Dasha: as I assign points at the end of the year, your blog is missing many assignments.

Turning Point

In the Act 3 scene 2 Hamlet is finally able to confirm the Ghost’s words about his father’s murder. He put on a play that looked like the death of his father and watched the reaction of the present king. He also asked his friend Horatio to confirm the reaction that he had noticed. Therefore, now Hamlet has his answers and he might start putting his revenge plan together. Moreover, after the play Hamlet has a significant conversation with his former friend Guildenstern.

Before this scene, the king had asked Guildenstern and Rosencrantz to spy on Hamlet and to find whether he is planning anything against him. They were supposed to be friends from collage and Hamlet was fond of them. However, after the conversation the readers might see that Hamlet suspected them all along. Shakespeare uses the image of some pipe instrument to show that Hamlet knows how much his friends lied to him to please the king. Hamlet asks Guildenstern to play on the pipe for him, but Guildenstern refuses because he cannot. However, Hamlet says that he did not know how to play a spy on Hamlet, but he still did.

Also, this scene is important because Hamlet’s play is revealed and that the spies might realize that Hamlet had been acting insane for a specific purpose. This scene is important for the play since this is a turning point from theory to action. After this action Hamlet is going to start forming a play for the revenge that will lead to multiple deaths at the end of the play.

In play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the author includes an important scene 3.1 of Hamlet and Ophelia. In this scene he describes the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet is being very forceful and harsh on her. Since it is known that Hamlet is very close to a women hater, in this scene his reasons are revealed. Hamlet is very angry with his mother because she got remarried too fast to a murderer of her husband. Even before Hamlet meets the ghost he is very frustrated with his mom’s actions. Therefore, in this scene Hamlet is expressing his anger on Ophelia since she is a young woman.

Also, we might consider that Hamlet was in love with Ophelia at some point before his plan. After his emotional speech about suicide he meets a girl who somehow rejected him, so he is probably angry with her for that action. Probably he thinks that since she did not say yes to him then she should not say yes to anybody else, so he sends her to the nunnery.

Moreover, he is frustrated with the “rotten state of Denmark”, so he wants at least something to be clear and pure of corruption. Therefore, he approaches her with fury of his disrupted mind.

To rest!

“To sleep, to die” these meanings are so close. What is that makes us think that death is sleep. Through life people wonder what is to be dead. Do we just disappear? Will we become spirits? What are we going to do to see in the other life? But what if people don’t believe in life after death? What if it is just nothing? Just a long-long sleep, but with no dreams to see?

The question of life and death is as lusting as the existence. We always wonder what is to come. We fear death. However, death is just a part of living. It is our end to come. If to consider death just sleeping, it does not look too scary. With the long years of heavy life, work, worries death is just a relive. People finally have a chance to rest. Death is not something we should fear.

Even Hamlet in his speech thinks about dieing as sleeping, slipping away from all the unfairness of life. However, suicide is a bad way to end life. It is unnatural for a person to kill himself. Death is going to come anyway, then why hurry it? If death is sleep then life is dream for death. To live is to collect the dreams to have in sleep of death.

Repetition

In the Act 1 scene 1 Shakespeare uses repetition to show the emotion. Repetition is a tool used to emphasize something that is important for readers’ attention. When Horatio, Marcellus and Bernardo see the ghost for the first time, they want it to speak. In line 51 Horatio says: “Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak!” They come to the conclusion that the ghost looks like their dead king. They want to make the ghost to speak, but ghost stays silent.

By repeating the word “speak” three times in a row, Shakespeare wants readers to pay attention to the emotion with which the person is saying it. Each time the word has to be pronounced with a different intonation. Such intonation leads readers to the conclusion of desperation and fear that Horatio experiences by talking to the ghost. Shakespeare emphasizes that the ghost is an important figure in the play and that the information it carries is very significant to the characters.

Hamlet's certainty

Act 1, scene 4 in the play “Hamlet” is recognized like the only scene in which Hamlet is sure about his actions to follow the ghost. As we know Hamlet is still in mourning for his father, so his certain reaction could be evidence that he misses his father. Hamlet is lost in the assuming of what could actually happen to his father. He does not believe that his father died accidentally; therefore, the appearance of his father’s ghost may lead him to find the truth. In the line 45 Hamlet says: “King, father, royal Dane. O, answer me!” Hamlet is convinced that the ghost is his father. Hamlet is seeking for the answers to his questions, and the ghost is the one who can give them to Hamlet.

