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.