revision of third prompt essay

link to original: http://idontwanttogototheshowtonight.blogspot.com/2012/11/third-prompt-essay.html

1970. Choose a character from a novel or play of recognized literary merit and write an essay in which you (a) briefly describe the standards of the fictional society in which the character exists and (b) show how the character is affected by and responds to those standards. In your essay do not merely summarize the plot.

The America in which Willy Loman lives in Death of a Salesman is one that prizes respect and success over all else. It is a society that believes a man is nothing if he is not well liked, a belief Willy holds strongly, and one that has caused Willy and those close to him a great deal of dispair. Having seen the great successes of his brother and Charley, Willy is in denial, avoiding the fact that he is not particularly successful, and he overexerts himself in an attempt to achieve all-star status. His internalization of society's measure of a man's worth takes a toll on his mental stability, and drives him to lash out at his son for not striving to conquer the business world. Arthur Miller uses Willy to show how the American values have become corrupt.

Though mostly proud and boisterous, Willy shows his feelings of inadequacy a few times throughout the play. In Act One, for example, he confides in Linda: "I'm very well liked in Hartford. You know, the trouble is, Linda, people don't seem to take to me... I know it when I walk in. They seem to laugh at me." (23). Earlier, when announcing his sales, he stated a very exaggerated result and meekly decremented it down to his real numbers: "I did five hundred gross in Providence and seven hundred gross in Boston... Well, I - I did - about a hundred and eighty gross in Providence. Well, no - it came to - roughly two hundred gross on the whole trip... The trouble was that three of the stores were half closed for inventory in Boston. Otherwise I woulda broke records." (22). Willy is afraid of being judged for his less-than-stellar performance, so he exaggerates his abilities and makes excuses for his shortcomings, and often says he's more respected than he is. As the play progresses, Willy's mental stability deteriorates, perhaps because of his repressed feelings of inadequacy. After losing his job in Act Two, Willy's mental stability is almost entirely gone; he is forced to confront the fact that he is not as successful as he would like to believe. He is ultimately driven to suicide (pardon the pun) to avoid the unavoidable; after his final confrontation with Biff there is no question anymore that neither Biff nor Willy are successful or important men.

Willy internalized this belief so firmly that he raised his sons by it as well. In Act One, he tells Biff and Happy "be liked and you will never want." (21). Biff says "I'm thirty-four years old, I oughta be makin' my future," which shows that the idea was at least partly instilled in him and his brother (21). So when Biff leaves for the West and becomes a drifter, Willy is unsurprisingly critical. He and Biff argue incessantly every time Biff comes home because Willy feels he is choosing to be worthless.

The fact that Willy's insistence on societal values both destroys 

 his relationship with his son and brings about his own demise is a hint that Miller believes these values to be flawed. Miller takes issue with the external validation Willy is seeking, and the successful dork Bernard is the embodiment of what Miller believes good ideals are.

ceremony analysis

yeaaah

Characters:
Tayo is the main d00d. He's half white and half Laguna Pueblo. He is trying to reconnect with his native roots with a ceremony that will cure himself and the land of ailments caused by witchery.
Grandma is supportive of Tayo. She listens when he cries and whatnot. She is full of stories, so she is possibly a Grandmother Spider character.
T'seh is a Yellow Woman character that Tayo sleeps with. She shows him Josiah's cattle.
Josiah is Tayo's late uncle and an important father figure. He raised Tayo to appreciate the land and his heritage.
Rocky is Tayo's late cousin/sort-of-step-brother. He embraced white culture fully. He died fighting in WWII.

Author:
Leslie Marmon Silko played a 'key role' in what Wikipedia calls the 'Native American Renaissance'
As a mixed-race author, she has personal experience with the things Tayo experiences.

Setting:
Post-WWII southwest USA. It flashes back to Tayo's tour in the Philippines from time to time though, or to his childhood.

Style:
The narrative is third-person omniscient, but it sort of adopts the perspective of the people it's talking about but only sort of. I don't know how to explain this. When it talks about Rocky and his embrace of white culture the narrative sort of talks with irreverence toward the native culture. And when the narrative is explaining Tayo's thoughts it speaks sarcastically about the whites. It's really cool.

