The Roots of His Lingering Indecision Essay Example for Free

The Roots of His Lingering Indecision Essay If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. (V. 2. 289-292) The tragedy of Hamlet does not only reveal Shakespeare’s remarkable skill as a playwright but it serves as a commentary of how he proclaims the complexity of the human mind. And even in the subject of death, he succeeds in conveying death as not just an element of tragedy, but as a showcase of complex emotions of the bereaved. In Hamlet, the â€Å"outward form† that consists of the thesis of ghostly malevolence and the use of irony in the dramatic integrity of which could not be sacrificed to preconceived Hamlet’s personality patterns and motifs (Wilson-Knight, 1963). Hamlet’s unpredictable character and ambivalent behavior compel its readers to contemplate much about the heros sanity. His personality, during the course of the play, leads us to believe that Hamlet only feigned his madness. Hamlet is a man disgusted with the repulsiveness of life around him and is obligated to set things straight. Under the guise of madness he attempts to fulfill revenge, yet the discussion does not stop there. Did Hamlet really succeed in being a good actor that he fooled everyone into believing in his madness or was he truly mad? Why did he wait so long to carry out his revenge? Did Hamlet pondered too much and this drove him to an insanity that was indeed real? In Act 2 Scene 2, we could read Hamlet speaking to himself. He wishes that he were able to act like the actor who performed the speech for him. Indecision has subdued Hamlet in forgoing the revenge the murder of his father on Claudius or keeping silent due to uncertainty about whether Claudius really killed his father. This is why he decides to try and make the players enact the murder scene as it was described to him by the ghost of his father. Hamlet is hoping that Claudius, when he sees the scene, will reveal himself as the true murderer of King Hamlet: I have heard that guilty creatures sitting at a play / Have by the very cunning of the scene / Been struck so to the soul that presently / The have proclaimed their malefactions (II. 2. 566-569). By watching Claudius when the actors perform this scene, Hamlet expects to discover whether the ghost told him the truth. Shakespeare creates such a vague situation which makes this character more intriguing. As a result of the ambiguity given throughout this play, many might argue for or against the idea that Hamlets antic disposition put on as a facade to mislead the royal family. This pales in contrast with the disposition of Hamlets lunatic mind. In other words, Hamlet might in fact really suffered insanity. Proof could be derived from Hamlets erratic mood changes, careless slaughter of those not directly involved in the murder of his father and his dealings with the ghost of his father. Many critics believe that Hamlet faked his insanity to conceal his real feelings and to divert attention from his task of revenge. Other critics assert that Hamlet hopes that Claudius, thinking him mad, will lower his guard and reveal his guilt in Hamlets presence. With his troubled life, Hamlet embraces the fools, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia and the ghost, and the mirror in which they all are reflected in Hamlet’s consciousness. The play exhibited the â€Å"fine intensification and enlargement of the theme of death; and in end the images which make dramatization possible are significant (Wilson-Knight, 1963). Due to his turbulent emotions which result from his indecision on how to respond to his fathers murder, he then thrived in isolation from society. Ill wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter. (I. 5. 99-104) A tragic hero, Hamlet largely determines his own fate, similar to Sophocles’ Oedipus and Shakespeare’s own King Lear. An extraordinarily complex young man—intuitive, accomplished, sensitive, noble, philosophic and reckless, Hamlet is a larger-than-life character. Thus, his tragedy rooted from these ill-defined â€Å"excesses† of personality. Hamlet’s emotional side is obviously evident from the beginning: At the plays opening he is portrayed to be consumed by anguish and shock even before he sees the ghost. In his first soliloquy, he even expressed the wish that suicide was acceptable. Also, Wilson-Knight (1963) averred that by establishing a dominant motif of disease and corruption and skillfully developing it through a series of carefully chosen interlaces, always present in moments of dramatic and moral tension, he enhances the genre and provides a structure suggesting macrocosmic and microcosmic horror. How the ghost contributes to irony implicit in that analogy must be investigating by first dialectically proving malevolence. A deeper understanding of the conflicts that hound the character of Hamlet and his turbulent emotions exemplifies the complex reactions of humans towards the issue of death. The approach taken by Shakespeare in Hamlet has generated countless different interpretations of death, but it is through Hamlets struggle to confront his internal dilemma that he himself dies at the end, fulfilling his duty as a son and his duty to society, by purging the corrupt from the monarchy and avenging his father’s death. However, we all know that death is never the end, it is only the beginning. Works Cited Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. In Kirszner Mandell (ed. ), Portable Literature Reading, Reacting, Writing, 5th ed. , Boston: Thomson/Wadsworth Publishers, 2003, p. 722-827. Wilson Knight, G. The Wheel of Fire. New York: Meridian Books, 1963.

