Permit Me the Present Tense

Carrying on with Shakespearian tragedies, the death continues, specifically Ophelia in this act. As I commented on at the end of my last post, Ophelia’s reaction to the apparent loss of sanity of her ex-lover is questionable. 

So far in the play, the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet hasn’t gone smoothly. Forbidden to see each other, and then Hamlet’s bizarre actions towards the rest of Denmark’s royal family, along with Ophelia being used as a decoy to glean information from Hamlet, (let’s state the obvious here) they’ve been going through a bit of a “rough” time you might say. So far Ophelia seems to have faired well, going along with the demands of her father and the king. She hasn’t seemed upset that she has been banned from seeing her lover and only disturbed at his growing “ecstasy” (in this case used as insanity and madness, not pleasure). It didn’t really appear as though Ophelia had ever been that attached to Hamlet. 

Hamlet, however, seemed more affected by the recent events. He constantly prods and puns toward Polonius for his part in taking away Hamlet’s lover. But Hamlet’s blatantly rude actions toward Ophelia during the play did seem especially harsh. So although up until this point Ophelia has seemed relatively unaffected by the loss of her lover, in Act IV she commits suicide.

So is Hamlet’s insanity spreading like a disease? Did the loss of Polonius cause Ophelia that much grief even though he has acted almost like her enemy (or overprotective father?) throughout the play?

The fairly certain answer is that the compounding of both the loss of Hamlet as a companion and her father pushed her over the edge. In a short period of time her father has died and her lover has been sent to England. 

At the end of Act IV we find out that Hamlet is returning to Denmark, no doubt to finish off his goal of revenge. It will be interesting to see how Hamlet reacts to the death of Ophelia. His reaction will help to show how deeply he felt about her before Polonius destroyed their relationship. And if Hamlet hadn’t completely lost his mind, it’s a safe prediction that Ophelia’s death could truly finish him off.

Ophelia’s character is consistently submissive throughout the play. This shows the attitudes about women during the time period. Ophelia is extremely compliant to the demands of her father, and he truly has complete control over her, banning her to see him and often using her to help King Claudius discover what is wrong with Hamlet. 

What seems strange to me is Ophelia’s passivity towards being told she can no longer be with Hamlet. In the beginning of the play the intimate relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet is introduced. When Polonius demands that she no longer see him, she seems surprisingly alright with it. And although Hamlet’s increasingly outlandish is distressing towards Ophelia, she doesn’t seem sad that she’s forbidden to see him or that he’s gone crazy. She is immediately compliant to whatever his demands might be.

In the beginning of Act Three, scene one, the King, Queen, Polonius, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are all talking about how to figure out what’s wrong with Hamlet. They talk about using Ophelia to help discover the root of Hamlet’s odd behavior,

“For we have closely sent for Hamlet hither,/ That he, as ’twere by accident, may here/ Affront Ophelia./ Her father and myself (lawful espials)/ Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,/ We amy of their encounter frankly judge/… If’t be the affliction of his love, or no, That thus he suffers for.” (Act III, scene i, 29-34, 36-70)

Throughout this entire scene the submissiveness of Ophelia is clearly apparent as she is being talked about as an object, being used to help Hamlet. And in this entire portion of the scene she only speaks once, a mere five words,

“Madam, I wish it may,” (41)

Furthering her use as an object, even though Hamlet is almost viewed as dangerous, and acts erratically throughout the encounter between her and Hamlet, neither her father nor the King step up to save her from further emotional damage. Her disposition to emotional damage also represents the feeling of the time: that Ophelia is weak and easily impressionable because she is a woman.

As her father continues to use her to his and the King’s benefit, I have to continue to wonder how she feels about what is occurring, and whether she finds it difficult to be away from the man she so abruptly had to end a relationship with. She doesn’t appear to be terribly heartbroken over him, but will her feelings show further into the play?

 

 

 

As we know from the later part of Act I, we know that Hamlet is going to start acting crazy. He has forced his guards to swear that they do not know anything about what Hamlet is going to do, and in truth, they don’t really know much. Although many of his actions are debatable in whether or not he is merely “acting crazy” or actually is, we know that he is at least cognizant of his actions. What the audience is not clearly sure of is how Hamlet’s bizarre behavior will help to avenge his father. Act II develops and the audience is introduced to Hamlet’s play we are given a better idea of how this revenge will play out. As always, as per Shakespeare, the idea to do this is highly creative. Hamlet describes his plans as the following, to 

“Make made the guilty and appal the free” (Act II, scene ii, line 578)

with the hopes   

“That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,/ Have by the very cunning of the scene/ Been struck so to the presently/ They have proclaimed their malefactions;/ For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak/ With most miraculous organ.” (607-611)

The purpose of the play is now clear: Hamlet will attempt to make Claudius admit to the crime he has committed. Hamlet’s hopes are that the play will make Claudius go made until he has to admit that he murdered the king. However, the interactions between Polonius and Hamlet further question of the exact reasoning for acting dumb to the people around him… possibly as a showing of disrespect?… Only time will tell..

