Week 6 Prompt: Close Reading Hamlet or Glossary Work (Choose One)

Due: Wednesday, September 28, 2011

This week you must choose from ONE of two options:

• Option One: Choose a passage from Hamlet and perform a close reading. This is the same assignment you’ve been doing since the beginning of the semester. If you feel like you need practice close reading, you may want to choose this option. 
• Option Two: Use the Bedford Glossary to answer a series of questions having to do with drama and plays. This option is intended to help you focus on the generic distinctions and nuances of drama. If you feel comfortable with your close reading skills, you may want to choose this option. 

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OPTION ONE

Explanation

Close reading involves reading carefully and keeping your senses attuned to things within the text that strike you as interesting, disturbing, significant, etc. Be certain to mark the passage or passages that strike you, so that you can come back to them. Once finished, reread the striking parts, choose one that you find the most compelling, and describe how it works and what it means.

Remember, you do this by:

• identifying what rhetorical effect/s are at work within the particular passage; 
• explaining the way the rhetorical effect/s function in the context of the passage; 
• and, finally, suggesting why the meaning, derived from the effect, is important for understanding the entire work. 

Close reading always moves from the particular (passage/effect) to the universal (entire text). From the effect you will provide a new way of reading the entire work. In many ways, this new reading forms the basis of your argument.

Requirements

• Read Hamlet and perform a close reading 
• Focus on a single passage that you feel is important 
• Identify and interpret no more than two rhetorical effects at work within the passage 
• Write your argument in 450 to 650 words 
• EMAIL ME YOUR WRITTEN ARGUMENT IN .DOC OR .RTF FORMAT 
• All assignments must be emailed to me by Wednesday, 6 pm. All late posts will automatically receive half credit. If the post is not emailed to me by Friday, 6 pm, it will receive no credit. 

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OPTION TWO

In essay form (that is, with complete sentences and coherent, well-organized paragraph), please answer the following questions using your Bedford Glossary for assistance:

• What is the difference between story and plot? 
• What is the difference between drama and play? 
• How does an Elizabethan tragedy, like Hamlet, differ from an ancient tragedy, like Oedipus Rex? 
• What is a soliloquy and why is it important to understanding Hamlet? 
• There are a number of soliloquy’s in Hamlet. In your opinion, which is the most important and why? 

Requirements

• Read Hamlet and then begin answering the above questions 
• Use your Bedford Glossary or the Oxford online resources to assist you in developing complete answers 
• Write your answers in essay form, NOT as a list. Be sure that your essay is a coherent, well-organized response. In style, it should resemble a summary. 
• Writer your answers in 450 to 650 words 
• EMAIL ME YOUR WRITTEN ARGUMENT IN .DOC OR .RTF FORMAT 
• All assignments must be emailed to me by Wednesday, 6 pm. All late posts will automatically receive half credit. If the post is not emailed to me by Friday, 6 pm, it will receive no credit. 

Week 5: Hailey Sherwood

In Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, the age-old question, “Who am I?” is presented in the pursuit of the protagonist, Oedipus, to find the truth about the murder of his father, Laius, which in turn reveals a forbidden relationship with his wife, Iokaste. In the pivotal moment where Oedipus comes to believe the truth he had sought out and simultaneously refused to accept, he gouges his eyes out. It is in this passage that the play comes to its head, highlighting the ironical nature of the story, and developing further questions about identity, ignorance, and crime and punishment.

“For the king ripped from her gown the golden brooches that were her ornament, and raised them and plunged them down straight into his own eyeballs, crying ‘No more, no more shall you look on the misery about me, the horrors of my own doing! Too long you have known the faces of of those whom I should have never seen, too long been blind to those for whom I was searching! From this hour, go in darkness!”’

The passage at first is rhetorically significant through the use of vivid imagery that expresses the gravity of the situation. Using diction such as “ripped,” “plunged,” and “down straight” contribute to the brutality of Oedipus blinding himself, and suggest that the act was swift and desperate (Lines 43-45). Juxtaposed next to a word as flowery as “ornament”, the association between the beautiful weapon and grotesque has an ironical feel (Line 44). Furthermore, detailing the brooches as “golden” suggest that they are representative of the “light” or truth in the story in Oedipus’ relationship with Iokaste (Line 43). The brooches are rich with meaning, and taking them, and using them as an instrument to inflict darkness is a literal and visual display of what Oedipus had been¾blind. It is then that Oedipus’s identity becomes centered around his own ignorance.

Oedipus’s own words hold important meaning in expressing the complex nature of the play. Through the instance of anaphora in Oedipus crying “too long”, there is a parallel created between the knowledge the others had possessed and the ignorance Oedipus had carried, with the words “know” and “blind” further depicting this contrast (Lines 47-49). Furthermore, a double entendre exists in Oedipus’s cry that “no more, no more shall you look on the misery about me, the horrors of my own doing” (Lines 46-47). Although it can be interpreted that the horrors of his doing can be recognized as killing his father and sleeping with his mother, the fact that Oedipus would punish himself in such an extreme and unflattering way suggest that the “horrors of his own doing” could be blinding himself (Line 47). In this, one can derive that Sophocles was possibly making a statement about a punishment literally fitting a crime, which contributes more to an ironic effect. It is in this passage, when Oedipus discovers his identity of the past that he consequently creates a new one for himself¾a banished blind man, a stark contrast to his once kingly status. He also gives a new meaning to the entire dynamic of his family, with Antigone and Ismene having meaningful and detrimental social implications from the affirmation of his identity. This passage is vital to the play in that as everything comes crashing down, some resolution exists in the knowledge that what is said to be true is true in fact. If a crime is committed, is there resolution in a punishment? Is ignorance truly bliss? Do two wrongs make a right? Oedipus Rex poses all of the above questions, and doesn’t necessarily give a clear answer. It is in this passage that these questions are brought to full front, and are vital to understanding the play.

