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Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Fall Frenzy

  As I write this snow is falling outside of my window.  I can't wait to go outside in the morning and see how wonderful my campus is going to look.  I wanted to share some photos that my friend and I took one afternoon in the early fall.  Looking back on the fall is always one of my favorite things because I can always remember how the air starts to change and the leaves fall from all the trees.  These were taken by the stream on our campus.











    I really enjoyed taking these photos and I think that some of them turned out quite well.
What are some of your favorite memories from the fall?

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Hamlet

    I apologize for the boring topic today.  But I have some fun things planned for the near future so don't you worry.
   It's the school year again which means I tell you about the books I've been reading in class.  One of the first books we've read this year is Hamlet. Yes, the great play.  Personally I have some problems with the book, none of which have to do with the fact that it's written in old English.  If you take a look at the text you'll learn that Hamlet is 30 years old. For that time period he's middled aged and he's still in school, unmarried, and throwing hissy fits.  Hamlet should have a prefrontal cortex that is fully developed.  This would mean that he is capable of making decisions.  Yet throughout the entire play that is exactly what he struggles with.  If Hamlet is 30 then, in conventional thinking of the time he should be married, and yet he won't make a commitment to Ophelia.  His actions just don't make sense considering how he should be much more mature then he actually is. I simply don't think that there is any sense behind what happens in the text.
    Hamlet can't even b described as a tragic hero.  He is instead an anti-hero.  Someone who tires to be heroic but ultimately fails due to their fatal flaw, however, unlike a tragic hero who learns of their fatal flaw, an anti-hero never does.  This is how Hamlet is, he simply doesn't learn from his own mistakes about himself.  Instead of learning he simply fails and wonders why everything is happening to him.  It is the realization of ones flaws that truly makes someone a tragic hero.
   Because of these two things Hamlet lacks the climax that readers are used to seeing, this work leaves the reader hanging with the sense that something else should have happened in the story to complete it. This was what really turned me off of Hamlet, there is no resolution, but rather unfulfilled deaths.  This book was also awful to write an essay on, however I do think it was difficult because of the views that I have.  I wanted to write a review of how odd some of the details were but I couldn't.  I also think that my views may have helped with the analyzation that I did with the text.  But then again it may not have.
  Have any of you read Hamlet? What are your opinions on it?