Themes:
Only siths deal in absolutes. Not all things white are evil, and not all things Laguna are pure. Betonie collects cool white stuff and there was that cool white rancher, and then there are the drinky Laguna guys and their self-loathing white envy.

Plot:
Tayo, a returning WWII soldier who was on tour in the Philippines, is apparently suffering from severe PTSD. His homeland also seems to be suffering with him because of a drought that is plaguing the Laguna Pueblo people. The narrative jumps around in time so I don't know how to best summarize the plot; this explanation will probably jump around too. Tayo was previously treated in a hospital for his PTSD, but his problems still remained. His flashbacks to the death of his cousin Rocky and a hallucinated death of his uncle Josiah persist. His sickness varies in severity, so he can do things like to go the bar to drown his sorrows with his fellow Indian veterans. During one such binge, he attacks and almost kills Emo, one of the vets. Tayo's grandmother realizes white medicine isn't helping Tayo recover, so she suggests that the medicine man Ku'oosh treat Tayo with a traditional ceremony. When this doesn't work fully, Tayo is sent to Betonie, another medicine man who is mixed-race, like Tayo, and more in-touch with white culture. Betonie acknowledges that times are changing, and thusly, traditional ceremonies must change to remain effective. He performs the beginning of the ceremony and leaves the brunt of the work to Tayo. Josiah's cattle, a hybrid of Mexican and Hereford cattle, are important for a bunch of reasons so Tayo goes North to find them. He comes upon a house, and in this house lives a woman, and this woman is named T'seh. They bang, and Tayo leaves to find the cattle. They're in a white guy's pasture, so Tayo cuts a big hole in the fence to steal them back. The cows leave, nbd, but some rangers catch Tayo. The rangers leave to pursue a mountain lion, though, allowing Tayo to get off scot-free. The lion is actually the lover of the lady he stayed with earlier, and Tayo follows the cattle to their house. T'seh says she'll keep the cows there until Robert, a character of slight importance throughout the book, can come to get them. Tayo goes home, and then the police chase him, and he has to hide overnight in a mine. Emo beats Harley, Tayo's best veteran pal (by my assessment), to death to lure Tayo out, but this doesn't work. Tayo goes to Ku'oosh's hut where it is revealed that T'seh is a spirit that helped Tayo out, and then the ceremony is complete and both Tayo and the land are healed.

Quotes:
"If a person wanted to get to the moon, there was a way; it all depended on whether you knew the directions..."
This is a neat quote that briefly explains some things about Laguna beliefs. I don't think it's necessarily important to the theme, but I did think it was interesting.

"You don't write off all the white people, just like you don't trust all the Indians."
This quote exemplifies the theme mentioned earlier. Betonie is acknowledging that times do change and that sometimes the truth is not... Laguna or white. (eyyyy)

no idea how many course responses I've done at this point

well here we are. Ceremony didn't suck like I thought it would. It was still pretty boring sometimes, but it wasn't because of the topic, but the style. Native culture in the novel didn't seem gimmicky, and I think that might be what turns me off about it in other works? I don't know. I liked the examination of the relationship between whites and the Laguna people.
we're starting Fifth Business now. I think the thing about Davies making up the source material for Fifth Business is pretty funny, and the book doesn't suck. The writing style is very pompous, but the narrator is a character I can make fun of so I don't mind.
I'm gonna fail the ap test let's write more prompt essays and maybe do some multiple choice

revision of fourth prompt essay

gettin' out of order now. link to the original. I didn't change much but I reconsidered all of my diction and sentence structure and patted myself on the back because I like this essay.

1982. In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. Choose a work of literary merit that confronts the reader or audience with a scene or scenes of violence. In a well-organized essay, explain how the scene or scenes contribute to the meaning of the complete work. Avoid plot summary.

Violence is abundant in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, but one particular sequence has a more prominent influence on the overall meaning than the others: the violence Alex experiences after being released from prison. His beating at the hands of his old victims as well as by the duo of his now-deputized friend and enemy serve to show how savage and vindictive humankind is.

After being turned away from home by his parents and discovering he can no longer listen to his beloved classical music, Alex takes an intoxicated trip to the library to read about suicide. The vulnerable Alex is accosted by an old man, Jack, that he and his droogs beat before Alex went to prison. Jack and his elderly cohorts mercilessly beat Alex despite his passivity. Alex had been punished already by the system and had apparently learned his lesson but Jack continues the beating until the police step in.

