Response to Course Material # I've lost count

These past few weeks have been a not-so-gentle reminder of how much work I need to do before the A.P. exam. I realized when we discussed introduction paragraphs that I had no idea how to write a good one. I have a lot of editing to do on my open prompt responses. Luckily, the exercise we did involving writing our own open prompts and responding to others with a stressful time limit helped. It made me more aware of each element of the prompt and how it should all fit in to the opening paragraph. It was a little scary to realize that I had such a big hole in my essay-writing abilities, but I still have most of the semester to figure it out, and I'm really glad Ms. Holmes noticed that we were struggling with opening paragraphs and cleared things up for us.

Along with intro paragraph work, we have been studying Tom Stoppard's play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. As this course goes on, I feel like the works are getting harder and harder to draw meaning from and write a theme statement for. This play is no exception. Like The American Dream, it has elements of the theater of the absurd, but still (in my opinion) has a meaning unique to the work. However, The American Dream is an allegory, making its meaning more blatant and understandable. With Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, I can not even begin to articulate an overall meaning or any form of theme statement yet.

To help us with this play, we watched a movie version directed by Stoppard himself. This was cool, because it represented Stoppard's interpretations in every way, and he even made some adjustments from the book after he had grown as a writer.  The most obvious change was the ending, which I personally liked a lot. Making it end with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern hanging themselves and then cutting to the wagon riding in the woods where the play began made the cyclical aspect of the play more clear. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are simply characters who exist solely for the purpose of being plot devices in Hamlet, and they are dead until are summoned for their lines whenever someone reads Hamlet (Or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead). Having them actually die at the end of the movie I think highlights this. This whole idea is really interesting to think about. It reminds me of when I listen to Les Miserables songs. I always feel really sad at the songs near the end and feel the need to go back to the earlier songs when everyone was alive. The characters are all reborn  for me when I go back to the opening song, but for other people who are not listening to Les Miserables or are listening to the ending songs, they are dead. I toyed with this idea a little before reading Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, but the play really takes it to the next level and shows and articulates it in a way that I could not and still am struggling to.

There's a lot of meaning in the play that I'm still trying to comprehend, and I am hoping more class discussion will help. Our class discussed whether or not the other characters in Hamlet are just as confused as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, or they are like the players. My initial thought was "They must be confused too, because what makes Rosencrantz and Guildenstern special so that they would be the only ones who are confused?" But someone pointed out that other characters could be players, and they need Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to be their audience. That made me doubt myself, and it raised questions like "How do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern know their lines?" and "Why would the players want Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to be their audience, if they can't even really watch the play? The players know they are in a play, so isn't the audience in the seats enough?" All of that is super confusing to me, along with what exactly Stoppard is trying to say about fate and free will. I know I say this about every play we read, but I seriously have no idea how we are going to put all this together into a theme statement.

Another tool we were given to help with Stoppard's play was a lecture on the work by a college professor. This lecture helped clear up some parts of the play and made me think about things like the friendship between Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. I did not, however, like the last few paragraphs of the lecture that basically say that the whole play is just Stoppard messing around, and  this is an absurd work with no unique meaning. I think there is a meaning behind the play, although I am struggling to articulate it. The main thing that bothers me though, is that the first part of the lecture seems to talk about and imply a deeper meaning to the work. Even the bit about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern being friends has meaning in it (although maybe not the main meaning). The end of the lecture seems to refute a lot of what it says in the beginning and body. Although I appreciated most of this lecture (whether I agreed or disagreed with each argument), I was not happy with the end.

Open Prompt Response Part 2 #2

2003 prompt:

According to critic Northrop Frye, “Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their
human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great
trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be
instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning.” Select a novel or play in which a tragic
figure functions as an instrument of the suffering of others. Then write an essay in which you
explain how the suffering brought upon others by that figure contributes to the tragic vision of
the work as a whole.

Many works that center around a tragic hero have a broader tragic vision that goes beyond the hero and involves the suffering of other characters in the play. William Shakespeare's Hamlet demonstrates this when the suffering of the tragic hero, Hamlet, has a ripple effect on the other characters, leading to a tragic, bloody ending with almost none of the main characters left alive and certainly none left unaffected. 

Hamlet is not in a good situation from the beginning of the play, when he has to deal with his cold uncle who killed his father and soon after married mother. This, coupled with the pressure to avenge his father's death cause him to turn inward and become very depressed. Because of his status as a member of the royal family isolated in a castle in Elsinore, he lacks an identity. This lack of identity impairs his abilities to make moral decisions, which leads him to more internal suffering, thoughts of suicide, and eventually his tragic death. In his wake he leaves a pile of dead bodies and tortured minds, all afflicted in some way by his suffering.

Hamlet's suffering causes not only the deaths of most of the other characters, but also lots of moral pain, to the point of almost insanity for some. Claudius's guilt over killing his brother is intensified by Hamlet's desperate attempt to figure out what path he should take by putting on the play. The audience sees how upset he is over his actions and even might sympathize with him to some degree, making his death at the end (caused by Hamlet) and subsequently the work as a whole more tragic, because he is not a completely evil person. Laertes and Ophelia are hurt by their father's death (also a result of Hamlet's inner torture), which, along with Hamlet's rejection and the possibility that she's carrying his baby, causes Ophelia so much pain that she goes insane and commits suicide. Laertes, crippled by the death of his father and sister, resorts to immoral behavior and kills Hamlet and inadvertently. His admission and sorrow for his wrongdoing as he is dying gives him some degree of redemption and makes his death add to the tragic image of the work as a whole. Gertrude also gets caught up in the slaughter and ends up giving up her life for her son. Her devotion to her son despite his behavior ends in her death and also adds to the tragic vision as a whole because her very death is in a way redemption, making the audience sympathize with her more.

Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, although they don't suffer morally that much from Hamlet, add to the body count, and increase the wake of suffering Hamlet leaves behind him. The deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, ordered by Hamlet, seem especially senseless and magnify the extent of the impact Hamlet's tragic circumstances on himself on those around him. 

Hamlet's tragic circumstances due to his difficult past and lack of identity have a ripple effect, wiping out most of the other characters mentally and physically. The only main character still alive at the end of the story is Horatio, and he has to live the rest of his life replaying the memory of the death of his best friend and others whom he knew well.