#14: My Favorite Narrative Work From This Semester

I don't particularly have a favorite work, but I do have one that I'll certainly remember for a long time: Hamlet. My previous exposures to Shakespeare's works have left me underwhelmed. I read Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and saw a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream (with the orgy scene cut to be family friendly of course). I didn't dislike those plays, but none of them particularly stuck out to me, perhaps Macbeth would have if I had been introduced to it in high school when my critical analysis skills were more developed instead of being introduced to it in middle school. But Macbeth really stood out to me in multiple ways and now I understand, at least a little bit, why Shakespeare is still taught so frequently centuries after his passing and in another country no less.

Hamlet doesn't stray far from the plot of a typical revenge tragedy, especially a Shakespearean one: the former king is killed and his son wishes revenge and ends in the deaths of just about every named character. At first I thought that Hamlet would be a deconstruction of the genre. Hamlet only knows that his father was murdered from a ghost, previous uses of supernatural elements by Shakespeare have been used to tell characters information they wouldn't already know such as in Macbeth. So if Shakespeare had decided to go that route, it could be possible that Hamlet is using the rumor of a ghost to justify his desire to kill his uncle now step-father. If his uncle really was innocent, this play could have delivered a truly powerful message on how revenge leads to many innocent deaths and the destruction of everything important around the person who sought revenge. Instead, the genre is played straight, while leaning more on the revenge side of the revenge-tragedy, where everyone lies dead and the country in shambles.

Other than that slight disappointment, there is something else about Hamlet that I like; the amount of small, but important details that are left unknown. The overall plot of the play is straightforward and easy to understand, however some key details are left vague. These details being left unknown do not hurt the play at all, but give people who do like the play some meat to chew on after the actors have taken their bows. This play leaves a lot open to interpretation and a lot of evidence that can support various interpretations, its the perfect mind candy for critical thinkers. That's why Hamlet will long stay in my mind and the minds of others for centuries to come.

#13: Analysis of Use of Race in Fences

Fences is a play that makes it quite clear that this has the African American perspective in mind. From the way characters talk to the opportunities presented to them, race radiates throughout the entire play. Its the way that race holds an important aspect, but not an overwhelming aspect of the play in comparison to the family dynamics that makes this play a success. You don't have to be of the same ancestry as Troy to understand his situation or the conflict between him and his son (I personally have a friend whose father greatly resembles Troy and my friend resembles Cory). Yet the race of the two characters gives the situation a distinct flavor that makes it unique to the African American culture. Race is a part of these characters but it is not their defining aspect, it merely informs them and the audience of their role in society and it is the way the characters react to the role that has been decided for them by society that makes them interesting characters.

#12: Analysis of Setting Information from Fences

The three paragraphs set the scene and time period of the play, as well as a clue towards the central conflict that drives the play. America is in a time of change and of people climbing the social and economical ladder, yet African Americans have been denied this privilege, but times are changing and their chance is coming.

These paragraphs appear to be mere mood setting at first, but when reading them again with the main character in mind, it clearly establishes the central conflict. Troy was part of the generation of African Americans denied  his full potential due to his race, and his son is part of the generation that can reach his full potential despite his race. Troy is stuck in the olden times and refuses to acknowledge the change taking place despite taking advantage of it to get a promotion. Troy wants his son to reach his full potential but can only recognize one way for him to do so: his way. This is the central conflict of the play and while many first time viewers/readers will quickly forget about these paragraphs, they add some deeper meaning to those who decide to revisit the play.

#11: Hamlet's Speech Shows His Madness

Hamlet's monologue at the end of Act 2, Scene 2 gives us an example of Hamlet's mental state, and its one that isn't particularly sane. He jumps from metaphor to metaphor like an ADHD child distracted by shiny toys. His sentence structure is erratic, his language is philosophical, his mind unclear. What makes this important is that this is the one point in the play where he is alone and talking to himself after he has declared to feign madness to hide his true intentions of revenge. This is the only point the audience gets to see what Hamlet is REALLY  thinking and yet his speech is so inconsistent and strange the audience can't help but wonder how mad Hamlet really is.

Note: the text after the // represents my thoughts on the current line

Ay, so goodbye to you.--Now I am alone.
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is not a monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit?
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit And all for nothing!
For Hecuba! //The heck is that? Not even the book explains what that is
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears //So  he's questioning how the player would act if he were in Hamlet's position
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appall the free,
Confound hte ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like John-a-dreams, unpregant of my cause,
And can say nothing--no, not for a king
Upon whose property and most dear life //Now he's doubting his resolve for his revenge plan
A damned defeat was made. Am I a coward?
Who calls me villain? Breaks my pate across?
Plucks off his beard and blows it in my face?
Tweaks me by the nose? Gives me the lie i' the throat
As deep as to the lungs? Who does me this?
Ha, 'swounds, I should take it; for it cannot be //Then suddenly changes topic to refute those who would cast him into villainy
But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should ha'fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain! //Example of his rapid change in metaphor
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I? This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell
Must like a whore unpack my heart with words //He's doubting his plans at this point?
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion! Fie upon 't, foh! About, my brains! //What?
Hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene //So he's completely forgotten about doubting himself?
Been struck so to the soul that presently
They have proclaimed their malefacitons;
For muurder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play somethign like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;
I'll tent him to the quick. If 'a do blench,
I know my course. The spirit that I ahve seen //So now he's spelling out his plan
May be the deveil, and the devil hath power
T'assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds
More relative than this. The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King