Alex's release was no surprise; his situation was widely publicized as a triumph of modern psychology and a sign of a bright crime-free future thanks to the awful aversion therapy to which Alex was subjected to eliminate his criminal urges. So when an old enemy and an old friend, now police officers, apprehend Alex for attacking the library patrons, they know full well that he was really the victim. Bearing old grudges, they take him to a secluded area and continue the beating that they were sent to stop.

Alex had already been punished for his transgressions, but still continued to suffer outside of prison. The people he had wronged insist on exacting their own revenge, despite the punishment Alex had already endured. And even the system that was meant to protect him, the very same one that tortured him under the pretense of saving him, brutalized him secretly. Burgess used this violence to show how spiteful and revenge-crazed humankind can be.

rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead

Author: Tom Stoppard is a Brit who is still alive if I'm not mistaken. He's among the more famous British playwrites but I haven't heard of his other stuff myself.

Setting: Elsinore, a kingdom in Denmark. Also a boat, and nowhere.

Characters:

Rosencrantz is the lovable dummy of the play. He embodies the phrase "ignorance is bliss" perfectly; he is content, or even happy, since he isn't wasting time philosophizing.

Guildenstern, by contrast, is the grouchy one. He analyzes and theorizes about everything, often throwing around buzzwords incorrectly. He tries so hard to understand the world around him, yet is unable to. This makes him very anxious and irritable.

The Player is some omniscient/clairvoyant d00d that seems to exist in all realms of the play. He knows what is currently happening to R & G, as well as what will happen. He's also got some profound things to say about people with his explanations of the acting profession.

{Hamlet, Claudius, et. al. copypasted from Hamlet analysis}

Plot:
The play begins in limbo with a series of coin tosses, all landing heads-up. Guildenstern starts listing philosophies and probability laws and stuff. Memories form in their minds as they are necessary for plot advancement, I guess; past events aren't, but become when the present needs that they have been? Anyway the players come in and R doesn't get that they're offering prostitution and haha comedy. Now poof they're in Elsinore and Claudius mixes them up haha and they are briefed on their mission. Hamlet has transformed, inside and out, and they're to glean what afflicts him. G proposes they play the question game to rehearse their interrogation of Hamlet, but R is a goober and doesn't understand and haha and then he gets it and they get nowhere. Then real Hamlet comes, and they interrogate him, and also get nowhere. Rosencrantz, being the less self-absorbed of the two, noticed that they got their butts kicked while Guildenstern pretends that they figured stuff out. More stuff with players and then another Hamlet scene and then the players act out Hamlet and it's really meta and I don't know if either of them understands the significance of it. Then they're told to fetch Dead Polonius but they can't and now they're in barrels on a boat and so are the players because this is now Tom and Jerry or something. R realizes their insignificance first and gets freaked out and explains it to G with another role play. G understands and now he's freaked out so they do the same role-play with the roles reversed as R tries to comfort him but the second time through they're being put to death instead of Hamlet and then pirates and more barrels and no more Hamlet. Then there's an exchange between R, G and the Players about death in which a few different views of it are expressed, and then R & G both disappear and the play ends. I really liked this play.

Style/voice: Stoppard uses very short, two-word sentences in quick back-and-forth exchanges between characters. It's as if most dialogue is a game of Questions, except with statements and no score and it's not a game. This makes the play pass very fast and it's a little confusing and you'll miss stuff if you aren't really paying attention. There is a boatload of repetition, often with conversations being repeated but with roles switched. I guess this adds to the identity confusion between R & G. There's low comedy all over the place with sex jokes aplenty. The profoundness of the play is only there if you're looking for it; it hides in the goofiness of the rest of the play. One of my quotes displays that rather nicely.

Symbolism: The wind symbolizes purpose in life, I guess. Nobody, except the player, knows which way it's going. The cointoss is predestiny.

Theme: Art is artificial. It's got stuff about death, too, but I just really can't put it into anything short of a three-act extension of Hamlet.

Quotes:
R: Is there a choice?
G: Is there a God?

This quote made me laugh, but it's also one of the more bold examples of deep meanings of the play hiding in its goofiness. The play has a "There is no God" vibe in a few parts. Another one is the repeated allusion to the Lord's Prayer, where they make a joke of it, mocking the notion of a supreme deity.

