, and to bring to light the unrealistic expectations society has for these people. Havrilesky used examples of everything; Mothers are displayed unrealistically in TV, movies, and modern fiction. She discusses specific events such as being referred to a group of mommies at a soccer game and an example of a man mocking her and some friends at a bar. These details add credibility and highlight the specific issue in society today. 

In recent years more and more has been expected of being a mother, an already daunting task. Havrilesky eloquently shows the unfairness of this stereotyping and categorizing through memorable words, specific details, and figurative language. 

Response to Course Materials #2

Last time I posted one of these, we left off with the American Dream. After our initial read, we took a break and annotated HTRLLAP and then went back and annotated The American Dream and had a second discussion. Our discussion of HTRLLAP wasn't great, lots of side stories and irrelevant details, but The American Dream was much better. I think this was because we had already discussed the play so we knew which parts to go back to and discuss. We also had a goal when discussing The American Dream which was to find all the motifs and put them together into a theme. This was new to me because although we discussed motifs all the time with The Great Gatsby and The Crucible, we had never tried to find a theme that embodied all of them. Annotating the play after discussing it in class made it much easier for me to catch important details and words, and reading it again allowed me to find evidence for all the motifs found in class.
Next we read Nuts and Bolts of College Literature. This book was incredibly helpful for class and also for college essays, seeing as it focused on all the mistakes I commonly make. I write in passive voice by mistake often and with NBOCL, I am trying to stop. In class we wrote our first AP writing practice and then used the Nuts and Bolts rules to correct it a few days later. This showed me how much my writing could be improved by being made more clear and concise.
At the beginning of each class we have been doing an exercise with a particular passage. We generally have to identify how form follows function and then model a sentence after it. It has been a lot harder than I would have imagined, but as a class we are getting better at it. We especially have have problems with modeling the sentence, which is odd because you would think that would be the easiest part.
For the last few days we have been watching Death of a Salesman. I think watching it helped a lot with comprehension because there were constant flashbacks that would be difficult to understand without actually seeing them. This play is incredibly sad and reminds me of The American Dream mainly in its criticisms of society.

The American Dream Close Reading

author: Edward Albee, one act play, first performed in 1961, adopted very young and his parents (especially mother) extremely strict.

setting: America in the 1960’s, well furnished apartment that looks expensive.

plot. The American Dream starts out with Mommy and Daddy discussing that their visitors are late. Neither mentions who “they” are, and this turns into a discussion about how achieving satisfaction is impossible these days. Mommy then takes the lead and gives an example of this by explaining her trip to buy a hat, a beige hat to be specific. She sees the Chairman of the Women’s committee who then claims the hat is beige, and Mommy is forced to take the hat back and throw a tantrum until the people in the shop find her a new hat that they swear its beige. Daddy then makes an interesting comment about it being the same hat as before, and Mommy says it most certainly was. The conversation about satisfaction continues with Daddy listing all the things that are broken in the house, and then Grandma arrives. She has a large pile of neatly wrapped boxes which she places in the room. Mommy tells a story about her poor childhood, when Grandma would wrap Mommy’s lunch up neatly but Mommy would never eat it because she wanted to take it home for Grandma. Several conversations take place about Grandma being old and then Grandma gets angry at Mommy and says she always said she would marry a rich man to live off of. The doorbell finally wrings but Daddy doesn’t want to answer it anymore and Mommy has to persuade him by telling him how manly he is. Mrs. Barker comes in and a very odd sequence of social niceties occur: Daddy asks if she might want to cross her legs and Mommy asks her to take her dress off. Daddy talks about having qualms right where the stitches are. Mrs. Barker talks about the many committees she is part of and Mommy cannot find the water. Grandma begins to tell Mrs. Barker why she is here: Twenty years ago Mommy and Daddy adopted a “bumble of joy” but it misbehaved and they were forced to chop it apart until it died. They have invited Mrs. Barker here so they can get satisfaction. Next, Grandma meets the young man who tells her his life story. He had a twin but he was separated from it and now he cannot love or feel anything and will do anything for money. Grandma takes him upstairs and is now offstage and narrating. Mommy is upset because she thinks Grandma has been taken away with the van man, who she says she never called. The play ends with Grandma saying that the play must end now because everyone has what they want, or what they think they want.

Significant characters

Mommy: Daughter of Grandma, controlling, was poor and married Daddy for money

Mrs. Barker: sickeningly sweet, professional women, power struggle with Mommy, Chairman of woman's committee, husband in a wheelchair, only one with a name, embodies femininity

Young Man: twin of baby Mommy and Daddy mutilated, representation of American Dream, hollow attractive shell, no substance, plans to kill Mommy and Daddy

Grandma: old American Dream, has substance, gender neutral, knows she is playing a role

Daddy: had sex change, emasculated, controlled by Mommy, rich, never says anything important.

All the women in this play are controlling and manipulative, while the men are pathetic. This could be because Albee had a controlling adoptive mother. This play was also written at an extremely tense and changing time in American history. The Civil Rights movement was going on, and Albee may not have thought that woman should have more power because he believed they would abuse it. Albees tone throughout the play is mocking and condescending towards American values and culture, especially the false politeness. 

Symbolism: The Young Man symbolizes the superficial new American Dream while Grandma represents the old one. The boxes represent substance.  Mommy and Daddy cannot find anything because they have no substance. The competition that Grandma wins with the day-old cake symbolized Yankee ingenuity and relates to the day old cake Mommy used to save for Grandma in her lunch box. Her nicely wrapped lunch box represents illusions and the boxes that Grandma wraps now.

THEME: Consumerism is corrupting American societal structures and values.

TITLE: The American Dream references the ideals of society and what people are striving towards. It is used mockingly because Albee views the American dream as superficial and a threat to America. The Young Man embodies the new American Dream because he is beautiful on the outside, but empty on the inside. Grandma is the foil to him as the old American Dream, and although she is nowhere near perfect, she does have substance.

QUOTES: " I have, now, only my person, my body, my face" This is a quote from the Young Man that shows the motif of superficiality and also how he embodies the empty American Dream. He goes on to say that he lets people use him, and will do anything for money because he is empty inside.

 "I can't quite remember anyone very much like Mommy and Daddy coming to see me about buying a bundle." This quote shows Mrs. Barkers stupidity because she cannot connect what Grandma is saying to her experiences twenty years ago. Albee wanted to show how fake the "professional woman" was, and how she is lost and confused just like Mommy and Daddy. The destruction of language is also shown by the word "bumble" instead of bundle of joy, because it turns something human into something not human.