The main characters in nearly all the literature studied this term share something in common. They all, at times, are on a personal quest to find their place in the world. Each is an individual who struggles for an identity amidst chaos and, in some cases, deception. These individuals share feelings of isolation and often have great difficulty communicating with other characters in their environment. Kathryn Morton and Tim O’Brien stress the critical importance of stories to the human experience. Stories create connections and contribute to an ever growing collective of knowledge, feelings, and experience. These connections bring order and clarity to an individual’s thought process which in turn helps guide useful action and greater contribution. …show more content…
Hamlet opens with the ghost of his father, the King. A ghost is surreal and can’t be touched or smelled but only faintly heard. This seems to foreshadow what is to come in Hamlet as he struggles with avenging the death of his father at the same time that he struggles to develop his own identity. A sense that Hamlet will be lost or blind spiritually is evident when he asks the ghost, “Where wilt thou lead me?”(1.5.1). The ghost replies “My hour is almost come When I to sulfurous and tormenting flames Must render up myself.” (1.5.3-4) Hamlet becomes blind as he pledges to carry out the murder of Claudius. The image of the ghost fading into an eternity of flames reflects Hamlet’s own plight as he loses himself and makes his brain empty to all other elements of his life but vengeance “Ay, thou poor ghost, whiles memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records...And thy commandment all alone shall live.” (1.5 100-103). The opening scene of John Gardner’s Grendel reflects similar imagery of single mindedness, intractability and aloneness. Grendel is literally frozen to the ground by his rage. The reader feels his emptiness as he looks out at the empty sky and mutters to himself. “So it goes with me day by day and age by age, I tell myself. Locked in a deadly progression of moon and stars. I …show more content…
I have had my share of broken bones but none of them have had the devastating impact on my ability to compete on the athletic field. In a split second of crunching and popping sounds and outrageous pain I was rendered helpless and alone lying on the turf in the corner of the field as the play went far down field. True isolation. What followed was a serious surgery and then a painful and long journey of recovery which I am just beginning. The first few nights after surgery I discovered that pain pills don’t agree with my stomach. At a few moments of real agony and before anyone came to my room with ice, I looked out my bedroom window at a black night sky. It seemed oddly familiar having read Hamlet and Grendel and some of the other stories and poems this semester. But unlike some of the characters I have friends who reached out and I decided to reach out too. What if some of the characters in our literature had done the same? Perhaps had Hamlet talked the entire vengeance thing out with Horatio or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern he might have never been poisoned and he and Ophelia could have lived happily ever after. And maybe Grendel could have teamed up with Hrothgar against some other enemy. But then again these are tragedies which tell us something about human nature and instruct us through humor and tragedy toward a better life of our own. There is no doubt that had I not had 8
Stories are the way humans share, create, and explore their many experiences and identities with each other. When a story is told, the original content lingers depending upon how the storyteller recalls the content. Once the story is retold, it often takes on different details and meanings, because each storyteller adds their own perspective, experience, and meaning. The story then begins to have its own life. Each storyteller has a connection to the beginning and the end of the story.
Hamlet is extremely proud of Old King and respects him.“He was a great human being. He was perfect in everything. I’ll never see the likes of him again” (I.ii.185-188). Hamlet loves his father and gives the greatest praise at the funeral. Grief driven by love tempts Hamlet to think his father’s goodness, and more, the loss of such a favorable figure. Hamlet believes that the ghost that is said to look like the dead king is indeed his father.”He waxes desperate with imagination”(I.ii.92). The Prince, who is deep in sadness and does not think sufficiently, is convinced that the spirit is the Old Hamlet, he is the only person that can physically communicate with the ghost. Hamlet for the second time talks to the apparition in his mother’s chamber, where Gertrude does not see any. What Horatio and other witnesses encounter at the gate at night proves the possibility of the existence of the ghost, Hamlet later in the play is considered to be truly mad on the account of his unusual ability to see and talk to the spirit, which is obviously conjured up by his mind. Rising actions in both the book and the play are implied at the beginning of the stories: Amir’s memory of 1975 and Old Hamlet’s death. The journey of redemption or revenge takes actions of concealing their true emotions and implementing devised
After the Prince has killed Polonius, the spirit of King Hamlet reappears for the 2nd time to the Prince when he is condemning his mother for her misdeeds. It almost seems like the ghost is acting just like most fathers. He seems to be prodding a too slow child. The ghost reminds Hamlet that he has promised to get revenge for the King's death.
