While our Lit group was discussing some possible ideas for our new Hamlet filming project (something I'm ashamed to say I'm excited for--it gives me more time to procrastinate on the Invisible Man project), it became very clear what our challenge will be. Our goal that day was to get a main "gist" of what each character will be like, and then we can assign him a newer, modern version of that role. For instance, we labeled Gertrude a cold, heartless witch monkey, insert-derogatory-female-word-here, from the very beginning. It was nice to see her sweet and innocent and all in Kenneth Branaugh's version, but for some peculiar reason she never struck us as that type of lady. In a quick, concurring decision, Gertrude was going to be the nosy character that everybody loves to hate in the TV shows. Easy.
Next.
And it was that way for many of the characters we were planning on including except one-- one character that all of us unconsciously avoided, the elephant in the room, the main character--Hamlet. It seemed so easy for us to label all these characters that didn't go too much in depth in the story. Characters like Gertrude, Ophelia, Claudius, even Laertes, were easy to distinguish, label, and categorize into some sort of niche or cliche, no hard feelings. So why is it so hard to do Hamlet? As I sat there listening to all my classmates' great ideas for our reality show, the absence of a main character bugged me--not because I was worried we wouldn't find one, but that the sorting, the categorizing, didn't come as quickly as I had expected. It brought me back to the discussion we had with the post-it notes with some central questions as to Hamlet's being: Is Hamlet a philosopher or a moral judge? Is he an artist or a joker? Is he poison, or is that Claudius's role?
There are a million and one pieces of text evidence that can support and deny all of them. You can make a snap judgment and claim him a bearer of truth, but just as quickly find evidence of his fabulous acting skills within the majority of ACT III. Fine then, he's a liar and an actor. Just as well, but in ACT I he seemed to do quite well in morally judging his mother and Claudius as they festively drank to Claudius's kingship. As annoying of a brat he is, he's also complicated. He's multifaceted. And whether we want to believe it or not, we find a personal connection with Hamlet that we can't find in the more extreme characters, like Ophelia or Gertrude. Both ladies represent a more specific personality type that some, but not all of us, can connect with. Sure, I can sympathize with Gertrude's struggle in finding out what's wrong with her son; you could argue that she was just trying to be a good mother, finding the best for her son. But I can't forgive her for marrying her dead husband's brother--even though it isn't technically incestuous, it's a slap in the face in the name of the late King. No one our age, no one in our generation, could connect with that, face that same problem.
But with Hamlet, it's different. His personality splits off many ways, a paradoxical combination of good and bad, sweet and sour, dirty and clean. He's more human than the rest of them. His struggle of choice resides with our own struggles in making decisions throughout our lives. Do we not ask ourselves the same questions of being, of conscience and of choice? No, it isn't to Ophelia's extent to possible suicide. But it's there, isn't it, gnawing at our thoughts if we give them enough attention?
And with that, I look at Hamlet's empty space next to "Possible TV Show Character." Everybody else's slots are filled: evil b**** (Gertrude), innocent, dumb-blonde lover (Ophelia). How are you supposed to caricature a character who plays as a human? We'll figure that out soon enough.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Saturday, February 22, 2014
The Life-Saving Poem
To the Mercy Killers, by Dudley Randall
If ever mercy move you murder me,
I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.
Never conspire with death to set me free,
but let me know such life as pain can give.
Even though I be a clot, an aching clench,
a stub, a stump, a butt, a scab, a knob,
a screaming pain, a putrefying stench,
still let me live, so long as life shall throb.
Even though I turn such traitor to myself
as beg to die, do not accomplice me.
Even though I seem not human, a mute shelf
of glucose, bottled blood, machinery
to swell the lung and pump the heart--even so,
do not put out my life. Let me still glow.