Guildenstern: My - dear fellow!
Rosencrantz: How are you?
Guildenstern: Afflicted.
Rosencrantz: Really? In what way?
Guildenstern: Transformed.
Rosencrantz: Inside or out?
Guildenstern: Both.
Rosencrantz: I see. Not much new there!
This quote is like the above. It's funny, but also exemplifies R's character. He's the goofy one that doesn't try to get too deep into things, and he's happier for it. If R & G weren't meddling, delving too deep into this Hamlet business, they wouldn't have 'died'. except they would have because their sole purpose is to enact Hamlet but whatever I'm tired.

course response 7

So we finished Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I really enjoyed it. It may be my favorite thing we've read so far. Its themes and whatnot were interesting and I didn't think it was hard to find depth in the play. I don't think I'll enjoy Ceremony much, though. For one, it's not a play. Plays are novels with all the boring parts cut out. I like interaction, and words, and thoughts, and I care less for scenery and description and that stuff. Also, Native American culture (and Egyptian culture) has never been able to hold my interest. Maybe, if nothing else, I'll be able to figure out exactly why that is by reading this book.

The prep we've done for the actual exam makes me a little nervous because I'm horrible at it. I'm shooting for a two.

revision of second prompt essay

link to original: http://idontwanttogototheshowtonight.blogspot.com/2012/10/second-prompt-essay.html

ehh, it's a little better.

2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, "Literature is the question minus the answer." Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes' observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers answers. Explain how the author's treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

In his 1962 novella A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess questions the merits of moral righteousness in a situation in which immorality is not feasible.

Alex, the teenage protagonist of the story, is sentenced to undergo a sort of aversion therapy for his repeated and severe crimes, rendering him incapable of violence. This is where Burgess first begins to ask what makes a morally good act. By depicting Alex, his free will revoked through government torture, as something sub-human, Burgess is taking a jab at the crime-and-punishment system. He asserts that choice is vital to morality; a moral act is only moral if it is chosen over some viable immoral option. In other words, discouraging immoral acts with a looming threat of punishment does not make one morally good, it makes one afraid.

After the treatment is finished, the "reformed" Alex is essentially thrown out onto the streets. He goes home to his parents' house, and his mother assumes he has broken out of prison illegally. She and her husband inform Alex that all of his belongings are gone, and they have rented out his room and can't accommodate him anymore. The new boarder berates Alex, causing him to break down and leave. He then goes to a library, where a bunch of old people beat him, and then some former gangmates-turned-policemen break up the violence and take Alex out of town where they beat him more themselves as revenge for their treatment under Alex's leadership. These events happen in rapid succession, creating an almost surreal personal hell for Alex. He wants to escape, or defend himself, but the thought of violence makes him ill. This is another slap on the wrist of the crime-and-punishment system, shaming it for rendering those that go through it totally defenseless in an unforgiving society. In a way, Burgess is also saying there is no absolute evil; sometimes, things like violence are not morally reprehensible.

While the treatment is in effect, Alex becomes a hollow shell. His superficial goodness (or rather, his lack of badness) means nothing because acting badly is an impossibility. When the treatment is broken, he is free to choose his actions as he pleases, but at this point he is truly reformed. He entertains the idea of settling down with a family, and imagines that his son will act out in the same ways he did, and he'll tell his son to behave, but he won't, and he shouldn't, because the ability to choose "evil" is what makes us human.

course response six?

uhh I really like Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead so far. It's hilarious and disconcerting and profound and written in modern English. Going through Hamlet, I had the impression that Rosencrantz wore the pants in their relationship, that Guildenstern was the sidekick, so it's strange to see those roles reversed in this play. This text is full of allusions and parallels and all those other things that remind a reader of things outside the text; Hamlet scenes and themes, some similar motifs (the music) as Death of a Salesman, style not unlike The American Dream at times with its short, confusing exchanges between characters and their inability to think forward or back at all, and that one line from the Lord's Prayer that keeps getting alluded to. I'm currently in the "circle stuff in the book" phase, and this is fun, so I'm looking forward to the "think about stuff" phase a lot.

