Lavender's AP Lit Class Blog
Monday, March 19, 2012
action over thought
Through out the book, Hamlet thinks too much. This is not always a bad thing, it can help keep us out of trouble, for Hamlet it just gets in the way. We have always been taught to “think before we act” but there are many times in our lives that we must put thinking aside and take action otherwise stuff that needs to get done won’t get done. Ask an athlete if before they make a run or a play if they think about what they are about to do. Odds are they just do it, and they will agree that thinking gets in the way. If we could bring Hamlet back to life and ask him if he regretted not killing the King I bet he would. If Hamlet would think less and act quicker he could have saved many lives including his own. We see Hamlet in several predicaments and he often walks around thinking and talking to himself about what is going on. When he speaks with the ghost he has enough reason to go and kill the king, it would be a rash decision and he probably could not prove himself innocent before a court but that still leaves this whole thing better off than it is in the end. "it is better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission", we see this mentality pay off when Fortinbras gets everything he wanted without question or difficulty.
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this is good dude! ya definitely argue that thinking too much in this book got a lot of people killed. maybe that's what Shakespeare was trying to say. think like an "athlete" and dont hesitate to do something. just do it because maybe you wont gt a second chance to that thing again. that's what happened to hamlet- he blew off his perfect opportunity to kill Claudius and he never got another that was that perfect again.
ReplyDeleteYour definitely going down the right path, so keep it up.
That's pretty good. But i don't know if I think that he thinks to much. You cant clearly make that assumption on this play because you haven't seen what he was like before his father was murdered. But that is just my opinion. I definitively think you are on the right track though.
ReplyDeleteHayden,
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a rich topic, one with ample opportunities for textual support. Indeed, you might need to narrow your focus a bit--either by focusing on the contrast between two characters (Hamlet and Fortinbras, as you suggest here)--or on two scenes, say, when Hamlet refrains from killing Claudius while he is(or seems to be) at prayer, versus his rash killing of Polonius (whom he assumes is the king). Neither actions here seem to have a very good outcome.