Last Post

I must say that it has been a long year that has gone by very quickly. I am not sure if that actually makes any sense or not, but the ambiguity of the statement also represents the ambiguity of my feelings regarding the end of high school and the beginning of college. I am happy, ecstatic even, that high school is finally over and all of the tests and essays that helped me in the long run but were annoying at the time I took them will never be seen again. I am also excited to be able to have a new start in the intimidating entity we all call college where I will be able to meet new people and enjoy a new found freedom that will likely define my future. Yet, despite this eagerness and thrill I feel, I am also sad to certain extent to leave high school where I have made so many great people and have created unforgettable memories. This said, I guess it is time to get on with the last blog entry I will likely ever make and it involves an ambiguity that is prevalent in my life at this point in time.
The final exam overall was a lot easier than any real test we have taken in class, at least in terms of the multiple choice section. Usually in the multiple choice passages we take in class, I know the answer to about half and guess on the other half hoping to get them right. On the AP exam however, there were a lot more clear-cut answers that allowed for the elimination of many answers instead of seeing four possible answers to a question. I would normally think about skipping five or ten questions and this is what I expected to do coming in to the exam room, but after reading the questions and the answers, I actually answered all of the multiple choice questions. This being said, although I felt I did decent on the multiple choice, the essays are the things that have me a bit worried. I feel that I did okay on the poetry essay and talked about literary devices that actually made sense in the scope of the poem. The same goes with the prose passage which was easier to understand than the one on the practice test, but my answer may not have been very clear. The essay that does have me miffed is the open question essay because I kind of feel like it was hit or miss. The question was about exile and enrichment and the novel I used was Frankenstein. I talked about the isolation the monster had because it had no one to associate with but the enrichment aspect of exile may have been a reach. I said that the monster was enriched with the knowledge it gained about mankind and cruelty of society. I am not sure if this even counts as enrichment, so is thus the one thing that has me worried about the exam. Other than this, I felt well-prepared for the AP Literature Exam.

Penultimate Blog

The penultimate blog of the year has finally arrived and along with it, the end of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I must say, the end of the play was quite interesting to say the least, especially the views on death that were revealed by both Ros and Guil as well as the various Tragedians. I guess it really does revisit the theme of life being like a play where each one of us gets a chance to walk across the stage and perform, whether it be improvisational or set in stone. Also the tone of the entire third act of the play kind of makes Ros and Guil sympathetic characters to a certain extent. From the very beginning of the play, we know that the final fate of the two main characters will be death because it is mentioned in the title. Despite knowing this however, I really didn’t feel any sympathy at all for the two because of the joking behavior and complete obliviousness the two showed. This only continued in the second act when they have no idea what to do with their lives unless someone tells them what to do. This is plainly evident through the fact that Claudius told the two to capture Hamlet after he killed Polonius and the two blindly do it without thinking of their friends feelings. In the third act however, things take a turn towards the more serious and more philosophical. Instead of plotting capture or some other action ordered by others, the two discuss death in what can be seen as humorous, but is likely much deeper than that. This is shown by Guildenstern’s claim that death is really nothing more than the fulfillment of an inexplicable and unavoidable fate. The fact that we all live a life that leads towards some death that is unavoidable is a concept that is recurring and is presented again near the end of the play. Our lives are like plays in which our acts have been mapped out and written in stone such that there is always someone watching and giving orders. As the end scene continues, more complicated and interesting views on death are given by both the Tragedians and the two main characters. The Player states that death is common and that light vanishes with life. Guildenstern replies that real death is not theatrical but is simply the absence of anything, the state of not existing. It is as if when a person dies, he or she just disappears in time, which is a very interesting concept in the scope of the novel because Tom Stoppard never really shows us when and how Ros and Guil die. Stoppard is holding something from us because from the very beginning, we expect Ros and Guil to die because of the title of the novel. Then when it finally comes time for their deaths, we don’t witness it and instead learn of the deaths of Claudius, Hamlet, Laertes, and Gertrude. I know this response is rather convoluted and doesn’t really have a centralized theme, but it does sufficiently express my confusion at the events that occurred at the end of the novel. Let us just hope an in class discussion can shed some light on the situation.