The other reason could be Hamlet’s contradictoriness because of his youth. In lines 63 and 64: “But do not go with it…No, by no means.”, Horatio and Marcellus are trying to convince Hamlet not to follow the ghost. However, Hamlet still follows him. It could be that Hamlet just goes against the words of his friends. He does not want to follow anybody’s orders, so he does what he is told in total reverse.

The Messanger!

We have been studying sonnets for a few days in the class. We looked at the very first structure of a sonnet and how it was changed by Shakespeare. As well as poets before Shakespeare, he wrote love sonnets; however, the love he was describing differed from love the poets before him wrote about. Shakespeare wrote about love in friendship. Even though many people think that he wrote to a gay boyfriend, I think that he was just writing about a friendship love to a friend. There is nothing wrong with being close to a friend in a nonphysical way. If it is okay for girls to talk about love each other, why should it be different for boys, for friendship is equal to both genders?

Shakespeare’s sonnets are a beautiful creation of poetry. They contain a lot of information about romance and beauty itself. Shakespeare had a gift of making thing look different then they appear for real. His use of metaphors and similes make any poet nowadays jealous. In a short sonnet of 14 lines Shakespeare could include up to 3 metaphors, which can be recognized only with a close look at them. Interpretation of Shakespeare’s work can take ours and you still won’t be able to get it without help. The language he uses is his own creation which can’t be compared to anybody else.

Out of all the sonnets, at which we looked in the class, I like the most is sonnet 73. In my opinion this sonnet talks about appreciation of what you have, for when you loose it, you miss it the most. The idea Shakespeare followed wasn’t just about telling the boy he liked him, but it had a message for every person who would be able to see it. As well as any other poem, Shakespeare’s sonnets can be interpreted in different ways and also might contain a different message. It depends on where you are in this life and where you are going with emotional world.

Because I Could Not Stop for Death

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

The poetess talks about life and its aspects through images. The syntax of the poem is clearly shown throughout the whole poem. The poetess uses symbols along with the images. Moreover, the theme is being presented in the poem.
The poetess uses an image of a person she calls Death in its carriage to show that the life has its end. She also describes how death is not a bed thing and that it is even kind. She talks about death like it’s only a beginning. When the poetess starts talking about the drive in the carriage, she mostly describes a person’s life and what they go through. The drive in the carriage represents the flow of life. She is looking at it from the side, it could be an image for memory when people look back at their lives, but remember as it happened to somebody else but not them. The image of the house may be talking about a close end of life – the drive. The poetess talks how the ground was a little swelled. It can mean a few things. First is that the person is dying of some disease and that is why death looks like an escape. Second is that by the end of life a person creates a swelling of it’s memories and actions and puts it into one place. The last stanza stands for the actual death towards which the person was going. The poetess describes how life maybe so long, but it feels like an only moment as one breath.
The theme of the poem is about the journey of life. A life that was fulfilled with memories. A person that the poetess is describing seems very grateful through the time he spent living.

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls, to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends doe say,

The breath goes now, and some say, no:

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move,

'Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th'earth brings harms and fears,

Men reckon what it did and meant,

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love, so much refined

That we ourselves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two,

Thy soul the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if th’ other do.

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as it comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must

Like th'other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end, where I begun.


The poet talks about love, but about a special kind of love. He talks about love that does not come to everybody maybe in their entire life. The poet does not actually mention the word love in the poem, but he uses metaphors to lead us to such a conclusion. Also, the poem has its special syntax that is maintained throughout the whole poem.
The biggest metaphor that the poet uses is about compasses. He talks how the two lovers are in the relationship to each other as the legs of the compasses are. He describes how they maybe far from each other but still together. His metaphors are incredible. In the very beginning the poet talks about love from the eyes of other people. He describes how other people think about love. Later in the poem he compares his love to the love of other people. He describes his love as the most pure love. The poet talks about a difference between passion and pure love because sometimes people mistake simple passion for real love.
Moreover, the poem includes the syntax that is perfectly continued till the end of the poem. The author chose each word to complete the sentence and to rhyme the sound. Syntax in a poem is very important and especially in a love poem. A love poem is supposed to flow and syntax helps to make it true.