Language, Identity and Acceptance in Wright’s Autobiography, Black Boy :: Wright Black Boy Essays

Language, Identity and Acceptance in Wright’s Autobiography, Black Boy African American writer James Baldwin said that, â€Å" Language is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: It reveals the private, and connects, or divorces one from the larger public or communal identity.† The stories in Black Boy are original and captivating. It identifies Richard Wright as a writer and a person of incredible substance. The language identifies the books time frame and era. And most importantly shows Richard’s journey through social and personal acceptance. Writing this book the language used was important to Wright. It gave him the power to convey his life story to the reader. Without it his stories could have never been published and his popularity amongst readers would be nonexistent. This book is based on a factual claim. It might be biased because we read only his side of the story. It might also include a bit of fiction but his command of the words and the imagery speaks otherwise. Richard Wright infuses the book with personal stories from his experiences in life. We as the reader might find some of the stories in the book hard to believe but his use of evidence and historical facts lead the reader to deem that this book is in fact the life of Richard Wright. His use of words and his grasp of the English language allows the reader to identify with his victories and his defeats. Using the pathos appeal Wright enables the reader to be part of the story of his life. â€Å" I would hurl words into the darkness for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger of life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human. Language also identifies the books era. Reading the book one can tell that it was a time of hostility between races. The term â€Å" white man† comes up many times. It is as if Wright is reluctant to use he names of particular people even when he does know them. â€Å" White man† obtain a singular feeling from the reader. Even though most of the time there is usually more than one man he refers to them as the white man. The blacks on the other hand are â€Å"us† or â€Å"ours† .