Ros and Guil and Macbeth

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." — Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 19-28)
It seems that throughout the reading of the absurdist play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, there has been mention of life being a play in which we as humans march across the stage portraying our character to the world. Along with this reading comes the fact that we are all but ordered to do every action we make in life or are at least influenced to do it just as actors are told to do things in a play. I think it is this fact that is highlighted above all else in the play, at least to the place we have read so far. It seems that Ros and Guil need another character, another personality, on stage to have any type of identity for themselves. They are simply lost without others and rely on others for any individuality of their own. This is ironic because of the fact that they need others for individuality, which essentially defeats the purpose of the thing, and the identity they create for themselves is ambiguous within itself. This is no more apparent than in the scene where the two are talking to a Player about Greek tragedies and whether or not one needs an audience to have a purpose. Once the player leaves, Ros and Guil have no idea what to do with themselves. They yell “Next” off stage expecting somebody to come and once again give them their identities. But, despite getting identities from others, Ros and Guil are unable to differentiate between each other almost as if they are two parts to one whole.
You may be wondering why I included the soliloquy from Macbeth in this blog, because I have made no mention of it thus far in the writing. You can either think of it as me leaving the reader in suspense or as me not being able to remember why I typed the soliloquy. One thing we have repeatedly discussed in class though is the connection between the soliloquy and the way Ro and Guil go through their respective lives. Macbeth, in uttering the speech, is rather existentialist in stating that life is “a tale told by an idiot” that signifies “nothing.” It is also in this manner that Ros and Guil go through their lives. They see no meaning in what they are doing and rather go through life as directed by others. Once the direction they have been given is done, they are then “heard no more.” I have just read through what I have written in this blog, and everything is rather convoluted and confusing. I didn’t mean for it to be this way as I am having trouble voicing my opinions on the very confusing way, but when you think about it, the confusing manner of my writing kind of fits with the play as most things seem to happen for no reason. All this said, the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is one of the most interesting plays I have ever read, from the nonsensical happenings to the extremely crude humor that is present, it is a truly entertaining experience.

"What Did I Do To Be So Black and Blue"

With the seminars that are currently happening in AP Lit. there seems to be one topic that has not been discussed and that has been the many songs present in the novel. Ralph Ellison is known as a man with a connection to the African American culture and jazz music is a huge part of this culture. One of the songs I noticed in the prologue, a section that will be discussed in class tomorrow, is the song “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue.” This song was originally written by Thomas Waller and was later sung by the great Louis Armstrong. The reference to the song, as aforementioned, occurs in the introduction of the novel and the narrator discusses how he wishes to feel the vibrations of the recording of “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue.” Because Ellison spent a lot of time writing the novel, I figured that the song must have some significance in the scope of the novel and was not placed accidentally. For this reason, I decided to research the song, a song I likely should have researched for my Invisible Man Research project.
“(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” was originally written by Thomas “Fats” Waller for the Broadway musical called Hot Chocolates. It was one of the first musicals to be performed by only African Americans and was written to show the sadness of a dark-skinned woman who had lost her man to a lighter-skinned girl. In 1955, Louis Armstrong took the song and transformed it into a nationally recognized song representing the powerful protest against racial discrimination. The song also has a historical significance in its message against racial discrimination and expresses the futility that some African Americans felt during the time period. The impassioned performance of Armstrong came eleven months after the U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which declared segregation of schools to be unconstitutional. Before and after this controversial decision, there were a series of murders of African Americans in the Deep South in states of Mississippi and Alabama. In the same year, 1955, Rosa Parks sparked the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat thus starting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. A few years later, Louis Armstrong spoke out harshly against President Eisenhower when the president was reluctant to act when African American teenagers were banned from a high school in Arkansas for no other reason than their skin color. With the start of the civil rights movement and the much political and social turmoil present at the time of the release of the song, Louis Armstrong essentially recorded an ultimate articulation of the concerns of the African American population. The song became a symbol and anthem of African American complaint against the invisibility that the speaker in the novel justifiably claims is present.

