Revenge

Time for revenge! Hamlet sets his goal finally after finding out the cause of his father’s death – kill Claudius at all costs. Good thing I already read Hamlet three years ago, so I know how his revenge ends. Although the death of Hamlet makes the play very tragic, I have learned that “evils” do not last long, as can be seen from Claudius’ pathetic death.

Hamlet’s anger was emitted at a different person after he lost the opportunity to kill Claudius. The scapegoat of the conflict turned out to be Polonius, Ophelia's dad. Hamlet even goes on to say, "The death I gave him. So, again, good night. I must be cruel only to be kind." (III, iv, 198-199) Polonius, who was eavesdropping conversation between Hamlet and the Queen behind a curtain, was brutally stabbed by Hamlet with a sword. Although Hamlet tells the Queen as if the murder was a mistake, according to the level of intelligence Hamlet has I assume he intended to do so. In other words, by killing his lover's dad he could prove to other people around him that he is fully mad (check previous blogs for such reasons).

Guiltiness

King Claudius

A famous aphorism in Korea : A thief feels guilty throughout his life. Bam! Yes, I am trying to relate this to Claudius. Just from watching a murder scene, he pops up from his throne and stops the play out of his own guiltness. Therefore, I want to give a huge credit to Hamlet for his intelligence - the King's reaction converted Hamlet's assumption to assurance. Anyhow, in this post I want to focus on the King's emotional state.

Here's a fact - he killed his own brother. Not only that, he "stole" his brother's wife. Still unsatisfied, he goes on to create a plan to get rid of Hamlet. Claudius recites, "King: I like him not, nor stands if safe with us, to let his madness range/ Therefore prepare you/ I your commision will forthwith dispatch/ and he to England shall along with you. The terms of our estate may not endure/ hazard so near's as doth/ hourly grow out of his brows." (III, iii, 1-7) Can you see his diabolic conscience? Not only he is not afraid of directly stating his hatred upon Hamlet, but he even orders his followers to kill him at the very moment he reaches England. Having ordered that, Claudius tells Hamlet he is going to be sent to England for education. From these facts, I think Claudius is either stupid, or very brave. He knows that Hamlet doesn't like him much - so if I were him (not that I would kill my brother to take over throne) I would try my best to buy Hamlet's love as much as possible. For instance, instead of sending him to England, I would hire a doctor to check if he was faking madness; if yes, I would try to cure his madness so he doesn't have to worry about getting a dagger stabbed in the back of his neck. As far as stupidness, I would say his actions prove his intelligence level. On the other hand, if we approach him from braveness, he might think Hamlet is not much of a threat to his reign, therefore he might have thought sending him away will remove small potential risk. Whatever the reason behind the cause is, Claudius is diabolic, and personally I think Hamlet should have killed him when he had a chance, despite the fact Claudius was praying.

Hamlet's Madness

Mr. Tangen threw me a good question - "Jay, do you think Hamlet's genuinely crazy or is he faking his own madness?" Without any moment of hesitance I answered, "He is OBVIOUSLY faking his craziness, sir." Well, he didn't seem to like my answer. He made his typical 'not-satisfied-with-your-answer' face and asked me back sarcastically to provide him with logical reasons for why I hold my belief that way. That's when I got stuck. There was nowhere in the book, or in at least ACT III that stated "Hamlet is a genius, but he is faking his own behaviour to elude the King's suspicion." So, I decided to be sincere and answered him back - "I don't know sir. I was just assuming." Then he seemed to be happy. Walking past me, he said "Good luck Jay, and tell me when you get the answer to my question."