In life, one goes through different experiences which makes and shapes us into the person who we become. Whether something as little as a "hello" by a crush or a death in a family, they contribute to the difference, as they are all equal in importance. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the protagonist Hamlet struggles throughout his life as he is in search of his true identity. The Webster's dictionary, under the second definition, defines identity as "The set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group." As life only moves forward for Hamlet, he struggles to find his place in life, nonetheless to revenge the murder of his father.
The Ghost is an appearance of him, where his soul seeks out for vengeance. At midnight the guards, Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo, noticed The Ghost on their post. They realized that the apparition appeared as the dead King Hamlet. “But in the gross and scope of mine opinion This bodes some strange eruption to our state (Shakespeare Act I: 6).”
Grendel is alone with only his mute mother for companionship. He is not accepted by the humans and has no real place of belonging outside of his hellish lake cave. Grendel views the human to try to find identity for himself. Grendel is not alone physically and emotionally. Psychologically Grendel develops a philosophical belief that he is alone is existence. This is illustrated when Grendel says “I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understood that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist.” (Gardner 21). Grendel’s isolation changes his outlook on life. To Grendel, he is the only one existing in a meaningless
illuminates on the mystery surrounding the death of Hamlet’s father, the King of Denmark. Often in literature the presence of a ghost indicates something left unresolved. In this case, the death of Hamlets father is the unresolved event as well the revenge necessary to give the tormented soul repose. The ghost created mystery for the audience, spawns the chain of death and treachery in Denmark, causes characters to question the death of their former king, and
The aspect of Hamlet that I find interesting is the appearance of the ghost that Hamlet suspects may be the ghost of his father. Hamlet does not know if the ghost is actually of his father or if it is a demon taking on his father's appearance. How will he know what decision to make if he does not know what the ghost actually is? Also, now I'm wondering if Hamlet makes the wrong decision, will his decision lead to his death? This is the second play of Shakespeare's that I have read that has the appearance of ghosts. Macbeth also had apparitions appear in it. Shakespeare seems to have a method of placing ghosts into his writings, and in Macbeth these ghosts led to the downfall of Macbeth. -Keisha McWhorter
All throughout the play Hamlet mourns the loss of his father, especially since his father is appearing to him as a ghostly figure telling him to avenge his death, and throughout the play it sets the stage and shows us how he is plotting to get back at the assassinator. Such an instance where the ghost appears to Hamlet is when Hamlet and his mother are in her bedchamber where the ghost will make his last appearance. Hamlet tells his mother to look where the ghost appears but she cannot see it because he is the only one who that has the ability to see him.
What effects does the ghost have on Hamlet, and was the ghost really there? During the course of the play Hamlet deteriorates, but why? Hamlet is influenced by the sightings of the ghost of his recently deceased father. The ghost comes to visit Hamlet and inform him in a roundabout way about his death.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is arguably one of the best plays known to English literature. It presents the protagonist, Hamlet, and his increasingly complex path through self discovery. His character is of an abnormally complex nature, the likes of which not often found in plays, and many different theses have been put forward about Hamlet's dynamic disposition. One such thesis is that Hamlet is a young man with an identity crisis living in a world of conflicting values.
Death threads its way through the entirety of Hamlet, from the opening scene’s confrontation with a dead man’s ghost to the blood bath of the final scene, which occurs as a result of the disruption of the natural order of Denmark. Hamlet is a man with suicidal tendencies which goes against his Christian beliefs as he is focused on the past rather than the future, which causes him to fall into the trap of inaction on his path of revenge. Hamlet’s moral dilemma stems from the ghost’s appearance as “a spirit of health or a goblin damned”, making Hamlet decide whether it brings with...
Thus, the first appearance of ghost in front of hamlet is a huge impact and sets the action in motion for the entire plot. The appearance becomes the most important scene in the play. To Hamlet, Hamlet really admired his father, and his father’s death entirely affected his emotion and life. As Hamlet knew that the ghost was the symbol of his father and the unnatural murder. The nightmare...
The appearance of the ghost to Hamlet caused him much confusion. He, at first, regards the ghost as questionable. Hamlet doesn't know if he should listen to the ghost. If this is the ghost of king Hamlet, then hamlet is obligated to listen to the ghost. This is the beginning of Hamlet's problems.
In the tragedy of Hamlet Shakespeare does not concern himself with the question whether blood-revenge is justified or not; it is raised only once and very late by the protagonist (v,ii,63-70) and never seriously considered. The dramatic and psychological situation rather than the moral issue is what seems to have attracted Shakespeare, and he chose to develop it, in spite of the hard-to-digest and at times a little obscure, elements it might involve [. . .] . (118-19)