Invisible Man = Frederick Douglass

Because we are on the topic of the novel Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, I figured I would discuss one of the many figures that the narrator is compared to in the novel. The list of people that the narrator, or the invisible man as some people like to call him, include Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey, but the person I would like to focus on is Frederick Douglass. Although Brother Jack states that he wishes to mold the narrator into a newer and better form of Booker T. Washington, and there is mention of him being like Washington in the Battle Royal, the one historical figure that I see most in the narrator is Douglass. Since I did not really do research on Frederick Douglass, I thought I would do a little digging on his history to see if there were more connections between the two people.
Frederick Douglass was born in a slave cabin and eventually became a slave. Although it was unlawful for slaves to learn to read and write, Douglass did by giving away food in exchange for lessons. By the time he escaped slavery, he became a staunch abolitionist and experienced a meteoric rise to fame and prominence. He eventually became a trusted advisor to Abraham Lincoln and participated in the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention. The one point that I saw, which provided a distinct similarity was the fact that both the narrator and Douglass both experienced meteoric rises to prominence. The narrator rose to prominence in the Brotherhood in a relatively short period of time through his brilliant oratory skills similar to the way Douglass became a leading figure in the abolitionist movement because of his oratory skills. Another point of similarity is that Douglass lived his life by following three keys: take advantage of opportunities, believe in yourself, and use the power of the spoken language. These three things embodied Douglass as a person and I feel that they also are key characteristics of the narrator. The narrator uses his belief in himself to take advantage of the Brotherhood situation. By using his ability to move the audience emotionally through his pathos-driven speaking, he is able to translate his belief in himself to others believing in him. This also brings along the added benefit of making money and increasing his standing in society. Eventually his pathos-driven speaking adds the element of rationality and science to cause him to be the perfect fit to be the Brotherhood’s spokesperson. By knowing his abilities and his limits and by believing in himself, the narrator went from being nearly homeless looking for a job to being rather well-to-do. This is again exactly like Douglass as he used his ability to be eloquent to get close to the many prominent political figures of his day and eventually rise to unmatched prominence in the African American community. These are of course only come of the connections that exist between Douglass and the narrator as I only did some surface research to come up with the similarities. Deeper research would likely yield more common points as I do firmly believe that the narrator is more like Frederick Douglass than any other African American historical figure in the novel.

The Stranger and The Dog

This week marked the first week of our Lit Circle novels and I must say, I was quite interested in the book I chose. The Stranger actually held my interest throughout the sixty pages we had to read for this session and it went by relatively fast. One of the most surprising things about the actual novel was the relative simplicity involved with the writing, at least stylistically. Every sentence was very short and did not really have any real substance or descriptive factor. I later learned that this was to show the characteristic monotony of the main character, Meursault, but the fact that Camus, the author of the novel, chose to write like that is still surprising. This leads directly into another thing that was really interesting about the novel and that was the way that Meursault reacts to situations. He has absolutely no emotions. This was discussed in more depth in our actual literature circle discussions, but Meursault is an apathetic individual, and seems almost incapable of feelings. When his mother dies, he shrugs it off as if he has just witnessed the death of an ant. He does not cry or weep and eventually goes on to resume his daily activities as if nothing has happened. When his girlfriend Marie states that she loves him, he states that love does not mean anything and when she wants to marry him, he states that marriage too means nothing. Arguably the most important phenomena in life, that being love, and the biggest commitment one can make, that being marriage, are again shrugged off by Meursault. We only really see him reveal any emotion when he kills and Arab at the end of the first section, something that does not really show any promise for his future. His emotions come out when he kills, sounds rather foreboding, which coincides with the rather strange title of the novel, one that invokes an aura of mystery.
Another one of the characters that had me very confused was the presence of Salomano and his dog in the novel. Salomano is presented as the neighbor of Meursault and is an old man whose only companion is his dog. The two resemble each other in appearance as both have hunched necks and scabs all over their bodies, yet the man hates the dog and the dog is deathly afraid of the man. Originally, I wondered why in the world the man would be included in the novel, but it was clarified when the scene where the man lost his dog took place. The old man was actually weeping when the dog slipped its collar and ran away despite showing hate towards it. Salomano goes on to tell a story about how he bought the dog when his wife died to be his companion. The dog likely filled the void left behind by his wife’s death and now that the dog is gone, the void has reopened provoking tears. The situation with the old man and the dog also reveals one of the aspects of Camus’s philosophy, one that is present throughout the novel. The story goes along with the saying that you don’t appreciate things until they are gone. It also highlights the pettiness of man and the absurdity in the events that occur in one’s life.