I like that we get to revise our essays because a lot of mine are embarrassing so it's good to go back and fix them.

wherefore art thou hamlet

author: Shakespeare. Wrote about a billion sonnets and several well-loved plays, including Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, and Taming of the Shrew.Writes often in iambic pentameter, as was the style back in Elizabethan England. He lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s, with Hamlet being estimated to have been written around the turn of the century.

setting: The castle of Elsinore in Denmark, in the beforetimes. It was written around 1600 but based on (ripped from) the existing oral tradition of Amleth, so it could have taken place anywhen.

plot: The play begins a few months after the death of the old king Hamlet. His wife Gertrude has married Hamlet's brother Claudius. Hamlet's son, henceforth Hamlet, is not happy with this incestuous relationship, especially considering his mother's lack of mourning for her husband's death. Some unimportant guards are chilling on the nightwatch when they see the ghost of the old king appear and walk around.

Analysts agree the opening scene of Hamlet inspired the "Graveyard Shift"

episode of popular children's show Spongebob Squarepants

They bring the learned Horatio to see if he can glean any more information from it, and he cannot, so they decide to fetch young Hamlet. He's bumming about, getting snippy at his mother and half-step-dad-uncle-in-law. They allow Laertes, son of the vizier Polonius, to return to school in France because it's up to them, and implore Hamlet to not go back to school. He agrees. It's at the start of this part that we learn of the tensioned situation between Denmark and Norway: Fortinbras, son of the old king of Norway, was levying troops to attack Denmark and regain the lands that were lost when Old Hamlet defeated his father. Fortinbras's uncle, reigning king, gave him a stern talking-to, and now he just wants to "attack Poland."

The next scene shows us the relationship between Laertes and his sister, Ophelia. He tells her not to take Hamlet's affections too seriously, because even if he does love her, he isn't allowed to choose that sort of thing for himself and Ophelia will wind up getting hurt. Polonius intrudes on their sibling talk to give Laertes all this going-away advice, a la Willy Loman, even though Laertes has left home before.

Horatio and company bring Hamlet to the nightwatch spot and he meets the ghost, which leads him off somewhere alone, much to the distress of Horatio who fears for his sanity and safety. The ghost tells Hamlet that Claudius is a usurper, that he killed Old Hamlet by poisoning him and then got with his lady. Hamlet shouts "O my prophetic soul!" and resolves to revenge his father. In a matter of seconds he comes up with the plan to pretend to be insane, for some reason, and then makes his best friend Horatio and that other guy Marcellus swear by his sword not to let on that they know.

Next we see Polonius instructing Reynaldo, another character that doesn't need a name, to spread rumors around France of Laertes and his sexcapades and copious drug use. He leaves, and Ophelia comes in, distraught. Hamlet came into her private chamber all in a tizzy, acting crazy. Polonius goes to Claudius and Gertrude with this information, proposing that Hamlet could be crazy for Ophelia.

Hamlet's apparent madness prompts Claudius to deploy Rosencrantzbot and Guildensternbot due to some weird political dynamic where he could be deposed if his next-in-line is unfit for the throne. He plans to use Hamlet's childhood friends to spy on him, hoping to learn what's happening in his noggin. They speak with Hamlet but are unable to glean much; Hamlet sees that Claudius sent them. A theatre troupe comes, much to Hamlet's excitement. He flaunts his theatre (I guess I'm using a British English locale on this machine?) knowledge by reciting an excerpt from a play, and then he decides to use the players to stage a story that parallels the murder of Old Hamlet for Claudius to confirm his guilt.

Right around this time, Hamlet is pondering suicide, when Ophelia enters. Polonius and Claudius are spying on Hamlet as he talks to Ophelia, hoping to affirm his maddening love for the girl. Hamlet suspects he is being watched, and doesn't offer any clues to the falseness of his madness, other than one overt death threat at the end of his "Get the to a nunnery!" tirade. Claudius is now understandably apprehensive and doesn't think Hamlet is mad for Ophelia.

