Hamlet lacks the 'agent' factor

A concept that stood out as I read Johnson's essay about Hamlet was his idea that " Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an agent." Hamlet's lengthy recurring debate on being the avenger or not being the avenger of his father's murder practically takes up his whole time, leaving little or nothing left for his scheming of the actual revenge. I laugh when I think about Hamlet like this, it's quite absurd yet not far form reality. How many college graduates now wander through the streets of big cities in search of jobs? How many of them are actually capable of using what they learned and actually apply them? Studying philosophy for example, is one that will obviously drive your mind to the infinite and beyond, but how much of it is applicable on a daily basis? Ok. I'm sorry philosophy wasn't the best example, actually its a little bit of a terrible example, but it made the point. Anyway, what I mean is  Hamlet's university education and fanfare in a way, cursed him. Because Hamlet's intellect takes over his instinct preventing him from taking action, his now obsolete physical contributions to the act of revenge leave him with nothing more than doubt.

Now. Why does Johnson claim Hamlet's an instrument? If it's not clear by now here it goes.
Hamlet's intellect is intact, thus, he can still use it as an advisor of some sort. However, because he doesn't have the 'agent' factor in him, he needs someone to avenge the death for him. In the end, he does, get his 'agent' or 'agents' since he doesn't kill Claudius by himself but with a series of events that serve as 'agents' like Gertrude's accidental poisoning and the death of Laertes.

The Radio Show's the What, the Radio is the How

      Not knowing what I was about to listen to, I pressed play on the radio show recorded almost 10 years ago. As I sat on my couch, my laptop sitting on my lap, I heard the baffling voices reciting Hamlet. Thankfully, it wasn't long until I realized the text below the loading bar was actually explaining what the narrator was talking about. Forehead slapping moment. Duh! 

      Anyway, three minutes into the show, the Jack Hitt, the narrator, shifts the attention towards the voices of inmates at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center who are putting up their own adaptation of the play.  Wait a minute! Wasn't CNG's adaptation of Romeo and Juliet back in 2010 also set in a jail?  What's up with Shakespeare and his adaptations alluding to jail? Well, come to think of it, many of his characters are prisoners of their own situations. Hamlet, is stuck trying to make up his mind about avenging his father's murder. In Romeo and Juliet's case, their literal inability to live without each other is what's obstructing their so-called freedom.  The featured prisoners, on the other hand manage to juxtapose Hamlet's inaction to their extreme action taking decisions that led them to prison. 

    Another aspect that stood out was the audio format in which this show was delivered. Hamlet is all about the ears, and oddly enough, everything that anyone can get out of this show will come to them through their ears. In the end, all that matters in Shakespeare's work are the words and the use of them. Therefore, the lack of images or video in the show becomes insignificant because the message does get across. At least I think I got the message. Either way, I found that connection between the how and the what of the show being related to Hamlet's 'ears'  very interesting. 

Night Explains it All

When I first started reading McCarthy's book I was very intrigued by the apocalyptic world he described. All the difficult experiences the small family has been through and all the horrible scenes they've encountered have more or less kept the pace moving in a somewhat quick direction. However, so much has happened that it seems as though nothing has happened at all. My intrigue has thus diminished.

 I want to know more about the world before its apocalypse but  I never seem to get enough answers. Questions like these come up: why are there survivors left in a world that is no longer 'the world'? Why would God, if there ever was one, put this test on last remains of humanity? Because the explicit answers were quite scarce, I looked for a better understanding of the situation in other texts. Having thought about these somewhat 'existential' questions,  Elie Wiesel's Night popped in my head. 

Wiesel wrote in his autobiography his traumatic experience as a jew during the holocaust. In his book, he narrates his life at Auschwitz and how he struggled to survive with his father who eventually died a few months before the camp's liberation. This experience, as Wiesel said 'killed his God' and turned his 'soul and dreams to ashes.' As the world described in The Road 'burned' and the ashes carried by the wind fall on the Father and his son's faces, it's as if the lost dreams of humanity come to haunt them reminding them of the pain and suffering they went through. 