The Invisible Man is Running

I must say that I am quite thankful that we are finally done reading the Invisible Man, a book, despite whatever my test grade will indicate, that I did finish late Sunday night. Despite the pain in the … that the novel was, at least in trying to finish all of the never ending assignments that remain to go on, I did actually enjoy the novel as surprising as that may seem. In my research of Ralph Ellison, I found that he explored race relations in the times after the Civil War in a way different than those before him in that he depicted the African American culture as vibrant and full rather than diminished and nearly dead. This different way of writing about race relations and the invisibility of African Americans was very interesting and caught my interest throughout the novel.
When looking back over the novel in a futile attempt to study for the test, I noticed many things that connected the beginning of the novel to the end of the novel that I had not initially picked up on. One of these things was the “running” theme and diction used. In the moments after the Battle Royal took place as the narrator watched the naked lady do her mesmerizing dance and was forced to fight, the narrator was able to give a speech. This speech contained a certain eloquence that would be reciprocated during his times in the Brotherhood but the white men listening did not truly appreciate it. The school superintendent merely gave the narrator the scholarship and an official looking document and sent him on his way after the white men had been entertained by the black men. The night he received the document, the narrator had a dream where he read the letter and it said “Keep This [expletive for African American]-Boy Running” (Ellison 33). After explaining the dream, he stated that he did not get the meaning at the time, but it is apparent that he eventually did glean the meaning. The funny thing about the letter and the dream is that it came true. Usually when one says that his dreams came true, it is a god thing but in this case, it was the opposite as the narrator was forced to run through various locations. He ran from his home to college and while at college ran around following instructions. He was eventually kicked out for running an errand incorrectly and was ran out of the college and forced to go to New York. When in New York, he ran around the city giving his “letter” of recommendation from Dr. Bledsoe to the employers only to never get a call-back. After this, he went to the paint factory and eventually gave his speech about dispossession after which he again ran away from Brother Jack. This running continued as he followed other people’s wishes and did what they expected of him, something that he eventually realizes and rebels against. In the very end of the novel, on page 534, he states that “I ran through the night, ran within myself. Ran.” In stating that he is running within himself, he is essentially stating that he is running away from himself and his personal identity. His identity has been dictated by other for so long and now that he has decided to harness it as his own, he has been rendered invisible as people can no longer see him in the way that they want, but now must realize that he is finally his own man. This at least was my interpretation of the word running and the invisibility presented in the novel as the two go hand in hand.

Similar Sonnet

I must say that I have had quite an interesting week. I am both glad and sad to say that I had a two and a half day week because I was sick on Monday and Tuesday, glad because I got to miss school, but sad because I missed so much in Ms. Clinch’s wonderful class. One such thing was the introduction to the sonnets we have recently discussed in class. I didn’t really have a background going into the seminar, but just sitting and listening was enlightening as I was able to learn that sonnets are about unrequited love and cruel/fair women. I also learned that a sonnet always has a shift or a turning point that is somewhere within the 14 lines of the poem. The one thing that really caught my eye in terms of the sonnets we discussed in class was the similarities that existed between them, the sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sonnet 67 by Edmund Spenser in particular.
Aside from the extended metaphors present in both sonnets regarding a man being on a hunt to obtain a woman, there were many other similarities that existed within the metaphor that really struck me. The first was the fact that both sonnets referred to the woman as a deer or doe. I mean sure, deer are beautiful creatures, but the fact that they are being hunted as prey is rather interesting. The women are clearly seen as objects, as I am sure many were in the time period the sonnets were written, and the capture of a woman’s interest seems to be almost like a game for the men. Another similarity that caught my eye is that although the chase is somewhat of a game in capturing one’s prey, it also seems that the men are both exhausted from their journey. The men see it as a game, but a necessary game, that has led them along a long and wearied path leading to a tired mind and body. Another point of comparison is that the men in both poems wish to either tame the deer or to tie it up in some way, shape, or manner. This again points to the view that women are objects meant to be tamed and owned, almost like animals. But, it also seemed like the women had a lot of power in the situation, especially in the sonnet by Spenser. The woman in both almost led the men on the chase because of their cruelly fair looks and in the end either tricked them into “taming” them or walked away. Although the outcomes of the poem, one being that the man “got”, for we don’t know if the woman planned on being with the man all along or not, the woman and the other being that woman was already “owned”, for we do not know if she really is owned or merely acts like it, by another man, there are many similarities present as aforementioned. These similarities, above all else, seem to characterize sonnets as many have similar aspects, but almost always have some type of deeper meaning that is extremely confusing.

Hamlet is a Coward???

