Monday, October 3, 2011

Without Rhyme or Reason

I don't want to turn this blog into too much of a formulaic notetaking on the weekly reading, but I will say this-Reading dialogue that is being spoken in rhyme for an entire scene is annoying.  It doesn't sound very real.  You know what I'm talking about. 

Moving right along...

Is Hamlet a crazy person?  Or is he the sane person?  Honestly, who knows?  How do we judge a person to be insane?  I read a Terry Pratchett novel once, pretty sure it was Night Watch (nobody quote me on this, please, it's going to be an awful paraphrase)  Although Prof. Burton thinks Terry Pratchett is funny.  Maybe he knows which book this is from) where Pratchett described one of his villains, Carcer, as "very, very sane", as he simply woke up one day and decided that all the rules in society didn't have to apply to him if he didn't want them to.  Is Hamlet the first literary sociopath?  People like that make us think differently about the world, and to be honest, it's a little frightening to me, to know that there are people who think the way that Hamlet does, who see the wonderful things about humanity and can sum it all up as the "quintessence of dust."  (As another side note, that quote immediately follows the "What a piece of work is a man" speech that people like to quote at Church meetings-they're missing the point of the speech.  Prof. Burton talked about this in class once and I thought it was funny).  Hamlet doesn't seem to be a violent sociopath-he's no Carcer or Joker- but he seems to be a sociopath nonetheless.  Anyways, that's just my thoughts on it...Let me know what you think!

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