Now Hamlet's play happens. He asks Horatio to watch Claudius as well, for certainty's sake, and then flirts a bit with an uncomfortable Ophelia. Sure enough, Claudius is clearly perturbed by the play. He goes to pray, and Hamlet decides not to kill him then as he would go to Heaven. He continues on to respond to his mother's beckoning, and goes on another tirade, this time berating her for her incestuous marriage. Polonius makes some noise because he was spying and Hamlet runs him through with a sword and he dies in a satisfyingly cheesy fashion. Old Hamlet's ghost appears here, but only to Hamlet, to whet his appetite for revenge. Hamlet then "lugs the guts" out of his mother's room. Claudius decides to ship Hamlet off to England and secretly sends an execution order with him. Hamlet passes Norway's army on the way out.

Gertrude is told that Ophelia has lost it too since her father died, and in her delirious songs she implies that Hamlet took her virginity. She also criticizes some of the other characters. Laertes returned from France furious, wanting revenge. Seeing his sister fueled his desire greatly. Horatio receives a letter from Hamlet, saying pirates, and then they meet in a graveyard for some reason and Hamlet tells Horatio about the execution orders and how he forged some for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in his stead. He then hops out and tells Laertes that he didn't really love his sister, and they fight in her grave. Claudius conspires with Laertes to kill Hamlet with a poison/duel combo.

Osric, yet another character who needs no name, comes to deliver the 'friendly' duel invitation to Hamlet. Hamlet screws with his head and then sends a yes, and then wonders to Horatio if he will survive the duel, put on by a man who sentenced him to death, with a man whose father Hamlet killed. He figures it doesn't matter, Jesus is in charge, and goes to the fight. Hamlet does pretty well, and Gertrude drinks from the poisoned wine to celebrate. Then Laertes hits Hamlet with the poisoned blade, they swap weapons, Laertes is wounded with the poisoned sword, and he confesses what happened, and then Hamlet kills the king, and everybody is dead. Hamlet's dying words are spent telling Horatio to not kill himself and to tell the story of what happened here. Fortinbras enters, comically nonchalant, and takes the throne.

characters:
Hamlet: the prince of Denmark, a Renaissance man admired by the people. Hamlet isn't exactly paranoid, because when he doubts other characters he is, without exception, correct. He is very cynical, and ponders some dark things. What happens after death? Should I kill myself? His thoughts on kings dying calls to mind the Tyler Durden quote from Fight Club: "You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else."

Claudius: the usurper king. He killed his brother for his throne and his wife. He is guilty but not regretful; he reveals as much while he prays.

Gertrude: Hamlet's mother, and sort of aunt. She married her husband's brother after he died. She loves Hamlet, and realizes her transgressions when Hamlet confronts her.

Polonius: A wise fool. Father of Laertes and Ophelia. He gets killed by Hamlet while spying. He works throughout the play to presumably heighten his standing in the court, but is shown to be foolish at times. He doesn't see through Hamlet's clear ruse, and he is very pretentious when speaking with royal figures, using excessive and pompous language.

Laertes: Polonius's son. Enraged by the death of his father, and by the insanity and suicide of his sister.

Ophelia: Hamlet's sort-of girlfriend. It is implied that she is pregnant and that Hamlet will not marry her. Hamlet's "Get thee to a nunnery" tirade could be a response to finding out she is pregnant. When her father dies, and when Hamlet won't marry her, she descends into insanity, realizing her life is effectively over.

Horatio: Hamlet's best pal. He is a learned man, and seems to have no real enemies. He seems to be calm and levelheaded at all times, except for when he considers drinking the poisoned wine while Hamlet is dying. Played by Big Hutch.

Fortinbras: Foil to Hamlet, in that their lives are pretty much identical.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern: Hamlet's childhood friends, brought to Elsinore by Claudius to spy on him.

style: Hamlet is full of double-meanings and subtle details. From specific words being ambiguous, such as 'nunnery' and 'rue,' to whole scenes like anything with Ophelia, the reader is just as uncertain about the meanings of characters' actions as the people of Elsinore.

tone: Hamlet has a foreboding tone through much of the piece. The ghost appears immediately in the play, and numerous times Hamlet is soliloquizing about death and suicide, and there is plenty of killings of family and friends, the people you're supposed to love most. The ambiguity of the characters' words and actions gives this dark tone a certain uncertainty, making it sort of foreboding.

Point of view: it's a play.

symbolism: Ophelia's flowers each symbolize something, and there are no stage directions given to indicate which character receives which flower, so directors have a very powerful tool at their disposal. For example, rue symbolizes regret and pity.

imagery: I don't have much to say here, other than allusions to Greek mythology occasionally, if that counts here.

