Rosie’s Blog

“Sit, Sit, Sit I’m going to give you these paper bags and other craft items and you will create what you think this class will be like this year” This is something like what Mrs. Duke said on the first day of class in August. I was already about to pee in my pants because of what I had heard about the class. Every time she spoke I made sure to make direct eye contact to show I was listening to her and so I wouldn’t leave a bad impression. Maybe it is good to be this scared on the first day of Mrs. Duke’s class, because maybe you’ll just work that much harder or maybe I was just being really over dramatic. Either way it has been the English class of a lifetime. Until this year I never really liked English. I don’t think it was the subject but rather the way we learned. But now I have figured out that a person can work with English literature in anyway possible and look at it through any lens.

    If you are reading this and saying I’m not a good test taker, or I can’t really write, I can’t make plot charts do not worry because Mrs. Duke will come up with any way possible for you to learn. Whether it be songs, class discussions, blogs, two column charts, organizing your binder, writing in a journal, or writing a story that could have come from that time period. I will guarantee you will experience everything in this class. And if you for some strange reason don’t learn anything about English (which I doubt) you will learn how to grasp something. Each of these activities can be used for the rest of your life when you are in college and may not have the best professor to teach you how to understand something because he or she is too busy doing their research. 

I will now begin with a list of everything you should remember for this class

- Please do your homework: This is not a joke! If you do your work you will always get an A in the class and it will aid you in participating in the discussions the next day. Each assignment is usually worth twenty points so if anything look at the amount of percentage points your grade will rise to if you just do an assignment every night. If tests are a problem, then make it up with homework no matter how long it takes. Trust me every bit of her homework is worth it in the end regardless of what you may think when you see it pop up on your English III assignments page each night. 

- Plan Ahead: Mrs. Duke always puts up assignments early! Keep a calendar of things to do and make up your own due dates so you get things like vocabulary done early. If you don’t have homework for any of your classes one night then just look a few days down the road and I’m sure there will be something their for you to do. There is nothing like waiting until the last minute ( it is never fun)

-Blog: If you think you can’t write a formal paper well, it doesn’t really matter. When you blog you get to be yourself and it is an easy forty to fifty points. Actually it is really fun. Sometimes I just blog when something exciting happens. If you have the option to do a free post then take advantage of it. Trust me over the holidays you will get to feel like you are a nerdy person because you will be wanting to blog about what is going on. Blogs are not only one of the most fun things about English III but they will begin to help you in “spitting” out a paper. Last year it took me 18 hours to sit down and write a paper once but now because I’m so used to blogging it isn’t so burdensome anymore. 

-Participate: I was quite the participator first and second quarter. However, second semester I just became tired of sharing my feelings all the time. This was probably because there were only five people in my class who would talk. Well, don’t be like me! TALK TALK TALK ! It will make Mrs. Duke happy and it will help you understand what is going on. Whether you think you are right or wrong just say what you think. Also keep in mind that when you do say something try and have some textual evidence to back it up because that will help prove your point.

When I read last years blogs every one of them reminded me to use a pen so don’t forget that but most of all don’t forget that if you mess up and don’t do your work for one book you can always redeem yourself the next time. Don’t just give up when you quit for a while because you are supposed to be getting better and more confident in understanding literature and writing. Participate, blog, plan, and do all of your work. Even if you stay up all night working on something for this class in the end it will be something you are proud of and could have probably never accomplished if you hadn’t been lucky enough to be selected to this English III class. 

Dear Mr. Beale,

I absolutely loved your voice of Hamlet. The way your could very your tone with emotion and different settings was impressive. I was able to listen to you and NOT fall asleep unlike most people whom I hear while listening to books on tape. Your Hamlet really paralleled to the Hamlet in the book and it most likely made me prejudice against Kenneth Branagh’s performance in the movie.  However, you were very dramatic at times, especially in act one which I found to be quite unrealistic. Regardless you always paused at the perfect times and varied your voice perfectly.

I was very surprised that you were so old. Excuse me for that not meaning to make it sound harsh but it just makes it even cooler to know you can vary your voice to different ages. You also made a fantastic gravedigger in Hamlet’s act five scene one of the 1996 movie Hamlet.  Overall, I really enjoyed your audio adaptation of Hamlet and hope to hear/see more of your works in the future.

