Hamlet: Act I ... the characters within...

Throughout Act I in Hamlet, you learn a lot about the characters without Shakespeare specifically saying anything about them. Everything you learn about each character in the first Act is strictly by what they do and say so you as a reader have to make assumptions and draw conclusion about each character. This really helped me to really take in the story because it doesn’t just tell you what to think, but it allows you to draw in on personal experiences to figure out what kind of person each character is.

One of the characters who really stuck out to me is King Claudius. You don’t really hear much from King Claudius himself, but you learn a lot about the kind of person he is from Act I. You learn about how selfish he is when you find out that he seduces Hamlet’s mother so he can be King. You then find out how conniving he is when you find out that he poisoned Hamlet’s father. Without actually saying that King Claudius is a bad man, you automatically hate this man from the start and feel sorry for Hamlet.

Another character, who on the other hand you hear a lot from but learn more about him by what he does, rather then what he says is Hamlet. Right from the start of Act I you realize that Hamlet will be the complicated character of the book both external and internally. Through the weeping over his father’s death, and his pronounced love for Ophelia, you realize how sensitive a man Hamlet is. You also learn that he is a respectful son when he chooses to bite his tongue rather then speak out against his mother and uncle’s marriage. This shows what strong character he is. Although we don’t know that much about Hamlet yet, I feel as though you can never learn everything there is to Hamlet because that’s how “deep” he is as a character in this story.

The last character I would like to point out is Gertrude. Now this character I don’t really know about, but from reading the first act, I have a lot of questions that I will hope to be answered throughout this play. Right now I am undecided on whether Queen Gertrude is innocent to what had happened to her husband, or if she was in on it. Hamlet states that her and his father were truly in love, but now that you see that she was so eager to go off and get married so soon, how do we truly know that she was in love. I am wondering if she helped plot the king’s murder or she is just so naive that she just doesn’t see what Claudius is doing. Either way, I find it very hard to sympathize with this character and I feel she will be my least favorite in the play. As the plot thickens, I hope to learn more of her connection to what is happening with the corruption going on in the kingdom.

So far, I am really enjoying reading this play. I’ve only read the first Act and I am already drawing conclusion to which everyone may be internally and how they affect the story externally. I am looking forward to reading on and finding out what really happened the day the king was murdered and who was actually in on the scheme.

When you comment on this particular blog, I would appreciate if you could focus on the ideas that i pointed out about the characters. I would love to hear if anyone felt the same way I did about these characters or if you don't feel the same way give me your input on how your opinion differs. Also if you would like to give me a critique on my grammar and organization skills that would be very helpful to me.

Coleridge and Shelley

1. In "Kubla-Klan", I think the author is cautioning against imagination's indulgence. When the poem first starts off, he talks about this beautiful paradise with imagery to make the reader think that the poem is going to be about this wonderful imaginative place. But the poem quickly takes a turn to the total opposite by the end of the poem. He then talks about this place in the total opposite way by saying its "savage" and saying it has "caves of ice". By the end of the poem the author is telling the reading to beware and then he says "and close your eyes with holy dread, for he on honeydew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise." To me this says that the author is warning the reader to watch out what for what you imagine could be a paradise because in reality it might not be as great as you thought it would be. I believe Coleridge is writing this to everyone who has ever wished they had something other then what they have already. It kind of goes with that saying "be careful what you wish for". I think the purpose of this story was to warn people to be happy with what they have and to stop wishing they had more because sometimes it isn't as great as you would have imagined. 

2. When I read Ozymandias, I heard three speakers with in the poem. The three speakers I am referring to are the narrator, the traveler, and Ozymandias. The narrator reveals what a traveler said to him about a broken statue he saw in the desert. This then brings on what the third speaker, Ozymandias, says "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" This statement I believe is very important to what this poem is trying to say to the listeners. This quote that Ozymandias once says suggest that this man was once a great leader and had eventually fallen in his rein of power. Seeing that the statue is broken when the traveler describes it in this poem, this could suggest that the leader had fallen or been taken over by another. I think this poem is trying to tell the leader to not be over-proud and obnoxious about all that you do because one day it might come back around and hurt you. This I think serves as a political lesson of abuse of power from leaders and how eventually all powerful leaders will fall. 

William Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" - Poetry and Social Change

1) Do you agree with the editors of your textbook that Blake's poetry had the power to enact social change by appealing to the imagination of the reader?