Everytime I think about the Holocaust, I  feel uncomfortable. It's so painful to have the knowledge of the extent to which humans' brutality can reach. Then, when I think about The Road,  I realize it resembles the horrors of the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel said "Everything came to an end - man, history, literature, religion, God. There was nothing left. And yet we begin again with night" making it obvious that for the Jewish people who died then, the apocalypse already happened. Humans have already been through the end, 'and yet we begin again with night'.  

One of my questions was finally answered. Humans posses this resilience that permits them to live through the end and find a way to continue living. Just as Elie and the The Road's Father and Son, God was lost at some point, coming back just in time to secure their survival. I think once again about why anyone would want to go through "the road" wanting to survive, but realizing the strength of those who survived the holocaust with virtually nothing left to live for, it all makes sense to me. 

Reason Makes you Human

These guys don't look very human to me! 

"Because we're the good guys. Yes. And we're carrying the fire" is the last bit of conversation between the Father and his boy when they discuss the possibility of ever "eating anybody". (129) As cannibalism becomes a recurrent them in this book, the repulsive thought of it forces me to cross my fingers and hope they never find themselves in that circumstance. I find it sweet and quite endearing how the father constantly reassures the boy that everything will be alright. He promises they will never eat anybody "even if they're starving" although they "are starving right now". When the father restates that they "carry the fire", as if they carry the knowledge or the reason its as if they kept their humanity in the form of knowledge which is what differentiates them from the bad guys.

This last conclusion put Mr.  Descartes in the picture. This french philosopher and mathematician said that only humans posses minds. The Road somehow corroborates his hypothesis by taking the humanity away from the bad guys and giving them animal-like behaviors. Descartes also said that the man is made up of body and mind. The body follows nature's laws while the mind does not. I suppose that for all animals, including humans occasionally, the number one most important priority is survival and the continuation of the species.

Mr. Descartes 

If I continue this Descartes-McCarthy comparison, the next reasonable conclusion is how mankind has lost its ability to reason. Descartes always said that because we can reason, we are very different from animals. I've come to believe that by letting the world dissolve into chaos and jeopardizing our own survival, people can no longer reason. Therefore, people are no longer people, what makes us people is our world and without it, we can't be ourselves. Mother nature, or what I just referred to as 'the world' is our identity, it shapes us somehow.  According to McCarthy though, there will be some hopefuls left, preserving humanity's humanity until some sort of miracle happens (or doesn't) that changes humans' course.

McCarthy's Road

Cormac McCarthy's interview on Oprah indirectly relates to The Road. As Oprah's questions about his life begin to detail how he survived virtually without any money, I'm reminded of how money has become irrelevant for the book's main characters as their journey south seeking refuge focuses on living off the land. Somehow, McCarthy always "knew things would work out" and considers himself "very lucky" with the success he's had, along with "totally unforeseen things that would occur" like the  financial boost he received from a courier at his doorstep one day.

I find McCarthy's point of view on how "things will work out" reflected on the Father's attitude. The father always finds a way to secure his son's life and his own at least for a little longer. Also, I've realized that if the father didn't have some sort of hope towards a better life and everything after the road, then there would be no point in undergoing such an arduous journey. This led me to conclude that one of McCarthy's underlying messages in his novel is how people need hope in their lives to encourage them to live. Therefore, those of us living in modern societies in which gaining money is basically our highest priority, the hope of a better job, a better house, even a better family overwhelm us to the point we begin to lose our humanity.

In a similar way, the Father and the Son's race towards safety against the "Bad Guys" symbolizes McCarthy's race towards success against money and the norms imposed by society to live for money. Unlike 99% of the world's population, McCarthy lived for his passion, and his race was to be successful, not through a mundane life and working an average job but actually focusing in his writing and doing what he could to live from it.