Since that day, I read through ACT III very thoroughly, but still found no phrases that clearly answered his question. However, at the very moment I closed the book, I was 100% sure that Hamlet was faking his own madness. There were so many clues in the book that insinuated his intelligence, and acting like a retard was only a part of his plan to escape the King's suspicion towards him. Ophelia even says, "O, help him, you sweet heavens!" (III, i, 145-152) Hamelt answers back, " If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny, Get thee to a nunnery, farewell. [...] Farewell." (III, i, 145-152)

Sherlock Holmes

This is the part where Hamlet's precise planning shows off. He tries to act crazy to everyone he knows - even towards his love Ophelia, so that absolutely no one is skeptical about his possible faking. Although Ophelia is terribly hurt, I assume Hamlet had a strong assurance that he could buy her love back later once his revenge has taken place. I could relate his thought to a fictional detective "Sherlock Holmes," because Holmes had done a similar acting to his friend and co-worker, Watson. In order to get a suspect into his trap, Holmes faked his own fatal illness to everyone, including Watson. He purposely provoked Watson so that he would recognize the severeness of his illness, and his plan worked out perfectly. Considering the fact that Holmes was a genius, it is not too exaggerated to assume Hamlet is a genius also.

Contrast to the Society



A Scene From Hamlet



Those were way too long. 57 minutes - I wouldn't say it was wasted down the drain, yet my attention span was brutally destroyed by the time I finished listening to them. The truth is, I did not get the drift of the audio at some parts, so I got some help from a friend's blog (Billy Coombs). For the most part I agree with his opinion - as a matter of fact I was going to start out my blog exactly how he wrote before I got hold of his post. Therefore, regardless of what he scribbled, I am going to write how I initially intended to write.

I have never killed anyone. I have killed many bugs, but I've never considered it a cruel murder. The good news is that I have stopped killing bugs since the day I learned the presence of big black moths in Colombia. My point is, it was hard for me to relate my personal experiences to these prisoners. Plus, I have never confronted such a huge dilemma like Hamlet - I have never jumped up and down around my house screaming "To be or not to be." Today's dilemma for me was to choose my lunch menu from Ceasar Salad to Taco, which is light compared to Hamlet's. In conclusion, Jay Park and Hamlet has almost no similarities. In other words, if I were to act the murder scenes from Hamlet, I would not get emotional as the prisoners who have prior experiences of committing a crime.

Who knows if I could have been a good friend of these prisoners if I hadn't know the fact that they were criminals? I want to approach this topic in a different method.

In spite of the fact that I could not relate the criminals reflections to my experiences, I was able to relate them to a scene in Hamlet. Hamlet orders his actors to act out a muder scene in front of Claudius to check his reaction, and surprisingly it works out perfectly as he intended (III, iii). Claudius, seeing the scene that evoked his memory, stops the play - and Hamlet is assured that the King had killed his father. As a criminal reflects "relate experience with Hamlet to that of the Missouri East Correctional Institution.", it is clear that their experiences have proven to affect their emotion significantly. I am glad I haven't gone through such disastrous activities so far, and I hope I get none in the future.

Hamlet vs Hamlet

I don't know how Shapeskpeare would react to the modern version of his work if he was still alive. Well, that doesn't really matter, because I really enjoyed it. It's a bit of a pity that I do not have much time to continue watching the movie, but yet I think I've watched enough to compare both movies.

In terms of similarities, both actors were good. Words fail me a little because it is hard to depict the energy emitted by both actors in one word, but anyhow they were talking in perfect old English, their body gestures revealed their overwhelming emotions directly, and most significantly they adjusted their voice tones at different emotional periods. Both actors raised their voices when the level of anger reached their peaks, lowered them down when both Hamlets regained calmness. Also, despite the fact that these two movies had completely different themes, both lines were very similar.



David Tennant



On the other hand, the amount of differences heavily outnumbers that of the similarities. First off, the actors were dressed differently. While David Tennant was dressed up as a very modern person - with a t-shirt and a pair of pants -  Kenneth Branagh was dressed formelry with a tuxedo. Personally, David Tennant (first link) gave me an impression of a famous comedian actor Jim Carrey so the overal mood of the clip was somewhat funny, especially when he closes up on the camera and rhetorically asks "Am I a coward?". Plus, he goes wilder than Kenneth Branagh, as proven by the facts that he thrashes the CCTV, jumps around the room, screams in anger and waves his hands harder. The fact that he added some modern phrases in between the lines also made the scene unique. Notwithstanding, Kenneth Branagh kept his dignity as publically renowned Hamlet, and was less wild than Tennant. At first, he remains calm and goes through his current situation logically although he loses his temper as he starts to get enraged. True, the setting was also modern, but the movie itself seemed less progressive and stern in comparison to the prior clip.