Week 5: Jasmine Amin

In the play, Lysistrata, the emerging theme is feminism. The main character, Lysistrata, wants to end the war that is occurring in Athens, and her solution is to have all the women withhold having sex with their husbands. Lysistrata herself states that women are ignorant and are not given a bigger role in society other than to marry and raise children. Her wish, along with other women of Greece, is to have women make an impact on the world and change history. She concurs that more involvement needs to be made by women in society.

Lysistrata's speech about wool is a clever use of a metaphor in comparing womens' duties to Athens as a whole. This is apparent in the passage between her and the Commissioner:

Do you know anything about weaving?
Say the yarn gets tangled: we thread it
this way and that through the skein, up and down,
until it's free. And it's like that with war.
We'll send our envoys
up and down, this way and that, all over Greece,
until it's finished (Lysistrata, 198-204)

In this passage, Lysistrata is fed up with how society looks down upon women and says that women "mold society" into what it is today, by being able to fix bad situations, as is represented in the line, "Say the yarn gets tangled: we thread it / this way and that through the skein, up and down/ until it's free " (199-201). The yarn being " threaded this way and that, up and down" is a symbol of unity, of how Athens is attempting to keep society together as a whole. Women are the fabric of the community, because without them, the world would not function the way it does. In other words, Lysistrata is also describing the distress she feels about the war. She is stressing the unfairness of the men being taken away from their families to fight in a useless war. The passage is a contrast between the way men think (war) and the way women think (peace). In Lysistrata's point of view, if women were in charge, there would be no war. "Untangling wool" takes great patience, and men only believe in violence and cruel acts in war, whereas women can handle any type of situation with a more caring nature.

Continuing her speech, Lysistrata goes on to state that cruel men need to be turned away from society, that they are spoiling the earth with their presence, "Isn't there too much dirt here in Athens? You must wash those men away (208-209). In order for Athens to stay together as a city, "unclean" individuals need to be removed from power, so that the "wool" or "city" won't be spoiled.

Week 5: Lauren Hansen

Oedipus Rex: Until the Blind See 

The only ones who can truly see are blind. Teiresias, the only physically blind character in the play Oedipus Rex, is the only person that can actually see what has happened, is happening and will happen to Oedipus and the other characters in the play. In Scene 1 (lines 152-157), Teiresias and Oedipus get into an argument that can be determined by the following:

OED: But not for you, not for you,
          You sightless, witless, senseless, mad old man!

TEIR: You are the madman. There is no one here
           Who will not curse you soon, as you curse me.

OED: You child of total night! I would not touch you;
          Neither would any man who sees the sun.

Oedipus says, “You sightless, senseless, witless old man!”—a statement that is full of meaning, both literal and figuratively. The alliterative use of the ‘S’ sound makes the phrase linger longer than necessary, but its uniqueness among other lines was what initially attracted me to this passage. Each word cuts deep with its cruel meaning, but dramatic irony cleverly resurfaces before the exclamation point can be tacked onto the end of the sentence. The words ‘sightless, witless, and senseless’ may be directed at Teiresias, but they actually apply more to Oedipus. To solidify his argument, Teiresias tells Oedipus the following prophecy: “there is no one here / Who will not curse you soon, as you curse me.”

This particular section of lines stood out to me because of the use of dramatic irony, which is the most common literary device used in Oedipus Rex. Oedipus makes a show out of the fact that Teiresias is physically blind, but the audience knows that reality is quite the opposite. Dramatic irony creates a concept of knowledge that seems to be brought to life through the deeper contrast between light and darkness. In this, it appears that Oedipus’s own sight blinded him to the truth, which had been told to him many times. He decided not to listen to the truth, but instead seek it out on his own.

On more than one occasion throughout the play, Sophocles refers to the fact that Oedipus is blind to the truth just as Teiresias is blind to the world. Also, to be blind in ironical terms could also mean unknowingly doing something. I think this ties in nicely to the action going on behind the scenes with Oedipus and the fact that he doesn’t realize what he has done by killing his father and marrying his mother. Despite his intelligence, Oedipus’s lack of knowledge is the path to his downfall because he refused to follow the advice of those who knew what was happening. (Oh, the irony!)

These exchanges set up the purpose of the entire play and, in a sense, foreshadow the fate of Oedipus. According to Sophocles, a person must not only be able to see something, but be able to understand it as well. After learning of his mistakes, Oedipus realizes he had never ‘seen’ his life in the ‘light.’ Ashamed of his actions, he blinds himself in an attempt to return to the ‘darkness,’ which he had previously occupied, returning to a state where he could not see the evil he lived in and the misery he caused.