#10: Analysis of Woman in "Hamlet"

There are only two notable woman in the play so this issue isn't a mountain to tackle. First there's the Queen Gertrude and Hamlet's (supposed) fiance Ophelia. Gertrude gets the most screen time and what makes her interesting is what we don't know about her. The audience is not told how much she knew about her husband's death or about her second husband both before and after the marriage. It is also left unknown why she married him, was she manipulated, was it down to secure her position as queen? We don't know. Her biggest scene in the play, where she and Hamlet meet in her room, consists mostly of Hamlet yelling at her and giving her no chance to explain herself.

Ophelia gets less screen time, and once again, her biggest scene consists of Hamlet yelling at her and not giving her a chance to respond. She tells us that Hamlet loves her yet in the only scene where the two interact, he scoffs her away. She then goes mad and drowns in the river (we are left uncertain if this was intentional suicide or not), and Hamlet reacts to her funeral by declaring that his love for her is greater than her brother's, which some readers may see as more of an attempt to outstage her brother than an actual declaration of feelings.

These roles are passive, the woman themselves don't directly affect the plot, its the interactions with them from men that give them importance in the play. Hamlet discarding Ophelia shows how far off the deep end he's gone, Hamlet's attempts to discover the truth behind his mother's actions create similar results.

It would be far fetched to describe these characters as a misogynistic representation of women, but their roles are so small or unknown there's not enough solid evidence to present such a case

#9: Thoughts on "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent" by John Milton

I went about memorizing that poem by reciting one line at a time, then reciting the poem I had memorized up to that point, then recited the next line then repeated.

I could not decipher a meaning at first only when I looked up the poem online did I see what the poem was trying to say. It makes sense in retrospect but requires knowledge of the language of the time and preferably the author's life as well.

#8: Analysis of "A Table For One" by Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw

Poem can be found here (it is recommended you see this before instead of after): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSOOuvQMQG0&list=PLAbMhAYRuCUhovB3jwR7XGxCs4MTjpMcT&index=45

As can be seen by other poems by this particular author, Yahtzee likes to use metaphor to make a point on current events. There are obvious parallels between the stories of his poems and recent news in the realm of gaming. He then uses the plot of the poem and reactions of the characters to express his point.

The restaurant represents the Xbox One, which had just been announced by Microsoft at the time. The waiter represents the Kinect, a device that was announced to require an online connection to function, was capable of watching the player when not using the console. The bread menu represents the list of features that were announced with the Xbox One, most notably how the word "television" was used more often than "games" during the announcement. The Xbox One is presented as a multimedia device that can combine all your forms of entertainment into one box, but it is primarily a games machine, and very few games were announced with the Xbox One, as can be seen by the empty menu at the restaurant. There is much more to the poem, but that's all needed to understand the point of the poem.

Now that the symbolism is out of the way, what makes Yahtzee's style noticeable is the way he disguises his metaphors. Even for a person familiar with all that is gaming, it is impossible to tell what metaphor the author is going for until at least half way through the poem. Once the audience realizes the metaphor, his message becomes blatantly clear: Yahtzee feels the Xbox One is a failure of a games machine in the same way a restaurant is a failure if it only serves bread.

#7: Why We Read "The Yellow Wallpaper"

In a literature class, there are thousands upon thousands of things you can use to teach students, yet only a relatively handful are chosen. That's because they have stood the "test of time" and they're messages will almost always be relevant to the readers who read these stories. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about woman slowly going insane from having too little stimuli, a reaction that occurs in the real world as well. This can be metaphorically taken in many regards: a woman going insane because she's not allowed to be creative, a person going insane from not being allowed to be his/herself, or a person going insane from not having his/her mind fed with knowledge. This is an issue almost everyone can relate with and is presented in a sympathetic manner, letting the reader feel a connection to the author and the story she wrote. This is why "The Yellow Wallpaper" has stood the test of time to me.

#6: Show Don't Tell

In a purely text narrative, a writer may need to use at least one paragraph to establish a scene, a filmmaker does the same thing when setting up shots in a film. A writer can only spend one paragraph introducing a new place or several; a filmmaker can use only one second to establish a scene or several. A good writer only tells the reader about things that are important, a good filmmaker only shows things to the viewer that are important. A good writer and a good filmmaker both show, don't tell.