During the interview, Oprah asks the author his view on luck to which he replies that sometimes people are meant to be in certain places because of "the laws of probability that exist everywhere." Later, he explains how "without getting superstitious" there is always a luckiest man somewhere on the planet and they don't necessarily hold that title throughout their lives. He takes the example of the stock market and how "in the Barron's there's all these stock market gurus that won't be there next year" using the successful investors to represent the lucky strikes people may go through. I had a hard time trying to relate this part to the book but then I thought of the Father and Son and how, when everything seems to be going straight downhill, they manage to survive out of pure luck and will I suppose.

McCarthy's anecdote about his friend in Las Vegas who gambled and used to win everything until the day he stopped, led me to my final conclusion: humanity's gamble with its survival. So far, humans have been able to adapt and create prosthesis that have secured the continuation of life. Yet throughout our history, we've gambled with the environment and the resources available to us foolishly believing we would forever be on a lucky strike like McCarthy's friend.

Today we face the possibility of an environmental collapse, similar to McCarthy's prediction. After gambling with mother nature's health, we've fatally gambled our own. 

A Game of Words (and Contradiction)

As I skimmed through some of my friend's blogs searching for an interesting one to write a response about, I came across Daniela's posts. Her last one, about vocabulary surprised me with her creativity. Usually, I don't think outside the box, whatever that box may be. I'm used to same old school writing (like I am doing right now) so posts like these are enlightening somehow.

Her very unconventional post is like a matching game that caught my attention due to its cleverness.

However, her post had very little writing (typing rather) and I'm not too sure about her not having any writing/typing but it certainly was a breather after reading other blogs.

Ok. Now that I've looked at it again, I found it a little boring. The lack of an introduction leaves all the words hanging next to what may or may not be their definition. So, as much as I want to like this post, it just seems dull and in dire need of something else. I was truly in love with the creativity at one point, and I still am. Only if an introduction as creative as the actual body of the post was somehow squished in, the post would be so much more complete! 

A Furnace in The Road

Usually whenever I'm reading a book there's one or two words every  couple of pages that I haven't seen or heard of before. I rarely refer to a dictionary though and the words somehow make sense as the text continues. My experience with The Road  is a different story. Having read about one third of the book already, I haven't struggled with the vocabulary at all. It's quite simple actually. Unlike other books in which the author comes up with intricate sentences complete with look-for-in- a- dictionary words, McCarthy just writes uncomplicated descriptions. So much for the supposed complexities of classic literature. 

For example, much of The Road's text is description: "They hiked out along the dirt road and along a hill where a house had once stood. It had burned long ago. The rusted shape of a furnace standing in the black water of the cellar. Sheets of charred metal roofing crumpled in the fields where the wind had blown it. In the barn they scavenged a few handfuls of some grain he did not recognize out of the dusty floor of a metal hopper and stood eating it dust and all. Then they set out across the fields toward the road." (89)  Practically, every single word in here is straightforward. Even a third-grader could understand this paragraph. 

But whoah! I know I mentioned the text's simplicity earlier, but what the heck is a furnace? 

Guess I shouldn't rely so much on my overconfidence in English vocabulary. 

An example of a furnace. 

Furnace: |ˈfərnəs| (noun) an enclosed structure in which material can be heated to very hightemperatures, e.g., for smelting metals. 
• an appliance fired by gas, oil, or wood in which air or water is heated to be circulated throughout a building in a heating system.• used to describe a very hot place : her car was a furnace.

Accepting the Child as the Child

My level of patience with this novel is slowly narrowing. It seems as though every time something crazy is about to happen to these two, they somehow manage to survive untouched. And as if being one of the last few survivors on Earth wasn't crazy enough, the author adds deranged cannibals into the equation. Their journey has turned into an escape from mankind instead of a quest to find others like them (although that was their initial goal). 

As the novel goes on, the child is increasingly annoying me with his questions about death. What really annoys me though, is the father's inability to just be honest with the kid and start treating him like an adult. I suppose I'm taking this 'just do something' stand because the kid's age is unknown. Therefore, I can play with whatever age I want him to be. Probably my rush-reading through this excerpt influenced my point of view at the moment, but I just want the kid to grow up and stop acting like he's a baby. 

