Lavender's AP Lit Class Blog

Lavender's AP Lit Class Blog

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

What to write about?

I like the character of Fortinbras, he just goes out and kind of does his thing. He is set on replenishing his family's reputation, and will stop at absolutely nothing to achieve his goal. I think I want to talk about the two parallels between Fortinbras and Hamlet. Hamlet thinks about everything before he does it, and he is actually quite the whiner. His whole to be or not to be speech, however one of the most famous speeches, really shows how big of a baby he really is. Fortinbras would have never gone through such struggles. He would have just killed Claudius right then and there. The one thing that is cool about Hamlet is how he decided that he would no longer think about everything and would just go out and kill a bunch of people, so he did. He is a man of his word. SO with that part right there is the only thing that I am hung up on. But I'm thinking about bringing Learties into the mix also, because him Fortinbras, and Hamlet are practically the same person. I think that I'm just going to right about those three and how they are essentially the same person just on different planes, If that makes any sense.

1 comment:

  1. Roger,

    A GOOD post (certainly better than most). i like the idea of examining parallels between these three main characters, each of whom finds himself in the situation of wishing to avenge a dead father. You could take this in a number of directions (for example, a 'compare and contrast' structure could be put in service of the larger argument as to whether or not Shakespeare wants his audience to favor action over thought). Keep in mind, though, that you need to GROUND your analysis in the actual language of the play. The easiest way to start out would be to go back and identify all the passages that speak directly to Fortinbras (there aren't many, and the most important one may be Hamlet's soliloquy as her reviews the passage of Fortinbras' army). Again, this is a good start. I'd love to see you kick butt on this essay!

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