#5: Archetypal Criticism

Archetypal Criticism is a form of criticism where a work is compared to other works that have done similar things, used the same tropes but in varying ways. This can make a story interesting as this can help us realize how effective an author can be in story telling, how much the author can say in little words.

Using cliches is not a bad thing, in fact they can be very good. Introducing a character with a line from a certain cliche establishes that cliche into the character, allowing you to say a lot with very little. From there you can do things badly by playing the cliche straight and adding nothing new, or you can use it for something interesting. Use it a launch pad for character development, use it as a deconstruction of the cliche with the character's actions or use the cliche to subvert the reader's expectations with a plot twist, Frozen uses that last part very well.

Being aware of common tropes is not a bad thing for a reader to have, rather its a good thing. It expands the reader's thought process beyond what is happening in the story and compares it to other stories and lets the reader point out the differences.

#4: Point of View Usage in "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

In this story, a man is being hanged and dreams of escaping the hanging to return to his wife; however, it is discovered at the end that this delusion of grandeur is nothing more than that and he dies. The choice to use 3rd person limited as a point of view is worth considering, as its possible to tell the same story with that point of view, so we need to examine what 3rd person limited can accomplice that first person cannot.

First of all is the distance between the main character and the reader. In 3rd person, the reader is like a spirit, watching over the events of the story while unable to interfere. In first person, the reader is the main character, and as such the actions of the main character become more personal. This metaphorical distance can completely change the moral of the story. In 3rd person, the events of this story serve as a warning, a "what if" scenario used to demonstrate a point. In 1st person, the events of this story becomes punishing, more personal. It punishes the reader for believing that Pyton Farquhar could avoid the inevitable by making his eventual death more personal, the reader would be in Farquhar's shoes and believe the same things he does, as we have no other characters to believe in.

So the biggest difference this point of view would make for this story is the effect on the reader, in 3rd person the metaphorical distance between the reader and the protagonist makes the story serve as a warning, as compared to a hypothetical first person version of this story where the reader would be metaphorically executed along with Farquhar for believing in his delusion of grandeur.

#3: The Setting of "Desiree's Baby"

We're not told a lot about the setting in "Desiree's Baby" but through the language used and the details we are given, there are some assumptions that can be made. Based on the author's biography and the french terms that are used throughout the story, it's easy to assume this story takes place somewhere in Louisiana, and Chopin had spent a good amount of time there and its the part of America where French would commonly be spoken. And it can be assumed that because Armand is a slave owner, this story takes place before the civil war. And that's all I have.

#2: Why "Powder" is Enjoyable to Read

To me, "Powder" is more pleasant to read than "Girl" or "Christmas Tree" because it follows standard paragraph formatting. I have a hard time reading "Christmas Tree" because the line breaks are at weird places, I know its because so the poem will look like a tree but its still irritating. "Girl" is a little better, but not by much; its one big long paragraph. My eyes look at that big block of text and think "this is an eyesore". "Powder" is pleasant to read because it makes good use of white space to create a story that's pleasant to the eye and pleasant to the mind.

In high school we're told that we should make a new paragraph when we move on to another line of thought, but the real reason we do so is to create white space that makes reading pleasant to the eye. "Powder"' has a lot of paragraphs that are five to six lines long, but has a lot of paragraphs that are much smaller mixed around those large paragraphs, this creates a smooth line for the eye to follow. Also studies show that taking a big task and separating it into a bunch of smaller tasks makes things easier for us to do, and the same goes for the reading eye. And because "Powder" mixes up the lengths of its paragraphs, its more fun to read than "Christmas Tree" and "Girl".

#1: Response to "Immigrants" poems

These two poems offer very different, possibly opposing, views on how immigrants view coming to America. Frost's poem claims that every ship coming to America has had the ideals of the pilgrims on the Mayflower as their guide, or all immigrants coming to America have come for the same reason as the pilgrims: to explore a new world and lead a better life. By contrast, Mora's poem is about how anxious immigrants are when coming to America, and how much they worry that their children will fit in.

What may help establish these poems even more is the context they were written in. Frost's poem was written in 1920, when many immigrants were coming to America to escape World War I and its after effects. Given this context and the meaning in the poem, its fair to assume that Frost is defending the immigrants, saying that they come with the same intentions as the original immigrants that founded this country. Mora's poem was written in 1986, a time that I'm not very familiar with, but if its anything like today's climate on immigration, Mora is trying to defend immigrants, showing how much they work in order to fit in, how they come with pure intentions.

When looked at by themselves, these poems offer two different messages: a positive one that shows that immigrants come with noble intentions and a negative one that shows how hard immigrants work to fit in. When looked at in the context of the time the poem's were written, these poems are both attempts to defend immigrants, to show the motivations behind why immigrants come here and what they do when they arrive.