For the essay portions of the “To be, or not to be” project, remember to BALANCE your CD‘s with your CM‘s appropriately. If you decide to use a large chunk of text from Hamlet’s soliloquy, my best advice to you is to dissect that large chunk into bite-sized pieces and then write your interpretation of each piece individually.
================================================================================
Here’s an example of writing an interpretation using a soliloquy from Macbeth:
—-
—–Macbeth’s soliloquy at the conclusion of Act II, scene 1 essentially boils down to the titular character’s inner conflict with temptation:
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? (2.1.33-39)
Here in the beginning of the soliloquy, Macbeth sees a vision of a dagger floating in the air. He attempts to grab it, but fails, and then he questions its very existence. It is obvious here how disgusted Macbeth is with himself by debating with himself whether or not to kill King Duncan in order to seize the throne for himself.
—-
—–
Notice that when a large chunk of text is used (i.e. longer than 3 lines in a work of drama) as a concrete detail that it is indented and separated from the rest of the paragraph, which should be almost entirely my commentary/interpretation of what the text means. (That is what the assignment is, after all.)
Take a moment and count how many lines I used here from the original text.
Now count how many pieces of commentary that I wrote that come from ME and do not involve summarizing plot.
—-
Go on, I’ll wait.
….
—-
….
Answer: 7 lines of concrete detail, and 1 piece of commentary.
—-
===============================================================================
Now take a look at a second example focusing on the SAME soliloquy from Macbeth…only THIS time, the large chunk of concrete detail is broken up into pieces throughout the paragraph.
—–Macbeth’s soliloquy at the conclusion of Act II, scene 1 essentially boils down to the titular character’s inner conflict with temptation. When Macbeth asks no one in particular if “this is a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?” (2.1.33-34), he is clearly at his wit’s end. While it is admirable to have ambition in life, his ambition for becoming a greater and more powerful man has led him to stick his own head in a vice and squeeze it endlessly with the pressure he puts on himself to take action. Unfortunately, this immense pressure Macbeth puts on himself will undoubtedly lead to his downfall instead of the triumph he can’t stop dreaming for. When he cries out to his hallucination, “Come, let me clutch thee” (2.1.34) and fails to do so since the dagger is only a figment of his imagination, he simply moans about this instead of rubbing his eyes and shaking off the incident like any sane person would. If anyone were to walk in the room right at this moment, it would certainly be an embarrassing scene, yet Macbeth is arguably so focused inward that he probably would not even notice anyone staring at him or making awkward attempts to snap him out of his trance. “I have thee not,” he moans in frustration, but “yet I see thee still” (2.1.35); he acknowledges that the tool to help him achieve his goals is out of his reach, but he refuses to take his eyes off of it — not even for a second. Accepting the idea that the only way to become king is to take this instrument of death and commit treason may not be something Macbeth is ready to do just yet, but it is not an option that he is willing to surrender either. Thus, Macbeth remains paralyzed, unable to do anything but keep his attention fixated on what haunts his every waking moment.
Note that this example is ONE paragraph that only covers the first few lines of this soliloquy in Macbeth. If I were to complete this essay, I would NOT continue to dissect EVERY line Macbeth says, but instead I would focus only on the parts that reinforce my argument that Macbeth is only succeeding in driving himself nuts by reaching for something that just doesn’t exist.
Take a moment and count how many lines I used here from the original text.
Now count how many pieces of commentary that I wrote that come from ME and do not involve summarizing plot.
Go on, I’ll wait.
….
….
Answer: 3 lines of concrete detail, and 8 pieces of commentary.
(The last concrete is split up into two parts, so it doesn’t count as two separate concrete details.)
==================================================================================
—-
NOW ASK YOURSELF:
Beyond just length, how do these two examples compare?
- Which is more informative and accessible to read, even for people who haven’t even read/seen Macbeth?
WHY???
—
- Which inspires more discussion/debate?
WHY???
—–
- Which is more persuasive in the sense of having a good chance of convincing the reader to agree with its commentary/point of view?
WHY???
—
If you’ve read this ENTIRE POST and take the time to answer these 3 questions in precise detail here on the blog, you may earn extra credit points toward your composition grade.
Mr. Y's H.O.T. Class Blog 
Hamlet Paper
Apr 23
Posted by jyanofsky
For the paper on Hamlet, you may choose ONE of the following topics OR pitch your own idea for a topic to Mr. Y.:
1) Analyze the theme of madness throughout the play.
(Hint: consider the motifs of poison, things that are described as rotten, or any scene in which advice is given and people are led to trust one another.)
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” (1.4.100)
—
—
2) Compare and contrast character foils.
You may use:
– This is the most obvious choice for this topic, given that Shakespeare makes the fact that he is using character foils pretty explicit in the final scene when Hamlet says: “I’ll be your foil, Laertes…” (5.2.249)
—-—
—
——
—
3) Who best fits the description of a tragic hero (a literary concept taken from Aristotle’s Poetics) — Willy Loman, or Hamlet?
—
4) Describe the influence Hamlet (the play) has on [insert other story you know well here].
(possible choices for comparison include: Harry Potter, Star Wars, Memento, Road to Perdition, etc.)
—
5) Make a case for which movie version that we watched in class best represents the spirit/theme/characters of Hamlet — the 1996 version with Kenneth Branagh or the 2009 BBC version with David Tennant.
—
Feel free to use this space to bounce ideas back and forth with each other. (I realize that this may not be possible while at school right now, unfortunately, but remember that this blog is available at home as well.)
—
Below, I have attached a couple of examples of thesis papers for you to use as reference. I encourage you to look over at least one of these papers to catch a glimpse of how the Jane Schaffer strategies that you have learned over the years serves as a solid foundation for this kind of writing…yet it is only a foundation. Once you know the rules, you can break them if need be and still meet and exceed high expectations for creating a piece of writing that is profound, meaningful, creative, inspiring, and dare I say interesting enough such that someone would actually want to read it. These examples do not follow Jane Schaffer methods word-for-word and step by step, but the basic expectations remain:
—
—
Examples
How the failure to communicate lead to Willy’s downfall in Death of a Salesman (former student’s paper)
(note that in this paper, this student used the term “miscommunication,” but what he meant was having the failure to communicate)
How William Blake Helped Open The Doors of 1960’s American Counter-Culture
Character Analysis: George Willard in Winesburg, Ohio
Analyzing the Theme of Deception in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
Posted in English 12, Period 1, Period 4, Period 6
Leave a comment
Tags: advice, character foil, citing Shakespeare, claudius, commentary, gertrude, ghost, hamlet, laertes, learning from each other, madness, murder, poison, polonius, revenge, rotten, theme, tragic hero, trust, uncertainty, writing tips