But I have to face the facts. The child is the child. Not a teenager, not an adult. So it's because of this that I can't pretend like he's older when in truth, he's probably a lot younger than what he seems to be. Instead of complaining about the kid's fears, I should learn form his courage. One I'd definitely find hard to get if I was wandering alone with my dad for what has become forever in the snow. 

The Road's Strain on a Weakening Relationship

The road continues to strain the father and son's relationship as the days go by and both become more desperate to find food, shelter and other refugees, like them that may help. As the story progresses, the two have the first encounter with other people, resulting in a violent conclusion. The "bad guys", as the father refers to them, are an ever present threat to the survival of the two. Destruction, isolation and pain have caused the "bad guys" to develop inhumane behaviors including cannibalism and rape as a survival tactic. In my previous blog entry I mentioned how deranged the world is described in McCarthy's book questioning the possible reasons why someone like the father would go to extremes to secure his son's welfare. After the father kills the crazy guy that threatened his son, and uses up one of his two bullets, the search for refuge becomes more intense with long late night walks in the forest and risking both their lives as they frequently near the "bad guys' '' truck.

I keep thinking about the boy and how awful it must be to grow up without any friends, always on the run. It's only logical that as he becomes more mature he starts to question his father's actions and take his own stand, even a t young age. For example, he's seen scared and frightened when his father asks him to "Stop it.... Take the gun." but he replies he doesn't want it, to which the father responds more forcibly, "I didn't ask if you wanted it. Take it." (70). More experiences like these create tension between them, yet the father's purpose is clear: "My job is to take care of you. I was appointed to do that by God. I will kill anyone who touches you." (77)

As more strain is put on their relationship I wonder how the father will react to his son's rebellion or if the son will continue to rebel at all. I also think about what will happen now that there is only one bullet left in the gun and how the father will use the resources he has left (food, clothing) to secure their much coveted survival. One last thing I'm still curious about is the woman that the father talks to when he's not with the child. She seems so mysterious and very little is known about her other than the conversations she's had with the father she uses to encourage him about giving up. I wonder why she keeps coming up and why the father won't do as she says although he's pretty attentive  to her and longing for her presence whenever she leaves. Up to now, her character is the most intriguing of all.

The Continuation Into the Dialogue of an Uncertain Future

The pages following those discussed in my previous blog post continue with the Father and Son's narrative of their journey south through the mountains.

One thing that becomes more recurrent as the novel goes on is the increasing presence of civilization and human activity. Also, the conversations between the two characters are slowly increasing and becoming longer. For example, the first dialogue in the book, page 5 is barely three lines long and it's blended in with the rest of the text. In contrast, the conversation on  page 34 takes up almost half of the text space.

It's also possible to say that their few phrases are getting deeper, but in truth,  they have never been shallow. If you just read the conversations quickly and ignore the rest of the text that follows them, then you won't find much meaning. This is due to the fact that what really makes their short and succinct dialogues meaningful are the actions that have taken place before, after and during the conversation. Therefore, the few exchanges that may seem insignificant due to their length are actually much heavier to the text and contribute insight to the Father and Son's relationship.

Referring to a different part of the book now, when both are awaken by the earthquake, a refugee scene is depicted. Once the description of the broken people is done, four short yet very powerful sentences follow: "Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. Ever is no time at all." (28) These sentences seem like a dialogue at first but once you reread them, it's as if though the reader was getting into the boy's mind. Also, the dramatic notion of having all the time in the world by saying that "(e)ver is a long time" makes both of them seem as if they will be there forever, yet "ever" being "no time at all" just destroys that concept and leaves you with a conflicting feeling between which perspective is more positive than the other given the circumstances.

How far would you go looking for survival in a deranged world without becoming deranged yourself?  Or are you already deranged to want to save yourself  there? This question hovers in my head every time I open the book. I'm always considering the reasons why someone would ever go through that experience willingly. It doesn't mean I'd give up, it just means that not only have I began to admire these character's strength, it also means that learning from the experience, I'd never want to be in their position. Basically, I see no point in being the last ones on Earth if there's only crazy people to share it with.

