Big I, Eye, Aye.

                Hamlet’s transformation is motivated by, as is the theme for the play, revenge. His external transformation is an act he must put on to put those around him off balance. To go about his plans of revenge without this cover of insanity would be too obvious to those around him. His internal transformation is also motivated by revenge, but in a different sense. This sense of urgent revenge is instilled in him first by his father’s ghost, as he shows Hamlet how he died and who did the deed. Hamlet then ‘knows’ that it is only he who can restore morality to the court and his family. Then, as he sees the troops of Fortinbras marching to die simply for love of their country, he realizes he must act passionately and forcefully for his family. This is the motivation for his internal change – to restore morality and justice to his family. To set right what his uncle and mother had done. His external transformation is then needed to suit his internal transformation.

                 His transformations are quite convincing. His speech, manner and actions are very strange and erratic. It is met by confusion or despair by most. His speech becomes overly fluent and joking. In fact, everything seems to be an elaborate play on words. His manner and actions are staged, unexpected, and often violent in some direction. (Take for instance the scene with his mother, before murdering Polonius).

               His thoughts and feelings have changed drastically. They are dark, and tragic. He despairs having to make these decisions, but cannot find a way out of them and resigns himself to his task. He feels immense hatred for his uncle and mother. He can barely control his feelings for Ophelia (passionate love letters, walking into her room and staring at her, hateful speech in the hall). This part of the transformation is sad, and seems to be what Hamlet cannot control – what drives the rest of the transformation.

                Ophelia believes he has gone mad and despairs over the fact. His mother, uncle, and Polonius are unsure whether or not he is mad. They do not entirely believe it, but his changed manner is definitely noticed and pondered. In fact, Claudius decides to exile Hamlet, because he is getting too dangerous (and dangerously close to the truth). Horatio, knowing the whole story, knows that Hamlet is not mad. But he is a bit perturbed by this change in Hamlet also. The fact that even those close to him are perturbed by this external and internal transformation of Hamlet shows how very convincing his ‘act’ is. Even those who know him well are worried.

Hamlet’s personal reality has many holes in it in regards to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The first four levels of the pyramid have the following holes:

- sex (cannot see Ophelia any longer, soon after play starts)

- security of body (eventually, King wants him to be killed, and then Laertes does too)

- security of morality (brothers killing brothers, a sister in-law marrying her brother in-law)

- security of the family (his father’s brother killed him, his mother weds very soon after her beloved husband dies. His family is very unstable)

- loses the entire level of love/belonging, which is friendship, family, and sexual intimacy (his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are spying on him, his family has disintegrated as shown above, and his lover, Ophelia, has been forced to stop seeing him and goes insane)

- respect of others (the people he looked up to before – his mother, his uncle – have betrayed him. Everyone else is going along with it instead of calling out the betrayal)

Because these levels make up who Hamlet is, and each stable level creates a stable personality/reality, holes wreak havoc on him. What makes this worse is that prior to his father’s death, all his levels were filled and stable. As the betrayals and upheavals occur, certain parts of the pyramid are being removed. Effectively this is like pulling blocks out of a Jenga tower. The more that are pulled out, the less stable Hamlet’s reality and sense of self is.

Thesis: Was Hamlet really in love with Ophelia? Can it be proven through his words, or his actions?

Reason: Yes – Ophelia’s proof. (words)

Example: The love letter written by him. II. ii. lines 109-124 
” Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.”

Example: Conversation with father of Hamlet’s sayings/doings.   I. iii. 99-100, 110-111, 113-114

Reason: Yes – Hamlet’s proof. (words and actions)

Example: Jumping into her grave and going partially insane. V. i. 271-273   V. i. 276-286

Example: Wandering into her room one night and clutching her after not being able to see her for a long time.  II. i. 75-100

Reason: No – certain behaviors/actions show that he doesn’t, even if he/she says that he does.

Example: Would not have bedded her if he loved her – would have married her, likely.

Example: Hateful speech in hall with her. Even though it was provoked, to have such a heated, hateful speech must have some kernel of truth.    III. i. 117-119, 121-130, 136-142

The Family of Old Hamlet

Crisis: Betrayal. Old Hamlet’s brother murders him, then weds his new-widowed wife. Prince Hamlet discovers this and is horrified at his mother and uncle’s incestuous betrayal. Prince Hamlet then wants to show Claudius to the world for what he is, as well as murder him.