When looking deeply into the soliloquy present in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, I noticed many things that I had previously skimmed over. I understood the events better and got a firmer grasp on some of the hidden elements of the play. Unfortunately this came too late as I wasn’t able to use it on the impossible quote test we just took, but there isn’t much I can do about it now. Recognizing an element of Hamlet’s persona on the other hand can never come too late. One element that really struck me, and was an element that I briefly broached in my essay, but did not really talk about in depth was the presence of Hamlet’s cowardice, or at least what I saw as cowardice. I may be completely off here, but hey, you got to take some risks in life.
Throughout the entire play, Hamlet constantly has thoughts about getting revenge on Claudius for killing his father. Hamlet sees the ghost in Act I and the ghost tells him that Claudius purposefully killed him to get the throne and start an incestuous relationship with King Hamlet’s ex-wife Gertrude. The thing about these thoughts is that they are just that, thoughts for he does nothing to ever act upon the thoughts. Every now and then, he undergoes periods of renewed conviction when he sees something in others that he admires, but after reinforcing his convictions, he goes back to doing nothing about them. A prime example of this is in his soliloquy in Act II when he talks about him being a rogue and a peasant slave. He states that he has ample motive to exact revenge, but does nothing calling himself a coward. He compares himself to a player that can act sad and speak words of grief when a death occurs, while he can do nothing but act sad. This again occurs in his soliloquy in Act IV when he admires the Norwegians for marching to their deaths for nothing more than honor and a patch of land not even big enough to bury all of their bodies. Here again, he complains about himself being a coward and states that he will change because he has a great argument to act as his father was killed and his mother stained. In both instances, Hamlet states that he will change and act, and in Act III, he does put on the play as promised, but once confirming Claudius’s role in his father’s murder he again does nothing. In Act IV, he makes a key distinction that essentially personifies Hamlet throughout the play. He states that his “thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth” (4.4.66). The key word here is again “thought” as he wishes for his thoughts to be bloody while he does nothing to act upon his thoughts. Even when he does actually do something, it is a disastrous occasion as most of the royal family dies leaving only Horatio alive. Hamlet always requires an outside source to renew convictions that never actually come into fruition. He is afraid of the outcomes of his actions as he states in the soliloquy in Act IV, and this fear and cowardice causes him to only renew his thoughts and never act upon them.

Invisible Oppression

The title The Invisible Man always causes thoughts of some science fiction thriller to rush through my head because the concept of invisibility is somewhat unknown to man. Sure, things can be camouflaged to appear invisible and they can hide from appearance by using things as cover, but true invisibility, and here I am talking about a condition when any seeing creature can look at you an see through you, has never been accomplished. Also, man is always afraid and extremely interested in the unknown, so I figured Ralph Ellison would take some weird approach on explaining invisibility through some obscure scientific concepts to satisfy his own interests. I was actually quite excited to read about something that could probably really spark my interest. The only problem was that I was completely wrong in my assumptions of the possible subject matter.
After reading through the first couple of pages in the novel, I realized that Ellison is going to explore a more figurative invisibility, but one that is just as interesting a topic, the inability of people to see the state of race relations. This topic is really only introduced a good ways into the novel when a fight breaks out between the people at the Golden Day saloon as one of the black veterans comments about a white man named Norton being blind to race relations. Despite the real discussion taking place in the meat of the novel, the introduction really struck me because of the fact that it is true, not the part about a man stealing electricity to light his home under a building but the part about how many are blind to the problems around them. In the case of civil rights, it took a man like Martin Luther King to come out and shed light upon an issue that many had chosen to turn a blind eye. In the case of the independence of many countries, such as India, it took a man like Gandhi to band the people together to strive for a goal that people had previously thought impossible or invisible. In the case of women’s rights, it took people like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to band women under one banner to get the privileges they deserved. In all of these cases, the problems were apparent but remained invisible to the public until there was light shed upon the issue, light that could be taken as synonymous to the large amount of light present in the mans home. It is as if he is trying to fight his invisibility with an abundance of light so he becomes relevant again. This same light is shed upon Norton when he comes into the Golden Day saloon and witnesses the fight and hears the “doctor” talk to him about race relations. I will admit that I am a bit behind on my reading, but I can only guess how the rest of the novel will go as we learn more about the narrator’s invisibility and how he came to see himself in that way.