Also, I always wonder what would happen to the boy if they do actually make it to the end. Because of his age, the father is obviously like to die earlier than the boy, leaving him adrift in the crazy land of no one. The Father lives for his son, therefore something leads me to believe that the boy won't make it and they will both die. I suppose I'm hoping for this dramatic ending because I couldn't possibly picture someone living alone in the world, I feel too bad for them. I am welcoming though,  any unexpected encounters with more sane people.... 

Keeping Up the Pace

As I began reading the first twenty pages of Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road', the novel's fast pace struck me as surprising. Usually, isolation and loneliness would inspire slow transitions between events, yet everything I've seen about the father and his son has happened rather quickly. The short paragraphs go into great detail describing the scenery the characters are in at that moment, cleverly sustaining the speed . This description of the sunrise for example, "(He) watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque." Less than a sentence later, the father is already "wrapped in his blanket" and "walk(ing) out through the trees". (11). Again, in other books, novels or movies, any scene involving a sunrise tends to represent a new beginning or hope. However, the sunrise described as 'slow and half opaque' does not seem like hope at all.  It's definitely a reflection of the dim situation in which the father and son are in. When the author takes the character practically somewhere else with every sentence, the actions lose their meaning, like watching the sunrise, in this case.

Further on in the paragraph the father 'knelt in the ashes' and 'raised his face to the paling day' and asked '(a)re you there?'. (11) its only until the next two sentences that he mentions God. Clearly, the father hasn't lost hope and suddenly, his actions have recovered some sort of meaning. Just like some saints painted in famous portraits calling out to God, this scene is quite powerful as it reflects the father's desperation and pain. The reason why I think this is because the father reminds me of the saints and martyrs that kneel in desperate calls for God (with the sun behind them resembling the Lord's presence) wearing distressed faces.  

Just after the father's cry, the paragraph that follows depicts the two walking through the city at noon of the next day. This, once again keeps the novel's pace speedy and it gives the story a certain feeling like its rushed. However, as I analyzed why it was this way, I realized it describes how one cannot wait to stay alive. Basically, if the father and son did not react and travel quickly then the would likely get caught up with the coming season as "There'd be no surviving another winter (t)here." (4) If they didn't hurry to find food, then they would go hungry. The fast pace was much more justifiable once I understood the circumstances of the need for survival which made the reading much more enjoyable, not that I didn't find the fast pace incredibly interesting before.

Heading Towards the Nightmare

Buddy was 'Travelling home again.' or ' Home to nightmare' as he later describes it. Usually homes are associated with peace, calm and love, so when Buddy  clarifieshat going home will be a nightmare,  it's quite obvious he feels upset about something that happened there. Because this passage is halfway through the book, as a reader, one can infer some reasons why he has this reaction towards his home. One of them is the fact he will be returning to his lying wife and another can be going back to his very despised job as a barber. 

The passage continues: 'The earth brown. Rubbing my brain against the cold window of the bus I was sent travelling my career on fire and so cruise home again now.' (106) These powerful sentences confess the real reason why he's back: his career failed. Anyone who has been in Buddy's position can understand his anger and frustration. However, Buddy continues on to say how 'we must go deeper with no justice and no jokes' as if his  life has lost its purpose and he has lost his faith. (106)  In a way, it seems as though he is surrendering into that hole that has pulled down since the beginning of the book. 

Later, Buddy explains how 'All my life I seemed to be a parcel on a bus'. I suppose lots of people have always considered themselves 'just another brick in the wall' but in truth, its a pitiful thing that such thoughts cross people's minds. Obviuosly, this is a root to Buddy's many problems, including his lack of self esteem. 

The next sentences in the passage pose a contradicting statement: ' I am the famous fucker. I am the famous barber. I am the famous cornet player. Read the labels. The labels are coming.'(106) Boldenn now explains that in fact, it was his trade that made him stand out. It was his job as a barber, a musician that gave him the fame that allowed society to label him and put him somewhere he found very hard to leave. Just like his vulnerable clients in pg 48, his anger reflects his own inability to have control over everything. He's realizing that society has taken control over him and his action through the labels and reputation he was given. The tone is demanding and sarcastic in a very spooky way, the last clause is almost threatening.  

