Hamlet Assignment #1

I am not one to believe in supernatural events or spirits. I consider myself to be stubbornly realistic. Though, events that I have been witnessing are toying around with what I believe. He rose out of the ground. My eyes refusing to accept what they were seeing. I was with my fellow guards Marcellus and Bernardo. What we all witnessed "sent shivers down my back" (1.l.57). It was he, the King of Denmark who appeared before us. I tried to speak with the King. I called out "speak!" (1.l.30). The spirit of the dead King did not respond to my request, only disappeared. I still like to think of that night as a dream. I do not know what to believe.

Hamlet Character Perspective

Assignment: Write one chunky paragraph about the character you’ve chosen to focus on for your blog, and why you’ve selected this character. What is interesting, engaging, and “social media” worthy about this character?

 The character I have chosen to focus on for my blog is Horatio. Horatio is the close friend of the central character of the play, Hamlet. I chose to go with Hamlet’s close friend because, to me, the friends of the main character are often essential to the story. Their roles help the main character develop in the story and they normally have qualities of importance that may go unnoticed. These types of characters spark my interest. Horatio seems to be loyal and a very helpful character to Hamlet. I get this impression because he is described as “the harbinger of truth” (Mabillard). Horatio is interesting, engaging, and social media worthy because he is a character to which everyone can relate. Most of us have been part of a friendship where we feel like we are the backbone for that person or the one that keeps them grounded. “If Horatio were not there, Hamlet’s sanity would truly be in doubt” (Mabillard). “It is through Horatio that the actions taken by Hamlet and other characters gain credibility” (Mabillard). It appears to me that Horatio is going to turn out to be every bit as interesting as Hamlet and I am looking forward to reading about how his character develops.

Works cited:

Mabillard, Amanda. Horatio. Shakespeare Online. 20 Aug. 2000. (date when you accessed the information) < http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/hamlet/horatiocharacter.html >.

Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams

Synopsis:

               The Glass Menagerie takes place in 1944 and is a play told through memories. The Wingfield family lives in small apartment that can only be entered and exited by a fire escape. Single mother Amanda lives with her son Tom and crippled daughter Laura. After their father left them, Tom took a full time job working at a warehouse to support the family. After Laura drops out of Business College due to her social anxiety, Amanda turns all her focus to finding a gentleman caller, or husband, for Laura. However, due to her anxiety, Laura has no interest in marrying and spends all her time collecting glass animals. Hoping to find a husband for Laura, Tom brings home his friend Jim from work who was an acquaintance to Laura in high school. After a few hours of conversation, Jim begins to break down the barrier Laura has created between herself and society. However, as Jim and Laura are dancing, Jim accidently bumps into Laura’s glass unicorn, breaking the horn and causing it to become as ordinary as any other horse. Laura’s hopes quickly become as shattered as her glass unicorn when Jim tells her that he is to be married.

Play Background

.                   Debuted in Chicago in 1944

         Characters and story based on experiences of author Tennessee Williams

         Character Laura based on William’s sister, Rose

Primary Characters

         Amanda Wingfield

         Tom Wingfield

         Laura Wingfield

         Jim O’Connor

Setting

         St. Louis in 1944. The Wingfield apartment

Key Plot Moments

         Beginning: Laura dropping out Business College: Viewer first insight into Laura’s personality and internal struggles.

         Middle: The shattering of the glass unicorn: Laura’s major characterization shift

         End: Laura blowing out the candle: ending of the play and final downfall of hope

Key Quotes

         “The scene is memory and is therefore non-realistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart” (Williams5-10)

         “A little physical defect is what you have. Hardly noticeable even! Magnified thousands of times by imagination! You know what my strong advice to you is? Think of yourself as superior in some way!” (Williams 37-41).

         “Now it is just like all the other horses” (Williams 89).

Symbols:

Glass Menagerie: Laura’s collection of little glass animals represents her fragile mental state and personality. The glass is very delicate and unique like Laura’s personality.

Fire Escape: The only way to enter and exit the Wingfield apartment us through a worn-down fire escape. This represents the difficulty that the family has escaping the despairs and struggles of reality.