Dear Kenneth Branagh, 

You did an excellent job in directing your adaptation of the film Hamlet. I enjoyed your ideas about the staging for each scene, the main setting of the castle and the costumes for the characters. In Act five scene one you placed the setting at night. This was something I would have never thought of on my own but I believe was an excellent choice. I also enjoyed the addition of staging in the castle throughout Act five. However, it was sometimes very over the top. For example, when you threw the sword across the room and it landed perfectly into Laertes hand. That would have well, hurt.

     On the other hand your version of Hamlet was not really up to par with what I had come to imagine. I know Mr. Branagh, that you were most likely a pretty good Hamlet when you were younger but I think, at this time and place you were just a little too old for the job. I can not fully critique your acting considering I only saw one act of the film but, like the over dramatic staging I feel this may fall somewhere into that category. Regardless, I believe you did an excellent job in both directing the film and being the main character. That must have been a very hard job; something that I could have never done.

Sincerely, Rosemary

So many things and so many questions. In this blog I’m going to try and address everything I’ve learned in different semi-paragraphs/bulleted.

First I wanted to talk about the way Stoppard played with language in these last pages. We have talked about the post modern language a lot in the past two years and I don’t think I have ever seen so much “language playing” in thirty pages. So, here are some examples and I’m sure I’m leaving out plenty more.

 -    Guil: You can still think, can’t you/Ros: I think so.Page 97

-      Ros: Well, shall we stretch our legs?

-      Guil: I don’t feel like stretching my legs

-      Ros: I’ll stretch them for you , if you like Page 100

-      Guil: Either you have lost the letter or you didn’t have it to lose in the first               place Page 107

-      Guil: You can’t not be on a boat

-      Ros: I’ve frequently not been on boats  Page 108

 And my favorite quote of the day

 Ros: I should have hamlet’s head cut off-!

 Guil: The sun’s going down. 

Of course it all depends on how you read that last quote when I  read it I saw Guildenstern saying yeah, the SON is going down. However so Stoppard could use the “playing with language technique” he used sun and moved back in to the thematic light and dark, death and life subject. Maybe this isn’t what Stoppard meant but I had written the book I would have written it that way!

Secondly I wanted to address the abundant use of death and its irony to the story. Some examples include pages 108 ,110, 119, 120, 121,123,124, and of course 126.

Death  is usually discussed when talking about fate and chance. At one point Rosencrantz says how life is a gamble and they talk about England being a dead end. These are some of my favorite death-like quotes.

HAMLET STABS HIS FATHER AND POISONED HIS MOTHER! At least I think he does because that’s what it says at the top of  page 117. Also we learn that the King, Queen, Laertes and Hamlet are all dead. The only one’s left are Horatio and Fortenbras. Well, that’s rather fishy.

Lastly, I’d like to discuss my ongoing wind theory that is really weird. I’ve been trying to draw a map to figure it out if this had some connection but I can’t get it. The only thing I can come up with is that at the beginning when Hamlet said “when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw” this was eventually applied to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern at the end. From Denmark, England is in a south- west  direction. How this applies to the sun direction and the wind I have yet to understand fully but, I do know it is one of the last things Rosencrantz and Guildenstern say. As of now it is a big stretch but Samantha (she’s on with this wind thing too) and I are determined to figure it out.

 IMPORTANT: Gabby’s blog is amazing and we just had a very heated discussion on this. So Samantha and I asked Why didn’t R and G just throw the letter  off the boat and go live in england forever? Well, Gabby gave us the greatest answer ever. To sum up what she said in her blog Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have always been pre destined to die. So, after Hamlet heard the letter he switched them and when R and G opened it again to read it they realized that it had been fated for them all along to die. Therefore they had to die and everything was their fault. The player represented hamlet who killed all the tragedians (which represented rosencranz and guildenstern) and now rosencrantz and guildenstern are freaking out because they are wondering “are we dead?” and the answer is yes they are destined to die so thats why they disapper off the stage.  So in summation the coin tosses, chance and fate, and all of the tradigians were little clues that their death has always been in their own hands! PROPS TO GABBY