Who are the Mercy Killers? The speaker references them twice here; once in the title, and once more in the second line as "kindly killers." I only want to know because this killer can change the definition and the meaning of this poem (whatever it is) in a heartbeat. At the beginning of this poem, I thought the speaker was talking about an obvious higher power that holds the treasure of life and death over human beings. But the more I read on, the more I realized that this speaker sounds like he's speaking to himself instead of this higher power (God, Zeus, Buddha, whoever). Throughout the poem I picture this speaker sitting cross-legged on the ground, gathering bits of himself to collect his strength before some type of onerous challenge that could cost him his life.
The third sentence, which starts on line 9, was the first game-changer for me, when he says "Even though I turn such traitor to myself/ as beg to die, do not accomplice me" (lines 9-10). Who is he speaking to? Back to my imaginative scenario, it seems like he's talking to himself. He's reinforcing his mind to stay strong. "Do not accomplice me" refers to his more pessimistic, Debbie-downer side of him that always wants to give up, turn himself over…kill himself. This transforms the poem from a religious prayer of strength to a battle of inner ideologies, inner drives.
Of course, like all well-written poems and novels and stories, noticing this tone change wasn't a coincidence. Upon reading the footnotes, Randall wrote this poem like a Shakespearean sonnet (ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG). However, the iambic pentameter is lost after the second line…that is because combines this technique with an Italian model of structure, which is a separation between the first eight lines with the last 6 lines. The physical structure is Shakespearean, but the tonal structure is Italian. And guess where the tonal shift is here? Yes. Line 9.
So with all of this in mind, what is the tone of the first 8 lines? There is a paradox here in the first two lines; the first is the connection of mercy and killer. It's interesting that the title combines these two words, yet the first two lines deliberately separate the two. How does done kill out of mercy? The pain of life must be too overbearing, worse than death itself, the absence of being or feeling. So in a twisted way, the speaker pushes away mercy, does not wish for it to enter his own heart. The first four lines in general seem like the running monologue of anybody with a terminal condition, be it cancer or any type of disorder. The pain of life, for them, is not a blessing but a curse that can only be cured by death. But is pain better than "nothing"? The speaker continues with this motif of pain and suffering, and it seems to me that he prefers this pain over death. Even if the pain comes from "a clot, an aching clench," (line 5) and all these other horrible maladies, they are all simply reminders of the throb of life.
The tone shift starting in line 9 transitions from physical ways of dying and suffering to more mental weaknesses that may push someone to take his own life. This is where the duality of minds, of angel and demon, come into play with a person's desire to live or die. Even if he turns on himself to take his own life-- even if he thinks he is nothing to this world, as noted by his self-examination as "a mute shelf/ of glucose, bottled blood, machinery" (lines 11-12)-- this mindset of being 'nothing', death-like, can be revived with the glow of life, even if means pain and suffering.
You may think he's some self-deprecating, pathetic individual who can never put his life together. But don't we think about this all the time? Maybe not to this extent, but the question of life and death circulates in everyone, even if "life" and "death" aren't explicitly stated. When we are in pain, whether physical or mental, do we not think about getting better by stopping all this feeling? By putting the tears to a halt? And what better way to do this, if not to take your own life? Ok, so maybe that last question is over-stepping it a little bit. But for those poor souls who did take that next step into that type of questioning to take their lives probably went the opposite direction than Randall's poem. But that's why I love this poem so much; it is quietly powerful in its pain, and if I had the power to give each struggling, questioning person this poem to acknowledge the power they have over their own life (and why they should treasure it, not throw it away), it would give a fair amount of re-consideration and appreciation for the life that's given.
If ever mercy move you murder me,
I pray you, kindly killers, let me live.
Never conspire with death to set me free,
but let me know such life as pain can give.
Even though I be a clot, an aching clench,
a stub, a stump, a butt, a scab, a knob,
a screaming pain, a putrefying stench,
still let me live, so long as life shall throb.
Even though I turn such traitor to myself
as beg to die, do not accomplice me.
Even though I seem not human, a mute shelf
of glucose, bottled blood, machinery
to swell the lung and pump the heart--even so,
do not put out my life. Let me still glow.