Our Visual Culture in Arts and Crafts Essay

Ours is a culture of spectacle, which is to say that we thrive on visual entertainment of all sorts (Mulvey, 2002). We love films, television, drama, ads, in addition to the art of the land expressed in art galleries throughout the world. We thrive on these visual entertainers, and so there is a huge industry involved in marketing visual thrills and using them on the people for a purpose. Visual culture is meant to influence the individual that enjoys it, so therefore advertisements add meaning to our lives by informing us about what is new and what is not in the all-important market of goods and services. Experts study the impact of their visual messages to people. In return for their efforts they have come to know that people are influenced by visual messages even if these messages last only a few seconds in an advertisement; and that the mind is like a long-term-memory photographer that may somehow retain everything in the subconscious part of itself. Henceforth are born marketing campaigns selling billions worth of goods and services to humanity. Films, too, cost billions of dollars. They, too, rely on the visual medium to make a living. What is more, films are seen as a necessity of modern life in terms of the culture that they allow ordinary individuals to relate to. Yes, films allow us to feel like we are a part of the culture they represent. Through films, humanity can connect. Connection and communication are the only essential facets of the media (that is, all mediums of communication). Visual art is special not only because it is related to the five senses of humanity; but also because it reveals a culture of science and imagination that we are invited to feel a part of. Every medium of communication is important in the modern world. The Internet plays an important part in the visual culture by bringing the world of visual arts into our homes. It shows us museums as well as the movies, icons of cultural visuals. Visual culture should be a subject of the communication field, as well as psychology and sociology, besides the fine arts. There are various understandings about what constitutes the visual culture, and so there are experts in visual arts that say paintings and similar art forms must not be open to visual-cultural interpretations. In other words, paintings are best left to the human soul to understand and judge (Kamhi, 2004). Visual culture is about quietude, just as much as it is about flourishing through science fiction movies such as the Matrix, and science fiction tv series like the Star Trek. These visual arts and crafts rely on the power of â€Å"effects† (which should also be read as special â€Å"affects†) seeing that these movies rely on the visual medium to produce pictures in the subconscious mind that would hopefully leave a lasting impression on the mind, depending on how powerful the visual message is. A very good medium of communication, such as the Internet encyclopedia by the name of Wikipedia, has a bad reputation because it is written by many experts and people do not always know whether those experts are real or not. Such reality conflicts are also obvious in the visual arts. Star Trek relied on special effects to make a lasting impression on the audience and also by its use of excessive, unique clothes and implements that never appeared real to the audience. We know that Star Wars is a lie, and yet we enjoy it. The reason appears to be that we enjoy unreal kinds of entertainment because they open the mind, allowing us to imagine things through the mind’s eye. All mediums of communication are open to competition and comparisons. Wikipedia may be compared to the Open Course Ware of MIT, for example, because many people find the encyclopedia useful. Wikipedia’s definition for â€Å"visual culture† appears very professional, concrete, correct and real: Visual culture is a field of study that generally includes some combination of cultural tudies, art history, and anthropology, by focusing on aspects of culture that rely on visual images. Among cultural studies theorists working with contemporary culture, this often overlaps with film studies and the study of television, although it can also include video game studies, comics, traditional artistic media, advertising, the Internet and any other medium that has a crucial visual component (â€Å"Visual Culture,† 2007). The above is actually just a part of the definition of the important culture of spectacle. Our generation of men will have literature about our visual culture in the days to come. Earlier generations of humanity did not perhaps have the kind of riches in visual culture that our generation possesses. We have excessive tv and movies that earlier generations did not have because they had not managed to make optimal use of electricity as well as scientific brains. This, indeed, is an important part of the definition of ‘our visual culture. ’ Like Wikipedia, there are visual means of communication that are rejected by certain kinds of people. In the Middle East, for example, it is considered a bad thing to enjoy Western television with girls kissing, beach babes, etc. And so, certain types of visual arts are not acceptable to particular groups of society. To put it another way, no visual culture or any other medium of communication can perhaps fully satisfy all people at the same time. Perhaps only nature can satisfy all people. Nature is an extraordinary feast to the eyes – a free form of visual art available for all and acceptable to all. Besides, nature could be compared to the films we watch and the photography we admire on the covers of golf magazines. Nature is represented by rivers, streams, oceans, mountains, lakes, green spaces, etc. What is a better feast to the eyes? We next explore how and why the visual culture of science fiction movies and tv shows is a visual form of entertainment. A viewer of both Star Trek and the Matrix may believe that one is better than the other, or that none of these visual entertainers are truly entertaining. In order to understand science fiction, it is necessary to know something about the science behind the phenomena being investigated in the film. Day after Tomorrow was a film that explored the possibility of an ice age suddenly hitting humanity when it’s time for global warming to show its true colors. It was a science fiction movie, and yet it was not an excellent representation of visual culture because the director(s) did not pay attention to good cutting/editing of the film. Similarly, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a famous name, a movie that cannot truly be understood unless one has read a book by the name of Guide to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Tom Cruise’s episode of the Matrix, on the other hand – a movie about the most handsome man losing his face after he had been in a dream machine – is more interesting because it is filmed beautifully. Beauty is a universal language, and so a viewer does not have to know the ‘secret beyond matter’ to understand the science behind the movie. It was not important to understand the science in this case because beauty was caught on tape. Both Cruise and his girlfriend in the movie are breathtakingly beautiful, and so the movie is a definite hit – one that would leave a lasting impression on the viewer. Then there was an Arnold Matrix with a similar story, and of course, the true Matrix with Keanu Reeves. Both were action-packed, and telling a different story about afterlife, or another life. Yet, Keanu and Arnold were not as handsome as Cruise perhaps, and the latter’s movie left a longer lasting effect on the girls as opposed to the boys. Keanu’s version was a hit especially among boys, although girls enjoyed eyeballing Keanu very much. Genders have differing interpretations of the visual arts. So therefore, it can be imagined that boys enjoyed Keanu’s Matrix more than the girls because boys like violent films – a sociological question to ponder, with reference to the visuals of the culture. The best visual culture of arts and films is made by the minds that work on lasting impression. Our visual culture has the capacity to change and shape people, which is why foreigners refer to Americanization as the standardization/globalization of American films and television shows available in all countries abroad. Those who enjoy Americanization and take comfort in a culture that appears tolerant and good to them, are lovers of the visual arts of the West. For them, movies such as the Matrix (all episodes) and shows such as Star Trek are culture definers. The world understands us better because of our visual arts. Thus, it is very important to concentrate on what we want others to know about us in the future. It is essential to ask: Is our visual culture going to be admired by our descendants? It would be easiest for future generations to understand us by looking at our visual arts preserved in museums, homes, books, and the on the World Wide Web. Improved technology has also made it possible to preserve films and television shows in good packaging and systems such as the DVD’s. We are providing improved quality of visual arts to our culture at all times. What we keep in our records will be taught in schools of tomorrow. Hence, it is very important to leave good messages behind, and in good quality films that easily leave a lasting impression on people. Science is a defining attribute of the modern era. What we leave behind in visual arts in terms of science fiction movies has got to reveal that we, as a society of the twenty first century, were thoroughly drenched in scientific facts and we were exploring the universe by the use of imagination. The latter generation of the twentieth century was already exploring time relativity in Back to the Future series. Besides time traveling, our society is interested in a lot more scientific details, such as volcanoes, trips to Mars, etc. Mission to Mars is a new film of bad-to-good quality, perhaps as well filmed as old Back to the Future series. Matrix is perhaps the most modern specimen. It is an unforgettable story, after all. I believe that Matrix is the paragon of modern science fiction films. But then, this is just a single person’s opinion. What society thinks collectively about a visual arts project is generally considered more acceptable an interpretation of the art form, although this argument may not necessarily be true. In the case of Matrix and its contemporary films, the fact is nevertheless that the episodes about life versus dreams were more important for the general public to enjoy in the era of quantum mechanics. Films such as Back to the Future were good in their own time – right after Einstein. Science is constantly moving ahead, and so we may expect science fiction films to improve further. Damien Broderick’s (2000) â€Å"Tearing Toward the Spike† is truly a work of art as far as the imagination of the author is concerned. Mankind is seeking knowledge at greater depths than ever before. What is the future of humanity? – Broderick’s paper answers the question with various creative scenarios, including a future that resembles a black hole, and a â€Å"‘dinosaur-killer’ asteroid† that strikes humanity in the middle of the day. At the same time, the author invites the reader to imagine any number of scenarios on his or her own. As a matter of fact, Broderick’s paper is an invitation for the reader’s very own stream of consciousness to burst forth. It is a mind opener, as well as an attempt to analyze unlimited possibilities. It is very easy to make a visual art treat using the imagination of the paper. Even so, it may very well be that the evolutionists would read the paper differently from the creationists. This is because the creationists are typically those that would like to remain compatible with their belief that the world would end when the Day of Judgment begins. On the other hand, there is no restriction on the faculty of the imagination in both the theory of creation and that of evolution. Both God and chance allow for unlimited possibilities, after all. What is more, in visual arts, it is best to have competitions of quality as well as theory. If evolutionists and creationists both make science fiction movies, they would most probably add to the spice of life in the modern world of spectacle. A variety of different visual treats is definitely good for the human soul. Besides, the greatest thing about visual arts is that it is possible for anybody in the world to join in and become an artist and/or an entertainer/performer. The quality of the visual medium must be taken care of. At the same time, since visual culture refers specifically to â€Å"culture,† it is an unforgettable truth about our world that certain forms of art are still not acceptable to all people of the world. In Iran, Buddha’s sculptures would be rejected. Similarly, Star Trek may be more entertaining than Matrix depending on what we are concentrating on in our appreciation of the craft of moviemaking. Various perspectives are involved in understanding visual culture. The fact remains, still, that our visual culture is a necessity in our lives, and must be good at all costs.