Kenneth Branagh

Krapp's Last Tape [Watch]

YouTube only demonstrated a section of video at a time on the side-bar relative links which got me a bit "vexed" after finding out there were 4 more divided parts. Yet, the video was far more interesting than the script due to the fact that now I had a visual aid to help me interpret. The video showed Krapp's madness very well, and I think the actor is truely awesome. The scene where he "passionately" ate the bananas left me with a huge laughter, but as I was pulled deeper into his acting my laughter was gone. Although I thought he was insane, it was at the same time very probable that this could happen to just about anyone. This post, I want to analyze the actor.

I want to give the actor a lot of credits for his great acting skills. I agreed with most comments in YouTube - the majority of them were compliments towards the actor. The part where he madly cleared out his desk was realistic that I flinched a bit. Well not really, but you get my point.

At Part 2, as he listens to his tapes, I saw his eyes trembling as if he was vividly recalling the memories. Soon, he was completely dazed out and was living in the past along the voices from the recording machine, because his eyes were out of focus. I did not know why he was sweating profusely until I heard his sick coughing and learned a small walk to his room meant excessive amount of exercise to him.

The part I liked the most about his acting was when he was desperately rewinding the tape to hear about his long lost love. He squeeked like a mad man when his first few attempts failed, but when he heard "so I put my face on her breasts", he was close to passing out from the pleasure he had felt.

Krapp's Last Tape [Read]

I am going to start this blog out differently.

A small confession: I took a glance at the "Read Section", realized it was a bit too long, and watched the "Clip Section" first. Meaning, I was able to picture the scene in my mind as I reluctantly read through the script - while the vice versa process could have resulted in a completely different approach. However I was able to pick up some lines from the script which some of them sounded like a bunch of mumbles in the video. Also, I came to realize at the end that both the reading and video dealt with an exactly same topic, except the fact that each gave me slightly different impressions. I am going to analyze this in the next post.

I would like to focus this post on Krapp's potential mental disease. In fact, I am sure Krapp is suffering from a chronic depression or hallucination. His behaviours were outrageously queer, according to: "He stoops, unlocks first drawer, peers into it, feels about inside it, takes out a reel of tape, peers at it, puts it back, locks drawer, unlocks second drawer peers into it, feels about inside it, takes out a large banana, peers at it, locks drawer, puts keys back in his pocket." This repeated a couple more times, so I concluded he enjoys things which most people find them very common.

When he was setting up the recording machine, he also repeatedly screams "Spools, spools, spools!" as if the tapes were everything to his life. I am assuming he was trying to recall a specific memory from the past which has pleasured him before, but as he listens to it, he seems to acknowledge the fact that he was as lonely as he is in his current situation. He stops and rewinds a few times when Krapp from 30 years ago was revealing his first love -

"Pause.

Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.

Pause.

Here I end--

Krapp switches off, winds tabe back, switches on again."

Even so, his actions were so inordinary that I thought at some points, he had been hallucinating as if he were back in the past. His final hope from recalling the past memories has failed, since he collapses on the desk only to realize his life was nothing but futile.

Passive Voice Practice

The statue is being visited by hundreds of tourists every year.

Hundreds of tourists visit the statue every year.

My books were stolen by someone yesterday.

Someone stole my books yesterday.

These books had been left in the classroom by a careless student.

A careless student left these books in the classroom.

Coffee is raised in many parts of Hawaii by plantation workers.

Plantation workers raise coffee in many parts of Hawaii.

The house had been broken into by someone while the owners were on vacation.

Someone had broken into the house while the owners were on vacation.

A woman was being carried downstairs by a very strong firefighter.

A very strong firefighter carried the woman downstairs.

The streets around the fire had been blocked off by the police.

The police blocked off the streets around the fire.

Have you seen the new movie that was directed by Ron Howard?

Have you seen Ron Howard’s new movie?

My car is in the garage being fixed by a dubious mechanic.
A dubious mechanic is fixing my car.

A great deal of our oil will have been exported to other countries by our government.
Our government will export a great deal of our oil.