Raising the Bar

As we continue to read what I see now to be an amazing play by Shakespeare, the plot constantly thickens and becomes more interesting. I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical at first, at least in terms of the play being as good as it is thought to be. Before we read the play in class, some motifs and themes were discussed such as the sense of duty many of the characters displayed and the presence of many questions, but the sheer genius and numerous meanings the one could take from the play were also talked about a great deal. This to me kind of set the bar rather high, in terms of the confusion I was expecting to feel and the multiple meaning I was expecting to find, for Hamlet, a play that is widely regarded as one of the greatest tragedies of all time and an extremely famous play recognizable to almost all of the educated population. Although the bar was set rather high, I had a hard time believing that the bar could ever be met for how could one play be so full of meaning and wordplay to warrant the extensive study that had been done and the extensive study that we were going to do on it. When Ms. Clinch said that we could easily spend more than three months unraveling the mysteries of the play, my skepticism only increased. True, Shakespeare is brilliant, but I had read his plays before and not been completely lost.
Then…. we started reading the play, and I was not disappointed, although I not sure if that is a good thing or not at this point in time. The meaning is in abundance as there are multiple ways you can read the novel and the confusion is at an all time high as if I attempt to read any of the play by myself, I find myself completely lost. In terms of meaning, we have discussed four or five scenes that can be interpreted in multiple ways. That it already twenty-five different reading that can be done on the play and that is not even scratching the surface. An example of this is with the scene when he is with Ophelia. Hamlet can be seen as angry the whole time, or angry after a little bit; he can be seen as knowing that Polonius and Claudius are listening at the beginning of his talk, the middle of his talk, or never during his talks. On top of this, the wordplay is rather unbelievable as one word can have two or three meaning each offering a different perspective of the scene.
So far in class, we have read through Act IV, and it has definitely gotten interesting as I can only anticipate how Hamlet will go about ruining Claudius after missing his chance to kill the man after hearing his confession. I also wonder how Gertrude and Ophelia will end up when all is said and done. I guess all I can hope is that the ending matches the interest and confusion of what I have read so far. I am pretty certain that I will not be disappointed.
Now, it is time to get off of my friends laptop and watch the SUPERBOWL.

Pettiness

As much as I loath to admit, missing school actually hurts, at least when you are looking at it from the perspective of me being completely lost when reading Hamlet. I guess I could attempt to act like missing school during the second semester of senior year doesn’t really matter, but what I am trying to get across is that it kind of does, at least in AP Lit. I have tried to read a bit more of Hamlet, and haven’t really understood too much. But, from what we have read in class, one character has struck me in a not so good way. That character is not Hamlet, although his ability and mastery of the English language have led to some quite interesting wordplays, for he has left a good impression on me; the character is Polonius, who seems to be the most petty character I have ever seen in any novel or play.
The first time we see Polonius in the play, he doesn’t seem all that bad besides the fact that he is Claudius’s right hand man. After all, anyone who associates himself with evil, as the play has depicted Claudius to be, must have some not-so-good presence in him. However, what I assumed he lacked in character, at least he made up in loyalty to the present King. Then, he went along and gave his speech to Laertes and my opinion of him began to fall. He essentially told his son to uphold the family name and to not make an embarrassment of himself. Even in attempting to give Laertes sound advice, he came off as being self-centered as his line “to thine own self stay true” can be interpreted as stay true to the family name and don’t embarrass yourself. He even ends up sending a man, Reynaldo, to spy on his own son to make sure he doesn’t do anything embarrassing. Of course, Polonius manages to make himself look worse than normal when giving Reynaldo orders to spy on his son by telling Reynaldo what lines to use when talking Laertes as if Reynaldo is some incompetent peasant. All of this served to show that Polonius is completely obsessed with his image and with being in control of any situation. His love to be in control is accentuated by his plans with Ophelia as he all but forces her to stop seeing Hamlet and then goes back and changes his mind when he has something to gain from the relationship between Ophelia and Hamlet. He originally wants to keep Ophelia pure so her image, there I go again using the word, clean, but when Claudius and Gertrude talk about Hamlet’s madness and awkward behavior, Polonius is willing to sacrifice his daughter for his own betterment, the ultimate sign of pettiness. With the characterization given to Polonius, as he is a man completely driven by his image, you could almost compare him to Torvald from A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen. Torvald was also obsessed with image as Nora herself brought up in one of the arguments between the two. Although the comparison may be a stretch, Torvald and Polonius had one very common trait, their ever-present pettiness.