 

 

 

On a near complete 360, my blog, which once focused on the poet Margaret Atwood, will now focus on the Tragedy of Hamlet by William Shakespeare… So here goes:

Act 1

The Character of Claudius

Its apparent. Claudius has done just about everything possible to alienate Hamlet. It is safe to assume that the reason for Claudius’ poor treatment of Hamlet is to defend Claudius’ new found seat on the throne of Denmark. Nevertheless Claudius’ actions quickly make him an easily hated character. For starters he has married his dead brother’s wife… less than two months after his death- not exactly the most popular character and Hamlet shares this feeling, muttering the pun,

“A little more than kin, a little less than kind!” (Shakespeare I. ii. 65).

His disdain for Hamlet is apparent when he refuses to let Hamlet return to Wittenburg, although he let Laertes (the son of his right-hand man) leave Denmark to return to France. Although the Queen seems to be brain washed by her new husband, she does not share his same chilly mode of conduct for her son. Whereas Claudius uses a formal way of speaking to Hamlet, the Queen still uses more personal pronouns with her son, although she is telling Hamlet to do things that she does not believe in.

Later on in the act we discover from the ghost of the king the true extent of Claudius’ actions,

“The serpent that did sting thy father’s life [King Hamlet]/ Now wears his crown.” (I. v. 38-9)

Though this information does not come as a surprise, it does finally confirm the reason for the appearance of King Hamlet’s ghost.

The ghost pleads for his son to avenge him and thereby gives the reader a foreshadowing of what is to come in the Tragedy of Hamlet

 

Some questions on my mind…..

What is the extent of his desire for control?

Why has Queen Gertrude seemingly forgotten her husband so quickly/ why is she so “in love” with Claudius?

Did she have a part in the plot to end the dead king’s life?

Why doesn’t she object to Hamlet being treated so badly?

 

For my own attempt at Atwood’s poetry I took the poem “Is/Not” and applied the theme of the media and television. Atwood uses this theme in the first stanza of “Variations on the Word Love” as she describes how today’s media has destroyed the meaning in the word love. In my own poem, I have used lines from “Is/Not”. I have also used a similar structure as Atwood uses in “Is/Not”: two line stanzas. Finally, as Atwood ends the first part of “Is/Not”, I have used the same line at the end of my own poem , which is also the title that I have used for my blog, “Permit me the present tense”.

Tune In/Tune Out 

Media is not the answer

informative or otherwise

 

“reality” is not so real

the stretching and twisting of our lives.

 

You are not my creator

you are not my death

 

changing norms only helps us

to dig our own shallow graves

 

beauty is not what it used to be

sickly thin has never been so cute

 

love is a creation of

over-dramatic camera angles.

 

nobody should have that

power, when the true power lies in me.

 

Give up the effort

controlling, alluring

 

permit yourself the option

and permit me mine

 

which needs neither

your approval nor your surprise

 

to shut you out, demand

the truth

 

pushing the envelope

toeing the line

 

looking to the future but

constantly reveling in the past

 

The same things are said

over and over again

 

Permit me the present tense:

The ability to live in what I know

 

 

This blog, which was an assignment for my high school english class most definitely created a new experience for the majority of its students. Although many of us have had experience with Facebook, Myspace, or Xanga, an actual “blog” is not something that many students have worked with. Perhaps this goes without saying, but I much preferred doing this blog as opposed to a traditional research paper. I enjoyed that we were able to use all different types of sources online to base our discussion off of. Working with other students’ blogs allowed me to see how all poets are connected. One thing I wish could have been added to this assignment (and I may in fact add it anyways) is a post assignment that asks for us to gather examples of our poet in society (ie youtube videos etc). I’ve found numerous poetry readings etc of my poet but never felt that I could fit them into the other posts. I would also suggest changing the days the posts were due- making them do monday night for example as opposed to the middle of the week.

Over the course of this blog I’ve made various comments on my classmates’ blogs. To see the comments I made, follow the links below.

Alison’s Blog

Katie’s Blog

Michael’s Blog

Maddie’s Blog

After receiving a comment from, and later seeing the article written by maddieegr1, on the similarities between Adrienne Rich and Atwood, I felt it was only appropriate to follow up with a post of my own. And through additional research I discovered that these two poets do in fact have a lot in common. On a most basic level (and on a fairly ironic level at that) both Rich and Atwood went to Radcliffe College, although they graduated ten years apart and from different programs. 