Who are the Mercy Killers? The speaker references them twice here; once in the title, and once more in the second line as "kindly killers." I only want to know because this killer can change the definition and the meaning of this poem (whatever it is) in a heartbeat. At the beginning of this poem, I thought the speaker was talking about an obvious higher power that holds the treasure of life and death over human beings. But the more I read on, the more I realized that this speaker sounds like he's speaking to himself instead of this higher power (God, Zeus, Buddha, whoever). Throughout the poem I picture this speaker sitting cross-legged on the ground, gathering bits of himself to collect his strength before some type of onerous challenge that could cost him his life.
The third sentence, which starts on line 9, was the first game-changer for me, when he says "Even though I turn such traitor to myself/ as beg to die, do not accomplice me" (lines 9-10). Who is he speaking to? Back to my imaginative scenario, it seems like he's talking to himself. He's reinforcing his mind to stay strong. "Do not accomplice me" refers to his more pessimistic, Debbie-downer side of him that always wants to give up, turn himself over…kill himself. This transforms the poem from a religious prayer of strength to a battle of inner ideologies, inner drives.
Of course, like all well-written poems and novels and stories, noticing this tone change wasn't a coincidence. Upon reading the footnotes, Randall wrote this poem like a Shakespearean sonnet (ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG). However, the iambic pentameter is lost after the second line…that is because combines this technique with an Italian model of structure, which is a separation between the first eight lines with the last 6 lines. The physical structure is Shakespearean, but the tonal structure is Italian. And guess where the tonal shift is here? Yes. Line 9.
So with all of this in mind, what is the tone of the first 8 lines? There is a paradox here in the first two lines; the first is the connection of mercy and killer. It's interesting that the title combines these two words, yet the first two lines deliberately separate the two. How does done kill out of mercy? The pain of life must be too overbearing, worse than death itself, the absence of being or feeling. So in a twisted way, the speaker pushes away mercy, does not wish for it to enter his own heart. The first four lines in general seem like the running monologue of anybody with a terminal condition, be it cancer or any type of disorder. The pain of life, for them, is not a blessing but a curse that can only be cured by death. But is pain better than "nothing"? The speaker continues with this motif of pain and suffering, and it seems to me that he prefers this pain over death. Even if the pain comes from "a clot, an aching clench," (line 5) and all these other horrible maladies, they are all simply reminders of the throb of life.
The tone shift starting in line 9 transitions from physical ways of dying and suffering to more mental weaknesses that may push someone to take his own life. This is where the duality of minds, of angel and demon, come into play with a person's desire to live or die. Even if he turns on himself to take his own life-- even if he thinks he is nothing to this world, as noted by his self-examination as "a mute shelf/ of glucose, bottled blood, machinery" (lines 11-12)-- this mindset of being 'nothing', death-like, can be revived with the glow of life, even if means pain and suffering.
You may think he's some self-deprecating, pathetic individual who can never put his life together. But don't we think about this all the time? Maybe not to this extent, but the question of life and death circulates in everyone, even if "life" and "death" aren't explicitly stated. When we are in pain, whether physical or mental, do we not think about getting better by stopping all this feeling? By putting the tears to a halt? And what better way to do this, if not to take your own life? Ok, so maybe that last question is over-stepping it a little bit. But for those poor souls who did take that next step into that type of questioning to take their lives probably went the opposite direction than Randall's poem. But that's why I love this poem so much; it is quietly powerful in its pain, and if I had the power to give each struggling, questioning person this poem to acknowledge the power they have over their own life (and why they should treasure it, not throw it away), it would give a fair amount of re-consideration and appreciation for the life that's given.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Shakespeare, the Scribe to my Morals
"My words fly up; my thoughts remain below.
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go"(Hamlet, III, iii, 97-98).