Glass Unicorn: The glass unicorn is the most intricate and fragile animal in Laura’s collection. The glass unicorn represents Laura’s unique personality and inner beauty. The unicorn breaking and it becoming an average horse represents Laura’s snap to reality and Jim stealing Laura’s individuality.

Blowing out the candle: While Jim at the WIngfield’s, the apartment loses power due to Tom’s inability to pay the electric bill. Laura and Jim light candles in the living room. The candles being lit represent the hope Laura feels while growing closer to Jim. At the very end of the play, Laura blows out the candle. This represents Laura’s lose of hope after she finds out that Jim is to be married.  

Motifs:

Laura’s defect: Foster Chapter 24, ...And Rarely Just Illness, suggests that when a character has a specific illness or defect it represents something about the time period or who the character is as a person. One of Laura’s leg is shorter than the other causing her to wear a brace on one leg. This makes Laura different from everyone else and represents her individuality.

Paradise Dance Hall: Paradise is a biblical allusion to the Garden of Eden. While Laura and Jim are talking, they hear music from Paradise Dance Hall across the street. The Garden of Eden is originally a beautiful and perfect place but eventually falls due to Adam and Eve’s lack of responsibility. This relates to Laura because she feels as though she is so close to paradise when she is with Jim but loses it all when she finds out that Jim is engaged.

Themes:

Escape:  Amanda, Laura, and Tom struggle with the weight of reality. Escape is an important theme in the play because each character has a way of escaping reality and going to their own mental happiness since reality is not enough. Amanda remonises from her days as a southern belle and dreams about gentleman callers, Laura spends her time with her glass menagerie, and Tom goes to the movies to escape reality.

Individualism: A main theme in the play is the rareness of individuality.  Even though awkward and antisocial, Laura has a unique personality despite the pressure to conform in high school. The glass unicorn, which symbolizes Laura, represents this theme because it is the most individual animal is Laura’s collection before it is broken.  

Stylistic Devices:

Music: The Glass Menagerie is a play told through memories. Music is used throughout the script and our video to connect different parts of the story. Music that is played at a certain point in one part of the script and is the played again later on is used to bring the viewer back to other points in the play and connect them.  

Swimming Home Creative Project PowerPoint

Poetry Analysis

In the poem Diving into the Wreck, Adrienne Rich addresses the issue of believing and accepting the truth over accepting the beliefs of the majority of society each of us live in. Rich does this by using the underwater scene of the wreck and the allusions to societal power. The mermaid wants evidence, she wants to know the true story of the wreck, “The thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth” (lines 61-63). She is ambitious and curious and goes against what her society believes and accepts to find evidence for herself. In the second stanza of the poem, Rich uses a ladder as a reference to society ideas and beliefs and the power it has over individuals. “There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging…we know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise, it is a piece of maritime floss, some sundry equipment.” (lines 13-21). These lines are inferring that there is always going to be the opinion from the majority. The opinion of the majority will always loom over our heads and it is our own decision to go along with the majority, or go along with our intuition and believe things based on what we need and want to believe. To find the truth, the mermaid has to escape from the safe society belief system and experiences how difficult the transition can end up being. Rich captures this transition in the lines. “I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me…I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin,” (lines 22-33). The mermaid experiences the hardships of going off on her own and expresses that she even feels pain. Once again Rich uses the ladder to allude to the mermaid’s society’s ideas and beliefs and provides a visualization of her moving the opposite direction of the society by describing her actions of crawling down the ladder as if she were an insect. At the end of the poem, Rich portrays why most of us prefer to stay and go along with the ideas and beliefs of our society and the majority. The question we are left with is whether it’s the right thing, or if it is the wrong thing; if it is an indicator of whether we are strong or weak. “We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage, the one who find our way back to this scene,” (lines 87-90). The “scene” in this case refers to truth, the reality of the stories we hear. The ones who escape the majority and go off to find the truth can either be perceived as being in the right or being in the wrong.

Rumpelstiltskin

Sisyphus