The Arab Israeli Conflict Of The Middle East Essay

The Arab Israeli conflict was a state of political tension and military disputes between the Arab countries and Israel. Though there are many factors contributing to the conflict such as Arab and Jewish nationalism and religion, Britain played an essential role in the conflict. Through Britain double dealing during the First World War and its misguided strategies and conflicting promises to Arab and Jewish ignited the conflict between Arab and Jews in the Middle East. Britain’s involvement started at the outbreak of war. Britain already had an interest in the Middle East, controlling Egypt and key points at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula. This control was essential to safeguard the Suez Canal and the route to India which was Britain’s most valued colony. Britain felt that with the stalemate in Europe it was essential to widen the conflict. Britain constructed a complex strategy to undermine the central powers. The British saw the Middle East and the Arabs as an ally, the only hope of success in the war. An idea to tempt the Arabs into a revolt against the ottomans and create a diversion which would tie down the central powers in the Middle East. The British high commissioner in Cairo, sir henry McMahon, negotiated that Hussein would provide a substantial Arab force against the ottomans in return for British support for Arab independence. By September 1918 Hussein and the British under General Allenby had defeated the Turks and entered Damascus. Hussein demandedShow MoreRelatedCauses Of The Arab-Israeli Conflict In The Middle East1820 Words   |  8 PagesIntroduction The Arab-Israeli conflicts in the Middle East have been an on-going issue since the establishment of Israel in 1948. The primary cause of the fighting between Arab-Israeli is the rejection of Israel exists in the Middle East. The first known outburst of Arab-Israeli conflict occurred in 1948. 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