      You could not count the number of times these short fifteen pages used metafiction and irony on one hand! Page 77 ” What is the dumbshow for? Well , its a device really it makes the action move tha tofllows more or less…”. However, I could not understand if they were off-stage talking about certain things or on stage. This is one of the first big instances where R and G discuss their death. The player explains to them that everyone who is marked for death dies. Another quote says ” There’s a design at work in  all art- surely you know that”. In one way a reader could see this as metafiction and that Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are in this play called Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are dead and they are acting like they don’t know they are going to die. Then again this could have another meaning.  The player could be explaining to people that eventually everyone will die because of fate. Guildenstern gets aggrivated when he finds out that “it is written”. Here my thoughts get so jumbled up becuase I am trying to imagine an actor differentiating his feelings in the play. On on hand he knows in lets say , real life that he will die because the play says he will. But then the player knows the play says he will die but the character guildenstern doesn’t know he is going to die. I’m sure this is quite confusing so I probably would have skipped those last few sentences but it was my way to get thoughts out. 

    Something else I would like to bring up again was page 85. Remember at the beginning when Hamlet told them about east and west and R and G were contemplating which way the wind was coming from? Hamlet said (in Hamlet) on page 107 ” I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southernly I know a hawk from a handsaw”. Then on pages 57-58 in Rosencrantz and Gildenstern the two characters determined that ” When the wind is southernly”/ “and the weather’s clear”/”and when it isn’t he can’t”/ He is at the mercy of the elements”. After discovering this they began to look for the sun and what direction it came from but were unable to figure it out . Well, they figure it out. It could be possible that although they are being sarcastic the entire time with just a bit of seriousness, strange clues like this will lead us to our final conclusion.

http://www.buddytv.com/articles/gossip-girl/gossip-girl-aftergasm-chuck-ba-25678.aspx

1. Exigence — What needs doing at this point? In other words, what is compelling Hamlet to speak at this moment in the play?

 Right now Hamlet is working out his feelings. He is not really sure whether he wants to just sit back and watch his mother and uncle marry but he also feels bad because he promised his father he would take revenge.  He knows though by thinking to much he will question his actions more and that would cause guilt with revenge.

 2. Audience – The audience is comprised of people who can in some way act on this exigence. Who is Hamlet’s primary audience and how does that influence his choices? Who is Hamlet’s secondary audience and how does that influence his choices? [Hint: they are not on the stage

Hamlet is really talking to himself in this soliloquy. Like the other soliloquies in this book so far we have noticed that the characters are usually working their problems. This is his opportunity to figure out what to do. However, other than Hamlet the secondary audience is most likely people in general. Hamlet is talking about different people’s pains when he says“ the pang of despised love, the law’s delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes”. We also get this clue because he uses the word “we” throughout the soliloquy. “And makes us rather bear those ils we have”. By doing this the audience is most likely thinking about times in which they have felt this way and understand what Hamlet is going through.

3. Purpose What is the purpose of Hamlet’s speech? 

Hamlet is asking himself whether or not he should take revenge. At the beginning he acts as though he just wants to hide from all the problems but then realizes it is more respectable to go through with it because regardless of the tough things in life sometimes it is easier to stick with what you know rather then venture off to an unknown place. He knows that he should not think about it too much because then “ currents turn awry and lose the name of action”. This shows that he still wants to please his father by the end of the soliloquy.

4. Appeals:  Which appeal(s) does Hamlet use to convince and/or motivate his audience? Reference specific lines.

Pathos: Appeal to the emotions or interest of the audience

Taken as a whole he is appealing to people to think about life and that life is full of trouble and that these are our troubles.

“there is the rub for in that sleep of death what dreams may come” (you really need to think about what is after life and that it is almost a fear)

“There is the respect that makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time”

logos: appeal to logic

“for in that sleep  of death  what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this moral coil, must give us pause.”

Ethos: appeal to character

“to be or not to be – that is the question”

hamlet starts the conversation by addressing his own problems

Hamlet first uses his problems to capture the audience but then goes to use logic to appeal to the audience’s emotion..  By doing this he is combining all three appeals to get the audience to understand his problem and think about their lives.

5. Figures of speech, imagery, diction, syntax: What literary devices does Hamlet employ? Where do you see him making comparisons?  Which tropes–similes, metaphors, personification, hyperbole, etc. does he use? How do these comparisons relate to his rhetorical purpose? What particularly vivid images stand out? What effect do these images have on Hamlet’s rhetorical purpose?