Frankenstein

This past week we completed the dreaded and time consuming Books on File assignment in AP Lit. Although it did take a bit too much work, especially for a person in the second semester of senior year, it did bring back memories of a novel that I had begun to forget in a way that I did not want. The novel I did was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and was the best novel I have likely ever read in a class in high school. Normally the novels we read, at least in years past, have been of great literary value but extremely boring in terms of subject matter and the tone of the novels. Frankenstein provided a rare deviation from this trend as it was very interesting to read and actually held my interest, a feat few novels manage to do. For this reason, I did not wish to forget the novel as it is special to me in an extremely obscure way. Besides what’s not to love about a novel about a man creating life in the form of a monster that returns to haunt the creators very being until the creator dies. Ina cruel twist of irony, the creator and master becomes the slave as every action of the creator is dictated by what the monster wants or doesn’t want. Aside from the content matter and the story line of the novel, there were many aspects that have stuck with me, especially the theme of doubles in the novel. If not for the themes worksheet that Ms. Clinch gave us, I would never have thought of Victor and the monster being doubles, but once the idea was in my head, I began to notice the theme everywhere…well not really everywhere but in a lot of places. This all pretty much centered around the alternate title, The Modern Prometheus, and the effect of nature on the two main characters.
In a way, this is kind of reiterating the final exam essay, but that does not diminish how interesting it is. Prometheus was a titan who stole the secret of fire from the gods and was punished because of this. In creating life without the presence of a woman or god, Victor was essentially stealing the secret of life and was punished because of this. His punishment was basically the presence of the monster. By creating the monster, Victor was forced to endure constant suffering because of the appearance of the monster as well as the actions of the monster as it killed much of Victor’s family and friends. The monster also had a few connections to Prometheus, as it also endured suffering because of its abnormal appearance in relation to other men. Much fire was present in the story the monster told in the novel.
In terms of the natural aspect of the double present, whenever the two characters were happy, they were able to appreciate the beauty of nature. Whenever the two characters were distressed or depressed, the two were unable to see anything beautiful about the world around them. I could go into more depth, but I have already exceeded 500 words so I guess I will save that for another day.

The Invisible Man

This week marks the first real week back in school, and I have to say, it has gone relatively well. We haven’t really had any major tests, aside from the impossible AP Lit essay, or homework. One thing that I have started at home is reading the Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. To be honest, the novel is nothing like I expected it to be. When hearing the title Invisible Man, I thought about a science fiction novel about a man that somehow became biologically invisible and experienced many things in the world from a unique perspective. The man had maybe made himself irreversibly invisible and had somehow conveyed some sort of life lesson through the events that happened to him. This of course is nothing like the actual novel, which I suppose is good because it makes for a very interesting storyline. In the first few lines of the novel, Ellison details that the character is invisible from a figurative sense because he has been ignored due to the color of his skin. The invisibility basically comes not from the fact that people can not see him, but because they refuse to acknowledge him as well as the rest of the African Americans in the US. This brings about a very interesting discussion topic as it was clear that equal rights for all minorities was a big problem, but nothing was really done about it until Martin Luther King Jr. and many other leaders forced the world to realize the situation. It was almost as if the world, or at least the US, could not see the invisible problem despite being apparent to many. This invisibility, which translates into a lack of action by the majority of people, has been a problem for centuries and I can only guess that the novel will go on to discuss the invisibility in greater depth.
During the many liberation movements and civil rights movements that have occurred throughout history, there have been many similarities. One is that people realize that there is a problem, but not much is done about it until a leader appears and takes the situation in his or her own hands. This is exactly what happened with Gandhi in South Africa and in India as he let the people rise up against the oppressive British. It is also exactly what happened with MLK as he led the African Americans and other minorities to fight for their rights against the oppression faced in the US. In both cases, the problem was apparent, but remained invisible to the general public as nothing was done about the issues for a long time. Another example can be with the feminist and women’s rights movements as chauvinistic tendencies had been around forever, but it took the efforts of a few women, such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others at conventions such as the Seneca Falls Convention, to really get the ball rolling in passing suffrage amendments. I haven’t really read enough of the novel to understand the story line, but after looking through the first couple of pages, I realize why the name Invisible Man can mean more than its literal definition, but can also encompass the struggle of the oppressed.