After giving an honest try at understanding the twisty-turny words of Shakespeare, I must admit there is some level of connection between the reader and this ancient 1600s play. My freshman self wouldn't have believed it. I remember all too painfully the first time we attacked Shakespeare with what was presumably his funniest work: A Midsummer Night's Dream. How awkward it was, not only for me but for the teacher, as we skimmed through many of the "dirtiest," "funniest" lines with blank, confused eyes and a lack of understanding (on the students' part). But I've realized that really giving the time to analyze these words that Shakespeare is construing and misconstruing gives much more meaning than giving a straightforward, simple dialogue (which I guess is the case for all good literary work). Throughout my freshman and sophomore years, Shakespeare always made me angry. Since we never actually focused on the meaning of the words (which we're doing now), all Shakespeare meant to me was a writer for the lame stories we've come to base our pop culture around--forbidden love from Romeo and Juliet, the struggle for kingship in Macbeth, bundled up in an obsolete form of English language that I was too lazy to look into. There was an emphasis on the plot instead of the diction, and for that reason No Fear Shakespeare became my best friend.
Geez, starting on a tangent before even addressing the quote. It's there for a reason, I promise. Reading the last two rhyming lines of the third scene of the third act of Hamlet gave me slight chills because of how incredibly relevant that sentence is. Relevance? In a Shakespeare work? Forget about it. And yet here we are, gasping and reeling at Claudius's hideous crime and getting extremely annoyed with Hamlet's indecision to do anything about it (in my opinion, at least). Everybody knows the basic story to this tragedy--if you've seen The Lion King, that is. Why bother reading it then? Suddenly it isn't about the plot anymore, but rather the relationships between the characters and the way they speak.
But this specific quote is my personal favorite in Hamlet so far, mainly because it rings so true in my head for some reason. To simplify, Claudius says that his 'grief' and 'need to repent' is empty and false since he doesn't truly think or believe in the words he says. For this reason, any prayer he sends about his murderous deed or his dead brother-king isn't light enough with truth to float to heaven and be "heard" by God, or whoever it is that lives there and decides our mortal fates. It can be taken two ways, now that I think about it; his words may be fake without the input of thought, which disables him to get to heaven. Or, the heaviness behind the words due to his true murderous thoughts make it too heavy for it to go to Heaven. When I read these lines, I felt like I've learned something extremely important, even though a part of me knew this information already. It's almost like whatever I feel is moral and immoral has just been verbally described by Shakespeare. Me, connect with Shakespeare? Yeah, right.
But it happened. The desperate measures I take to avoid boredom during a snow-in are astounding, but I gotta say it paid off somehow.
Words without thoughts never to Heaven go"(Hamlet, III, iii, 97-98).
After giving an honest try at understanding the twisty-turny words of Shakespeare, I must admit there is some level of connection between the reader and this ancient 1600s play. My freshman self wouldn't have believed it. I remember all too painfully the first time we attacked Shakespeare with what was presumably his funniest work: A Midsummer Night's Dream. How awkward it was, not only for me but for the teacher, as we skimmed through many of the "dirtiest," "funniest" lines with blank, confused eyes and a lack of understanding (on the students' part). But I've realized that really giving the time to analyze these words that Shakespeare is construing and misconstruing gives much more meaning than giving a straightforward, simple dialogue (which I guess is the case for all good literary work). Throughout my freshman and sophomore years, Shakespeare always made me angry. Since we never actually focused on the meaning of the words (which we're doing now), all Shakespeare meant to me was a writer for the lame stories we've come to base our pop culture around--forbidden love from Romeo and Juliet, the struggle for kingship in Macbeth, bundled up in an obsolete form of English language that I was too lazy to look into. There was an emphasis on the plot instead of the diction, and for that reason No Fear Shakespeare became my best friend.
Geez, starting on a tangent before even addressing the quote. It's there for a reason, I promise. Reading the last two rhyming lines of the third scene of the third act of Hamlet gave me slight chills because of how incredibly relevant that sentence is. Relevance? In a Shakespeare work? Forget about it. And yet here we are, gasping and reeling at Claudius's hideous crime and getting extremely annoyed with Hamlet's indecision to do anything about it (in my opinion, at least). Everybody knows the basic story to this tragedy--if you've seen The Lion King, that is. Why bother reading it then? Suddenly it isn't about the plot anymore, but rather the relationships between the characters and the way they speak.