-Hamlet uses an old English syntax, imagery, diction, similes, and metaphors.  The diction and syntax Hamlet uses was most likely great for the audience of the time period. Because it was a colloquial language they were better able to understand hamlets main problem and apply it to their lives. His use of imagery “ a sea of troubles” also goes to help the audience picture what he is saying.

Other examples:

Simile: to sleep, perchance to dream

Imagery: “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir”

“to grunt and sweat under a weary life”

hyperbole:” to die ,to sleep- no more- and by a sleep to say we end … devoutly to be wished:

metaphor: with this regard their currents turn awry”

6. How do you respond to Hamlet’s soliloquy? In other words, what do you think of him right now.

 As of now I think that his use of logic really got to me. I started to think about what he was saying and put myself in his shoes. Hamlet is not the whinny, crazy boy as he was in the beginning of act one. It is almost as if Hamlet wants the audience to tell him what to do. As of now we don’t really have a clear idea of his plans but hopefully he has worked out some of his feelings. . 

I read this chapter on Sunday afternoon so pardon me if I’m a little shaky but I am going to try an re read this to make it a little better. At the beginning of Act two we see our first BIG example of intertexuality.

INTERTEXTUALITY: Hamlet meets with Rosencrantz and Gildenstern. After the two men discuss what Hamlet had said. They realize there is something going on “hawk from a handsaw” and that when he said things he was probably thinking about something else.

 CLEVER, WITTY: The second postmodern element comes up with there witty talk about direction. After refereeing to Hamlet’s quote they try to figure out which way the wind came from. They determine that they came from the south and try to feel the wind through the floor with their toes

METAFICTION: This was once again used on page sixty two when the two began discussing lines

“ Your diction will go to pieces

“your lines will be cut”

“to dumbshows”

Thematically I noticed more talk about life, future, and fate when they began to question their death . It is interesting  that   a lot of the themes seem to come out of their question and confusion. Another cultural detail that I noticed was on page sixty seven. The other day I realized that this book , because it is postmodern is definitely going to have some different meanings than Hamlet. So, culturally  the quote “Everything has to be taken on trust : truth is only which is taken to be true. It is the currency of living” could be looked at from the stance of a person in 1967 (when the book was written) who hates the Vietnam war. A the time people were really lacking trust in the government. Because of gulf of Tonkin  and later the Mei Lei massacre people lost fate. The government thought the people had gone mad with all of their protests and draft card burnings, civil rights protests,  along with women’s rights. Because this book has so many questions and people turning “crazy”, confusion, and what will come of the future, I can see Stoppard was clearly talking about the time period. Of course I may be a little off on my  ideas so if anyone has any input please comment! 

This section of Rosencrantz and Guilderstern was a little harder to understand. Gertrude begins by telling the two to go visit Hamlet. Despite Rosentcrantz urge to go home they stay and for some time play a question game. In a way this isreall y fun because it takes a while to figure out at the reader what the goal of the game is. In fact I wanted to play when I finished reading. During this time they alternate between role playing (this situation between them and Hamlet) and playing games.  Soon enough Hamlet walks in and the  stories of Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guilderstern combine. 

Here is where we will truly begin to see the post-modern aspects of the story . The different opinions and points of view will be shown and we, the readers will feel as though we know everything. Another difference that I have noticed in the two stories is the difference in the poetic form. Hamlet, seems to be more poetically written than Rosencrantz an Guilderstern are dead. 

            The postmodern storytelling of Rosencrantz and Gilderstern is rather interesting. I feel as though I can understand Stoppard’s story even better than Hamlet even though it is in the same language. Just for a little summary Rosencrantz and Gilderstern begins with a coin toss game. The game quickly turns into a conversation about life. One that analyzes chance,desires, and fear. Soon after the two men run into the players who are actors and musicians. One who stands out is the young boy who dresses as a woman (represntative of Shakespeare’s plays). Both Rosencrantz and Gilderstern enter as the page comes to a close. 

           At first I asked myself how is a postmodern book written in Shakespearean English. But thenI realized one, this story definitely uses subjectivism. The story comes from a point of view but not one in which the person knows everything. This shows the shift from the modern period. Rosencrantz and Gilderstern also use metafiction in that we know they are reading a story. In the second part of Act 1 the two characters shift between role playing and having a discussion where the reader must keep up with what is going on. The characters don’t leave the reader to guess thier emotions rather they talk about it. If you have more ideas on how this book is post modern give me some ideas.