Hey guys, can someone please take a quick look over one of my paragraphs for Module B (Hamlet)? The question is "To what extent does 'Hamlet' resonate with your personal response of the play as a whole?" I'm going to be writing an organic response on the day, but I feel like I'm storytelling and just need someone to tell me if the general direction of my arguments are clear. This is by far my weakest paragraph, and my teacher hasn't gotten back to me on my draft yet, despite the assessment being in 2 days ugh. It would mean so much if someone could provide some assistance!
Shakespeare reveals the extent to which competing societal expectations can plague the individual’s perceptions of morality, and by extension, their ability to take decisive action.
Nice concept to start. While Freud suggests that Hamlet’s explicit references to Gertrude’s “honeying and making love over the nasty sty” emanate from his Oedipus complex, it is far more compelling to reason that these loquacious meanderings are simply a result of the grand conflict with which he is placed as an individual: a humanist expected to be the bearer of divine retribution, as evidenced in his claim “O cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right”. The negative religious connotations of “cursed” and “spite”, reveal his frustration with the extent to which medieval expectations have placed him in direct conflict with his Humanist desire for agency.
I feel we are focusing too much on the character here - It is nicely analytical, but try to abstract a little. Composer should always be mentioned more than the character. While Fortinbras' desire to restore order and honour to his country would motivate him go to war over even an "egg shell", Hamlet's struggle to reconcile his belief in Christian theology – “Heaven and Earth” – and the filial honour with which he is "bound", paralyses his ability to “sweep” to revenge in this pragmatic manner.
More character description, and no techniques! However, though Aristotelians construe Hamlet’s continual delays as signs of his inherent “fatal flaw”, Shakespeare’s claim that “conscience doth make cowards of us all” suggests otherwise – that his vacillations should be assumed given the external circumstances with which is beset.
Better mentioning composer, but still need techniques to make this proper analysis. Additionally, Hamlet’s contradiction of his hierarchal position in his ironic statement “O, what a peasant slave am I!”, represents moral ambiguities as an indiscriminate burden over humanity at large, suggesting they are indeed not an individual fault.
Not Hamlet's statement, Shakespeare's, Hamlet is the puppet. Utilising the environment of duplicity and familial discord as a catalyst for Hamlet’s struggle to reconcile opposing notions of morality, Shakespeare is able to explore the paradox of human existence.
I think your ideas are
fantastic, but you are right, you are doing more of a character/story breakdown. Abstract a bit, make sure we are involving lots of techniques and how
they work to
portray Hamlet in a certain way, and how this resonates with the theme you are discussing. I'd also like you to link back to this theme more obviously throughout the paragraph, specifically laying out how the portrayal of Hamlet (not Hamlet himself, the portrayal by Shakespeare, that's the important bit, Hamlet is a construct) links to the theme
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Topic: English Advanced Question Thread (Read 1408581 times)