I do agree with the editors of my textbook that Blake's poetry had the power to enact social change by appealing to the imagination of the reader. I say this because in both his poems he gets into the mind of a child who was put under these hard working labors and really makes you imagine what a child under those conditions might be thinking. Blake gives you two different versions of how a child might feel I believe in order to appeal to a greater audience and to get more of a reaction to his poems. First he speaks as a child with a more optimistic view saying that as long as he is a good boy and works hard he will be rewarded in heaven. This poem might enact social change because it makes you have hope for the boy and makes you want to try and make things better for children all over who are just working hard to be as good as they can. The second poem on the other hand is a more pessimistic view of how a child might feel under these hard working conditions. It talks about how the child feels disowned  because his parents sold him to be a chimney sweep. On the other hand this child feels as though god is punishing him and he blames the heavens. This poem might enact social change because it makes you feel bad for the hopeless boy in the poem and makes you just want to fix all the unfairness that these children have to face.

2) Why might the editors have included the Parliament transcript as a primary source document? How did it affect your reading of Blake's work?

They editors might have included the Parliament transcript as a primary source document in order for the reader to have a background on how the real conditions of child labor were and how dead on Blake was in getting the pain the children suffered through with his poetry. This affected my reading of Blake's work because once i had the background on how horrible the child labor was it made Blake's poetry sound all the more real and you almost believe it came from a child himself because those poems are exactly how you would imagine a child would feel under these hard conditions that they had to over come. It really helped me to get the deeper meaning and pain of the poem and it helped the poem affect me way more than it did before i had that background information.

Jonathan Swift teacher prep work

a) Questions I asked:

1) How do we know this is all really happening, could it just be a dream? I asked this question because I was wondering if this could be just a dream. They say that the man woke up, but maybe he just woke up in his dream. I figured that other people who read this might have the same question and it would be something good to discuss.

2) Who really is the normal human in this story? How do we know the man isn’t just a giant and everyone else is normal sized? I asked this question because everyone has a different point of view on things and when I read the story I took it as he might be a giant. So I thought this would be another good discussion question on how point of view effect’s a story.

3) Why didn’t the man fight back when the people had him tied up if he was so much bigger then them? Would it just be easier to go along with being a hostage basically? I asked this question because I thought it was interesting how he didn’t fight at all and just went along with the people and there ways even though he was so much bigger then them. I also thought this would be something good to discuss about fighting over going with the flow.

4) How come the little people are so closed minded as to believe that the man isn’t real, that he “dropped from the moon”? I picked this question because I think it relates to what Pope was talking about when he talks about the limitation to the mind and believing things that are outside the normal. This would be another good discussion question.

Significant Parts: One significant part I thought was this: “For as to what we have heard you affirm, that there are other kingdoms and states in the world inhabited by human creatures as large as yourself, our philosophers are in much doubt, and would rather conjecture that you dropped from the moon, or one of the stars;”

            I thought this was an important part because the little people talk about how it is impossible for there to be people as big as him. I think this relates to how Pope says that people are limited of the mind because they are saying that it’s impossible for him to be real, when they really they don’t know what can really be out there and they are being really close minded.

Predictions: I really didn’t have any predictions that I thought people would have a hard time understanding. I think this was a very easy story to understand. The only thing I would clarify would be why the man did not fight against people that were so much more tiny than he was. 

b) and c)Reflective Journal:

            I really liked working in the teacher groups. By putting all of our thoughts together about the story, it really helps to think more outside of just my own thinking. It helped me to get more than one prospective out of the book which helped me understand the story better on a deeper level. What one of us didn’t catch about the story, the other person did. It gave us a chance to really look at the story at a very well rounded perspective. I don’t really have anything bad to say about working in these teacher groups. It gives us a chance to work together and hear the perspective of our peers. Like for instance, I didn’t even realize that this could all be a dream until someone in my group brought it to my attention. This brought up another question for me to ask my self about the reality of this story. All in all I really enjoy these teacher groups and I think we should do more group work like this.

            I believe the way my group has approached are teaching method is very good. We plan to have different discussion points to focus on that stood out to us in the story. Then, we also have some questions that we will answer that we thought would clarify the story more clearly. All in all, my group has a very well organized way to teach the class about this story. I think we will do very well.