Frustrated by Vanity

Odaantaje's 'Coming Through Slaughter' explores the last bits of composure in Buddy Bolden's life. Bolden is described as a busy, passionate musician who also cuts hair as a day job. He 'works with the vanity of others' at the barbershop, contributing to the self-confidence of everyone else who stops to get a shave or get trimmed. (47)

Bolden's dementia can be attributed in part, to his job as a hair cutter. Clearly, this wasn't a job he enjoyed as he details the 'tin bladed fan, turning like a giant knife all day above my head' acknowledging the fact that he doesn't feel comfortable under a revolving blade over him, but who would? This leads to the deduction that his workplace isn't somewhere Buddy feels safe.  In the next paragraph, he narrates how the hair he cuts sticks to him all over his body: 'I blow my nose every hour and get the hair-flecks out of it. I cough them up first thing in the morning. I spit out the black fragments onto the pavement as I walk home with Nora from work. I find pieces all over my clothes even in my underwear. I go through the evenings with the smell of shaving soap up to my elbows. It is there in my fingers as I play.' (47) Obviously, Buddy can't get away from this monster that the hair has evolved into. It's everywhere he goes and one can tell he is very intent on getting away from this beast by spitting it on the ground or blowing it out his nose.

But why is Buddy so strained about the hair?  Well, it definitely has to do with what he has associated with. As he rubs his skin trying to rid it of the hair, 'the layers of soap all day long have made another skin over' him. Basically, in the process of getting rid of this monster he has created another self that lies over his skin, a barrier or an impediment or protection towards the beast. Buddy then describes 'how he can manipulate their looks'  meaning he can play around with the way his clients will project themselves in society, the image they will portray of themselves for sometime. Supposing this intimidates Buddy a little, it also gives him much power over his clients whom he sees watching 'their own faces for the twenty minutes they sit below' him as 'they laugh nervously'. (48) Bolden even acknowledges his power over their lives: 'This is the power I live in. ...They trust me with the cold razor at the vein under thier ears. They trust me with liquid soap cupped into my palms as I pass by their eyes and massage it into their hair. Dreams of the neck.' (48) This last bit causes one to shiver as Buddy impersonates (at least seems to) a slaughterer with his descriptions of how his clients are so vulnerable as he does his job.

By the end of this passage, Bolden's frustration becomes clear. Although it seems as he took pleasure in watching his clients become so fragile, it also seems as though he resents them and being used as a tool for vanity. The role of vanity becomes more present as he sees the men 'stumbling with no more sight to the door and feeling even through their pain the waves of heat as they go through the door into the real climate of Liberty and First, leaving this ice, wallpaper, and sweet smell and gracious conversation, mirrors, my slavery here.' (48) Again, Buddy is alienating himself from the rest of the world by referring to his workplace as ice. Also, the things he describes such as the mirrors and the wallpaper represent a flase sense of vanity and beauty. The wallpaper hides the wall behind it as people hide themselves under what they wish others to see, and the mirrors reflect the lies that everyone lives caused by vanity and quest for beauty.

This last narration, as it becomes erratic and starts to lose it meaning indicates Buddy's frustration and anger towards the vanity he encourages by cutting his client's hair.

Suprising Symbolism in Fitzgerald's 'The Great Gatsby'

F. Scott Fitzgerald's famed book, The Great Gatsby is full of symbolism that gives most little details in the novel special meaning. One of those symbols that is rarely analyzed is the role that sports play. In many cases, Fitzgerald relates sports to characters that have cheated and deceived society. Therefore, sports play a role in which those involved tend to get what they want fraudulently. One example is the encounter Nick has with Mr. Wolfsheim in which Gatsby tells him the truth about the 1919 World Series: "Gatsby hesitated then added coolly: 'He's the man that fixed the World's Series back in 1919." (Fitzgerald 73)