Mr. Murphy's comment

Dasha:
your blog posts are supposed to be MULTIPLE paragraphs.
Besides being practice to improve your analytical writing, your blog symbolizes your effort in class. Let's try and give your blog more effort? I moved this on-line so that you had a keyboard to make writing easier.
Mr. Murphy

Pera Pound

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

This poem has a dark mood. The poet is speaking with a sad tone. The poem talks about people’s darkness inside them. Also, it talks about their loneliness by using the image of leafs on a branch of a tree, where the branch is also dark. The image shows how people are separated from one another even though they are on the same tree.

Fish and Eye

Margaret Atwood

You fit into me

You fit into me

Like hook into an eye

A fish hook

An open eye

The poem talks about feelings. To give this feeling the poetess uses images like hook-eye etc. In the first lines the poetess describes the feeling of completeness and idealness, which each girl experiences in a relationship. The poetess talks to us or to a specific person as a girl in an unhappy love. She tells that the person is just perfect and that they are made for each other; however, as always nothing is perfect. In the lines 3 and 4 “fish hook and eye” tells how much this relationship is hurting her. How at the end this relationship, if there’s any, is not good for a girl and that he is not that perfect for her after all.

Randall Jarrell

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State

And I hunched in it’s belly my wet fur froze.

Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

I woke to black flack and the nightmare fighters.

When I died they washed me out if the turret with a hose.

The poem is about war and specifically air war. The overall meaning includes a story of a pilot and his heath. If to translate little meanings by every sentence, it has its own special part. The first sentence tells about the beginning of the fight which starts in a moment: “…mother’s sleep” represents safety and “State” represents reality that the character meets in the war battle. The second sentence tells that the character’s plane got shot. Third sentence talks about his plane falling to the ground and that the life of a person who not that long ago only started living had been taken. The forth sentence tells that the battle was began so fast in the night that it seemed to be a nightmare for the people taking part in it. The last sentence talks how there are not that much respect for the died fighter when they wash him “with a hose.”

Gwendolyn Brooks

We Real Cool

We real coll. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike strait. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.

This poem is about the teenage hood. The times when the poetess lived so many teenagers had problem with drugs. This poem might be about the teenagers that spent all their time doing what they are not supposed to do. She talks how wastefully they spend their time. And at the end there is no time and they die of the sin they committed while hiding from their parents.

I think you like this!

I think you enjoy this blogging thing!
Don't forget to give me exact textual references to support your reading observations.
Keep up the good work.

Mr. Murphy's comments

Good job. Well arranged look at the three arguments.
I also think your blog looks much better now that your have added graphics.
Now what about music?

Three different theories on the Civil Disobedience have been introduced by Gandhi, Thoreau, and Martin Luther King. The three authors have many different views on the injustice of the government and the resistance. All of them are agreed on the idea that the people have to disobey and resist if the government does not rule fairly.

Thoreau does not believe in government at all. His idea of the government is no government. He thinks that the government should not support just the majority of the people. He considers individuals as nothing. He says that an individual can’t change anything especially against the majority. He believes that the government is too corrupt to consider people’s needs. In the second part of his work, Thoreau calls the government “it” to show its inhumanness. He writes about the resistance to Mexican War. However, he considers this war a bad one just because it is proslavery war. If the war could be against slaver, a Civil War for example, Thoreau would probably support it. In contrast to Thoreau’s views, Gandhi believes in peace against war.

Mohandas Gandhi has a different perspective on the topic of violent resistance. For him violence is not an issue. He does support the civil disobedience but in a peaceful and radical way. He believes that each person can even die on the matter of the cause if it is going to help others. His idea of the government is that each person can choose a government they trust or not. If people do not trust the government they protest. However, peacefully and only peacefully. Maybe quietly too.

Martin Luther King’s work is different in the point of the equality. He believes and fights for the equality among people. He believes that going to a prison for a good cause is a good thing to do. He can strike and disobey, but also it is supposed to be a peaceful strike. No harm! That is the main the point of the civil disobedience for Martin Luther King.