Their topics of poetry are also similar, focusing on feminism and

The darkest and richest course of my poetry are sex, sexuality, sexual wounds, sexual identity, and sexual politics,” (The Northern Anthology of Poetry)

as is described about Rich. The appearance of the focus on a sexual identity is apparent in many poems of Atwood’s. Such poems of Atwood’s that cover this topic are: “Variations on the Word Love” (whose eroticism was discussed in a previous post), and “Is/Not”, among others. 

An article comparing both Atwood and Rich, writes that,

As a poet, Rich seems to be “continually wrestling” with the necessity of using language to express intangible concepts in concrete ways. 

This struggle is apparent in Atwood’s poems as well. Atwood attempts to describe the power of the word “love” in ”Variations on the Word Love”, the feelings of an unhappy mother in “The Shadow Voice”, and the feelings of depression in “Up” (from her poetry collection Morning In the Burned House).

From themes to alma maters, Atwood and Rich have a wealth of similarities in their lives and writing styles. These two poets are centered around feminist ideas and female-sexual empowerment, while incorporating these ideas with everyday comparisons and in-depth imagery and metaphor.

To read the rest of the article comparing Atwood and Rich, click here. 

Thank you to Maddie for the inspiration for this post! To see her blog, click here.

As quoted in “Intro to Atwood”, Atwood started out in a traditional realm of writing poetry. As Atwood explained, 

It resembled the poetry of Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poe, with a little Shelley and Keats thrown in. The fact is that at the time I became a poet, I had read very few poems written after the year 1900. I knew nothing of modernism or free verse.

Later on however, Atwood was introduced to poetry the broke all previously known rules,

… I did suffer a simulated cardiac arrest the first time I encountered T.S. Eliot and realized that not all poems rhymed, any more. “I don’t understand a word of this,” I thought, “so it must be good,” 

explained Atwood in a lecture on her philosophy.

This liberation from the standard, traditional methods of poetry are clear in Atwood’s own poetry. T.S. Eliot’s influence on Atwood’s poetry is especially apparent when comparing Eliot’s “Morning at the Window” and Atwood’s “Morning in the Burned House”. Full text of these poems can be seen here:

“Morning at the Window” by T.S. Eliot

“Morning in the Burned House” by Margaret Atwood

On the surface, these poems have a lot in common. For starters, there is an astonishing similarity in the titles. As Atwood said, neither poem rhymes, and although they vary in length overall, line length remains fairly consistent throughout the poems.

Their mode of specific description and metaphor center around a couple very similar lines. Both use images of breakfast, where the speaker in Atwood’s poem is eating breakfast, in Eliot’s poem housemaids are cleaning breakfast dishes. As Eliot writes in his poem, 

The brown waves of fog toss up to me

Atwood writes

in the east a bank of cloud 
rises up silently like dark bread. 

Both have this imagery of dark brown clouds, and both of these lines are nearly in the exact center of both of the poems. Immediately following these lines are other similar images, Eliot writes, 

Twisted faces from the bottom of the street,

And tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts,

describing a changing, swirling blur of the passing of reality paired with the dirtiness of this reality. Atwood uses a similar image when describing the wreckage of the burned house:

I can see the swirls in the oilcloth,
I can see the flaws in the glass,
those flares where the sun hits them.

Here Atwood writes of the “swirling” objects around her, and although she is speaking more literally of the patterns around her, as she mentions the imperfections of her current situation, the “flaws”, it is obvious that she too is speaking of the dirtiness of reality.

An article written by James Parsons on T.S. Eliot’s poem also points out a theme that can be connected to Atwood’s poem: isolation. As Parsons writes of Eliot’s poem, 

It is also clear that the persona is isolated, divorced from the action. There is no real communication. He (or she) is leaning out the upstairs window. “They” – people without names – are making breakfast. He is ‘aware’ of the housemaids but not in contact with them.

Similar to the situation in this poem, in Atwood’s the persona is also isolated, revisiting a destroyed home… alone. There is no mention of what has happened to the family that used to live in the house. The persona talks of her lonliness, “No one else is around,”. And although the persona is experiencing the home, her experience is completely separate from the rest of the world.

As Atwood has admitted, Eliot provided a necessary awakening into the world of modern poetry. His influence has undoubtedly caused Atwood’s style to be what it is today, very modern. However, the influence of Eliot on Atwood is especially apparent in “Morning in the Burned House”, as Atwood’s poem seems to almost mimic that of Eliot’s.

To read the rest of James Parsons’ article, click here.