But this specific quote is my personal favorite in Hamlet so far, mainly because it rings so true in my head for some reason. To simplify, Claudius says that his 'grief' and 'need to repent' is empty and false since he doesn't truly think or believe in the words he says. For this reason, any prayer he sends about his murderous deed or his dead brother-king isn't light enough with truth to float to heaven and be "heard" by God, or whoever it is that lives there and decides our mortal fates. It can be taken two ways, now that I think about it; his words may be fake without the input of thought, which disables him to get to heaven. Or, the heaviness behind the words due to his true murderous thoughts make it too heavy for it to go to Heaven. When I read these lines, I felt like I've learned something extremely important, even though a part of me knew this information already. It's almost like whatever I feel is moral and immoral has just been verbally described by Shakespeare. Me, connect with Shakespeare? Yeah, right.
But it happened. The desperate measures I take to avoid boredom during a snow-in are astounding, but I gotta say it paid off somehow.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Mr. Invisible
I've got many problems with this book.
It goes beyond the tough language, the seemingly endless sentences (that usually go on to create their own paragraphs), the sporadic way in which the narrator speaks, or even the narrator's own personal and quite twisted problems he's got going on in his head. No, this I can all deal with. At least, I can tolerate it. But the one thing that really grinds my gears, that I'm constantly reminded of as I open the annoyingly thin pages of this book, is that the narrator's name is never stated. There is no hint nor suggestion of his name anywhere in the 19 chapters that I have read so far. Like the drug commercials coined in their terrifying commercials--not even once.
Of course, it didn't seem like a big deal five chapters in. I kept thinking that his name will pop up somewhere, when Dr. Bledsoe calls him into his office, or when he writes his name for a job application. Anything, really. But it was finally the last straw when I meant to annotate a specific portion of a reading and ended up writing "He told him that he wasn't supposed to go, yet he goes against his own judgement?" Yes. Word for word, an annotation. I don't even know who I'm referring to at this point. It's irritating and distracting for my nit-picky brain that wants to know everything. And of course, the pain of annotating. I've given up on that a couple of chapters later; he's a John Doe in my mind.
But since all AP Lit books are written by genius authors who probably knew more or less what they were doing, I'm grudgingly guessing that Ellison had justification for leaving the narrator's name tag empty. Besides torturing future AP Lit students with the pain of not knowing,his the narrator's lack of identity from something as simple as his name probably says a lot about the nature of this guy in the first place. From the beginning, we read him as an unidentifiable character, and as I read throughout the chapters I've noticed that I find it easier to identify with his struggles and his pains against society's unbending rules. By avoiding a literal "label" for the protagonist, the author succeeded in having readers sympathizing with this protagonist (even if he strikes me as a little bit of a brat sometimes).
And by acknowledging this style, the narrator's lack of identity becomes more profound in that his invisibility stems from his worthlessness in this world. Throughout the novel, the narrator loves likening himself to a machine of some sort, or as a minuscule fore in the grand scheme of things. When asked for an interview to represent the goals of the Brotherhood, the narrator replies, "I'm no hero and I'm far from the top; I'm a cog in a machine. We here in the Brotherhood work as a unit" (pg. 396-397). There are many cogs in a machine; you wouldn't waste your time naming each one. Likewise, he identifies himself as part of a unit; that is, he considers himself not even a whole being, but only a part of a larger picture. What is a name for, at this point? He is one out of millions of African Americans, one out of billions of human beings in this world. The absence of a name expounds on this statement that the author is trying to get across. In relation to the mass of humankind, this protagonist is nothing, even though he likes to think he's doing brave and innovational things. When he stands in a crowd with the rest of the population, he is invisible.