Coping method: Prince Hamlet copes by plotting revenge, and then exacting it. He concocts an intricate plan, plays at being crazy, and succeeds in avenging his father. Claudius exiles Hamlet.

The Family of Polonius

Crises: Aiding in betrayal of Old Hamlet. Ophelia is in love with Hamlet and goes mad. Prince Hamlet kills Polonius, which leads to Laertes vowing revenge.

Coping method: Ophelia cannot cope with the drama surrounding here – she goes insane and dies in mysterious circumstances. Laertes copes by also plotting revenge against Hamlet himself.

The Family of Old Fortinbras

Crisis: Old Hamlet and Fortinbras fought for Denmark many years before the time of the play. Old Hamlet slays Fortinbras, and thus Prince Fortinbras cannot lay claim to Denmark. He is not pleased by this.

Coping method: Prince Fortinbras plans to attack Norway. His uncle discourages him, so he attacks a neighboring country instead. On his way back, he does attack Norway, and takes it over.

            The stereotypical roles of a nuclear family are fulfilled or disintegrated in the play Hamlet. The family of Old Hamlet strays the furthest from these roles. Before the death, it seems likely that they were very stereotypical- the father as the leader, the mother devoted to him, the son off to college. Later, the role of the stereotypical father is switched from Old Hamlet to Claudius. Hamlet does not approve of this, so he continuously disobeys his new father and loathes his mother. They have the makings of a nuclear family – mother, father, and child. But, their actions do not make a rosy picture of the nuclear family.

            The family of Polonius fulfills these roles very well. Polonius is wise, and offers up precious wisdom to his children, who listen and obey their father carefully. The two children, Laertes and Ophelia are close and loving. They are not stereotypical in the way that their mother is never mentioned. However, they do make the most of what they have.

            The family of Fortinbras is the furthest from the nuclear family. Both his parents are absent. Strangely, he is also the most ‘normal’ of the play.

Thesis: The greatest Hell to humanity is the complete absence of reason and meaning. (meaninglessness and nothingness). OR, The greatest Hell imaginable is a world absent of meaningful (and reasonable?) input.

Progression, more formally typed: (I might switch the psycho. and philo. sections)

Examples from book
- Actual representation of Hell
- How certain characters interpret it (Carys VS Whitehead VS Marty)

Philosophical Outlook and how it relates in book
- Being VS Nothingness
- Meaning VS Meaninglessness (Nihilism)
included above: Dread.

Scientific/psychological/historical? backup, how it relates to book
- Solitary confinement
- No sound in room experiment
- Voids considered heretical in middle ages

Ramble-y bits start here:

(- When Marty is in Hell
         – How Carys goes into Hell herself… why she likes it. Sartrean freedom?
- Contrast with images of Warsaw etc.. ? 

- PHILOSOPHICAL OUTLOOK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_(existential)

Theory of Nihilism? Meaning VS Meaninglessness (go into different theories of meaning. Ultimate meaning especially http://www.existential-therapy.com/Special_Topics/Meaning.htm)

Being and Nothingness – Sartre. Read more.

http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/nothingness/

CONSIDER DREAD. “Carefully contemplating Nothing in itself, we begin to notice the importance and vitality of our own moods. Above all else, Nothing is what produces in us a feeling of dread {Ger. Angst}. This deep feeling of dread, Heidegger held, is the most fundamental human clue to the nature and reality of Nothing. ” http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/7b.htm#nothing/)

Huge pile of examples here, quotes I’m considering from book:

“No need to go, he thought; nothing to lose if I stay here and the grey comes again.” (387)

“He had fallen to his knees; what was left of his self-presrevation was a tattered and hopeless thought, grey on grey. Even the voice had stopped now. It was bored with the banter. Besides, it had taught its lesson well. Nothing is essential, it had said, and shown him the why and how; or rather dug up that part of him that had known all along. Now he would would just wait for the progenitor of this elegant syllogism to come and despatch him. He lay down, not certain if he was alive or dead, if the man who would presently come would kill him or resurrect him: only certain that to lie down was easiest, in this, the emptiest of all worlds.” (383)