Quotes (there are so many!):
"Lend every man thy ear but few thy voice" Polonius's instruction to Laertes may have saved his own life had he followed it. In Elsinore, one must be observant and secretive. Take in every hint but present none to anybody else. Don't involve yourself unless you must.

"There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow." Hamlet truly accepts that he will die, and that's okay. He accepts that it is in God's hands.

"My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go." Claudius shows his guilt in his prayer but acknowledges he doesn't truly regret killing his brother. His feelings are also summed up in the quote: "May one be pardon'd and retain th' offence?"

revision of first prompt essay

Choose a work of recognized literary merit in which a specific inanimate object (e.g., a seashell, a handkerchief, a painting) is important, and write an essay in which you show how two or three of the purposes the object serves are related to one another.

Basil's portrait of Dorian has two main plot functions in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. It serves as the catalyst for Dorian's descent into hedonism when he wishes that the painting would age in his stead, and its destruction is the ultimate resolution of all of the problems thusly started.

Lamenting the realization that he will eventually grow old and die, Dorian wishes that Basil's portrait of him will age in his stead. This leaves him free to enjoy his youth indefinitely, and initiates a downward spiral into a hedonistic lifestyle. His new self-centered disposition causes collateral damage, however; it drives Sybil Vane to suicide which spurs her brother to seek revenge. Dorian also turns to opium, kills Basil, and blackmails a chemist with undisclosed information to dispose of the evidence. His eternal youth leads him away from a life of morality and towards a life of debauchery and internal conflict.

The story concludes with a paranoid and regretful Dorian wishing to repent. Guilt and fear of karma catching up to him overwhelm Dorian, so he destroys the painting, which is the manifestation of all of his guilt. The painting returns to its original appearance, and Dorian and promptly dies.

The two plot functions of the portrait are directly related; the painting is both the alpha and the omega. The painting allows Dorian to enjoy his youth indefinitely, which he takes full advantage of. His fear that karma will catch up with him as well as his guilt for the harm he has caused to others is what leads him to destroy the painting, which makes things right: Dorian's age is advanced properly and he dies.

course response five or so

Okay, I'm reasonably certain we haven't done anything except read and watch Hamlet. And the atmosphere exercises, but I'm going to skip over those, lest I start writing something that isn't appropriate for school like we do in class haha.
I liked the Jacobi Hamlet movie more, quite possibly because I saw it first. I thought the character of Hamlet in that movie was kind of eccentric, and I'm not sure what I imagined Hamlet to be like before seeing the movie but by the end my image of him matched Jacobi's Hamlet. The Branagh version of the film was uncomfortable. The character of Hamlet looks like he was disturbed even before his dad's death. Like a mid-2000s style emo kid. I don't like how he and Claudius look sort of albino or something. It's offputting. The cinematography of the Branagh film was kind of cheesy, in my opinion. They did a lot of closeups on eyes and mouths that I feel could have been done more tastefully, and while as a Star Wars fan I can appreciate low-quality special effects, the ones in this move just shouldn't have existed. They were low quality (the earth splitting one was hilarious) and also overused and didn't make much sense in my opinion. "Okay chasing ghost through forest let's throw some fire here, the earth splitting thing, some trees, now that same earth splitting thing again, and some more fire for good measure." It was like 7th grade video productions class all over again. And in the "To be or not to be" speech when he's talking at his reflection and he just happened to pick the mirror where Polonius and Claudius were hiding, that was cheesy. And then the end when Hamlet chucks his rapier across the room to impale Claudius, that was ridiculous. I had a lot of problems with the cinematography of the second film, and not just the characters. Oh, and also the interpretation. I didn't like Ophelia's straightjacket, and I didn't like Hamlet's emo-kid-style sensitivity. I wish I knew a less rude way to describe that. Maybe I'll come back later.

My annotations are mostly responses to the play because I don't quite recognize the significance of many DIDLS things in Hamlet. I'm beginning to get more comfortable with Elizabethan English but until I can actually understand the meaning of the sentences fully, I won't understand the importance of how they're presented. Like I said in the last course update, Ms. Holmes interjecting really made understanding the play a lot easier than trying to think myself.