The main point I want to get out of this is that this narrator is not literally invisible. Which, really, is a stupid assumption to make, but I honestly thought he was in the first portion of the book. While he's at school, driving around Mr. Norton, it seems as if John Doe is living through a haze in which he is unsure what is real and what is fake. For all we know, he may be just another patient in Golden Day imagining things, and the rest of the whole story is his fantasy. But his social invisibility, despite all his ambition to reach for the top of the social ladder driving luxury cars and getting people to notice him, is what dominates his life, and I don't think this is necessarily because of his skin color alone. Rather, his constant associations with an organization that doesn't consider each member's individuality is what renders him invisible. And unfortunately, I think this will get the better of him. He'll get so caught up with his self-important that he won't see his quick disposal by the organization once their need of him has run its course. I mean, that's what happened at the school, even though he was one of the university's brightest students; this is what happened when he took a job in a paint factory. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again, but this time he'll take it so personally that it'll really mess with his head. He'll really start to question his individuality and purpose in the world he lives in. I can't wait for that to happen; then maybe I'll get a name out of him.
It goes beyond the tough language, the seemingly endless sentences (that usually go on to create their own paragraphs), the sporadic way in which the narrator speaks, or even the narrator's own personal and quite twisted problems he's got going on in his head. No, this I can all deal with. At least, I can tolerate it. But the one thing that really grinds my gears, that I'm constantly reminded of as I open the annoyingly thin pages of this book, is that the narrator's name is never stated. There is no hint nor suggestion of his name anywhere in the 19 chapters that I have read so far. Like the drug commercials coined in their terrifying commercials--not even once.
Of course, it didn't seem like a big deal five chapters in. I kept thinking that his name will pop up somewhere, when Dr. Bledsoe calls him into his office, or when he writes his name for a job application. Anything, really. But it was finally the last straw when I meant to annotate a specific portion of a reading and ended up writing "He told him that he wasn't supposed to go, yet he goes against his own judgement?" Yes. Word for word, an annotation. I don't even know who I'm referring to at this point. It's irritating and distracting for my nit-picky brain that wants to know everything. And of course, the pain of annotating. I've given up on that a couple of chapters later; he's a John Doe in my mind.
But since all AP Lit books are written by genius authors who probably knew more or less what they were doing, I'm grudgingly guessing that Ellison had justification for leaving the narrator's name tag empty. Besides torturing future AP Lit students with the pain of not knowing,
And by acknowledging this style, the narrator's lack of identity becomes more profound in that his invisibility stems from his worthlessness in this world. Throughout the novel, the narrator loves likening himself to a machine of some sort, or as a minuscule fore in the grand scheme of things. When asked for an interview to represent the goals of the Brotherhood, the narrator replies, "I'm no hero and I'm far from the top; I'm a cog in a machine. We here in the Brotherhood work as a unit" (pg. 396-397). There are many cogs in a machine; you wouldn't waste your time naming each one. Likewise, he identifies himself as part of a unit; that is, he considers himself not even a whole being, but only a part of a larger picture. What is a name for, at this point? He is one out of millions of African Americans, one out of billions of human beings in this world. The absence of a name expounds on this statement that the author is trying to get across. In relation to the mass of humankind, this protagonist is nothing, even though he likes to think he's doing brave and innovational things. When he stands in a crowd with the rest of the population, he is invisible.
The main point I want to get out of this is that this narrator is not literally invisible. Which, really, is a stupid assumption to make, but I honestly thought he was in the first portion of the book. While he's at school, driving around Mr. Norton, it seems as if John Doe is living through a haze in which he is unsure what is real and what is fake. For all we know, he may be just another patient in Golden Day imagining things, and the rest of the whole story is his fantasy. But his social invisibility, despite all his ambition to reach for the top of the social ladder driving luxury cars and getting people to notice him, is what dominates his life, and I don't think this is necessarily because of his skin color alone. Rather, his constant associations with an organization that doesn't consider each member's individuality is what renders him invisible. And unfortunately, I think this will get the better of him. He'll get so caught up with his self-important that he won't see his quick disposal by the organization once their need of him has run its course. I mean, that's what happened at the school, even though he was one of the university's brightest students; this is what happened when he took a job in a paint factory. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again, but this time he'll take it so personally that it'll really mess with his head. He'll really start to question his individuality and purpose in the world he lives in. I can't wait for that to happen; then maybe I'll get a name out of him.
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