“Arms spread before him like a blind man on a cliff-edge, he reeled, looking for some point of security. his wasn’t the adventure he’d thought it would be; it was nothing. Nothing is essential. Once stepped into, this boundlessness nowhere had neither distance nor depth, north nor south. And everything outside it – the stairs, the landing, the stairs below that, the hallway, Carys – all of it was like a fabrication. A dream of palpability, not a true place. There was no true place but here. All he’d lived and experienced, all he’d taken joy in, taken pain in, it was insubstantial. Passion was dust. Optimism, self-deception. He doubted now even the momory of senses: the textures, the temperatures. Colour, form, pattern. All diversions – games the mind had invented to disguise this unbearable zero. And why not? Looking too long into the abyss would madden a man.” (381)

—> Look into that experiment with rooms with absolutely no noise, how that affected the person.

—> Look into effects of complete solitude on inmates and such. Interesting that Marty was in jail, yet he was still terrified of the void.

“Hell is the place of those who have denied;
They find there what they planted and what dug,
A Lake of Spaces, and a Wood of Nothing,
And wander there and drift, and never cease
Wailing for substance.”
-W.B. Yeats, The Hour Glass

- How Warsaw in the beginning would usually be considered a Hell, but to Whitehead it is not, because there is so much input, even if it is really terrible. (contrast to actual Hell)

“I can bear the night itself. It’s not pleasant, but it’s not unambiguous. It’s twilight I can’t deal wtih. That’s when the bad sweats come over me. When the light’s going and nothing’s quite real anymore, quite solid. Just forms. Things that once had shapes…
It had been winter of such evenings: colourless drizzles that eroded distance and killed sound; weeks on end of uncertain light, when troubled dawn became troubled dusk with no day intervening.” (57)

“She found it difficult to recall her nightmares of nullity; his presence cancelled memory.” (237) Before talks about white tree and dead people illusion. Go into that, the importance of WHITE.

“There is no Hell, the old man thought, putting the boudoir and its charred Casanove out of his mind. Or else Hell is a room and a bed and appetite everlasting, and I’ve been there and seen its rapture and, if the worst comes to the worst, I will endure it.” (336)

“She wasn’t prone to believing that the world was all in the mind. That’s why she’d gone to H: the world was too real. Now here was this vapour in her ears, telling her she was nothing, everything was nothing; nameless muck.” (384)

[Lovely concluding paragraph will be found here.]

I’m posting this here so I can access it easier. And if anyone thinks a tangent seems interesting and I should expand, please tell me

- not technically a vacuum because they are in it

- vacuum strips them of everything but fear?

- why?

- strips everything but the core of what humans are?

In medieval Europe </wiki/Middle_Ages>, the Catholic Church held the idea of a vacuum to be immoral or even heretical. The absence of anything implied the absence of God </wiki/God>, and harkened back to the void prior to the creation story in the book of Genesis </wiki/Genesis>.”
- characters seem to be able to think in the void, so do their thoughts fill the void? No… is the void conscious? Does that make it not a void? Yes… then why do they only experience immense fear? Could happiness not fill the void? Because unknown?
- If the void is conscious/active enough to push out human happiness… Hell = oppression of every sense?

Void is bad because no God. Does that leave only the devil? Is the book not completely devoid of God/morality?

Alternatively…

- Make up a mythology using bits and pieces of religion. You don’t know why exactly you’re afraid, but you are because it seems like you learnt that this is bad and you shouldn’t do it a long time ago.
- use of symbolism to build terror.
- selling of soul idea to Devil-character plotline
- Is Mamoulian the Devil?
-

I surrender. Retreat! Retreat!

Epic of Gilgamesh is… not going to happen. I think I could do it, but I know that I’d be half insane by the end of it, and completely hating it. I wouldn’t do it justice, and I actually want to sit and think about this for awhile. Not just throw myself at it for a pat on the head for trying and an okay mark. :P

So, I’m reading it (I finished the Damnation Game a month or two ago). I’m thinking about it too. I’ll post my thoughts and stuff on here, but I’m not trying to linearize (totally a word) all my jumbly thoughts. I’d just like a good think, no strings attached.

All done my ramble of concession.