Hamlet: The Extent of Obligation

For my final blog for this month, I felt it only necessary to address the second work that I am reading in AP Lit class, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. While the classic tale has had its fair share of modern incarnations through film and other works, the original text (or texts depending on the other versions of the play) creates critical questions that to this day remain incredibly difficult to answer, as seen by multiple scenes of the characters themselves asking questions to one other. To be more specific, I wanted to expand on one of the key words that we have been indexing throughout the play thus far, which is “duty”. The idea of fulfilling a role or obligation to someone or being bound by law to complete a task is a concept that is constantly present throughout the first act alongside the beginning of the second, which is how much of the play that we have covered. From the guard’s declaration of “Our duty to your Honor” (I.ii.275) toward their Prince Hamlet, to Ophelia’s sullen response “I shall obey, my lord” (I.iii.145) toward her prying father Polonius, complying to the will of another is an idea that Shakespeare expounds upon through his characters. Perhaps the most notable example of moral obligation, and the one that sparks a hefty moral question, is that with Prince Hamlet and his ghostly King, where the deceased father incites his son to enact revenge on his cunning uncle Claudius who murdered him the orchard. In response to his father’s charge, young Hamlet declares “thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, unmixed with base matter” (I.v.109-111). Through these words, Hamlet declares that he shall dedicate his entire being toward fulfilling his duty to his dead father and the newfound charge he has been given, setting aside all other obligations he may need to fulfill for the sole satisfaction of this one. In this way, the morality of the concept of duty and obligation is brought into question. While Hamlet does in fact feel compelled by his honor to commit an act of vengeance against his uncle, should he not question the virtue and morale behind his actions? To what extent can obligation be carried out without comprising the moral integrity of the person appointed with the task? It is interesting to note how Hamlet lamented in the king’s hall earlier about why “the Everlasting had not fixed his canon ‘gainst [self-slaughter]” (I.ii.135-136), dreading how the commandments of God were the only thing keeping him among the world of the living. In his duty to God, Hamlet was willing to give up his selfish wish of taking his own life in order to maintain his moral integrity. However, Hamlet seems to have no problem breaking his service to the Lord when it comes to adhering to a new duty that his dead father has enlisted him into, something that goes directly against the Bible. Romans 12:19 explicitly states “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord”. As a man who knows God’s thoughts on suicide, Hamlet is also certain to know what God has to say about revenge, but is willing to compromise his faith to satisfy his inner demons that long for hate and revenge against his Uncle Claudius, and have been stirred up by his father’s apparition. Through Hamlet, Shakespeare poses the question of not necessarily of who we are all duty-bound to serve, but what obligations we are willing to break in order to satisfy our own internal desires and ambitions.

 

All Woods Must Fail

For this next blog, I really wanted to return to the world of JRR Tolkien to simply examine his poetic excerpts from works like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and see all that they have to offer outside the context of the story and what overall message they have for each of us to hear. When trying to decide which poem to pick, I found one that truly relates to my life at this moment, caught up in the entangled branches of work, school, friends, family, and anything else that might get thrown my way. Tolkien’s All Woods Must Fail seems to speak to this very concept, recognizing the weariness of the wooded world that we all get lost in at some point in our lives, while at the same time providing the glimmer of hope that an end to our troubles will one day come and we will be able to leave the shadowed world of woods far behind. The poem is taken from The Lord of the Rings and serves as an encouraging thought to the hobbits, who are nearing the end of the Old Forest that they have been lost in. It opens by saying, “O! Wanderers in the shadowed land/Despair not! For though dark they stand, All woods there be must end at last”. While the context in which this poem is derived from is from a very literal interpretation and standpoint, I believe that Tolkien’s writing transcends past the story to take on a metaphorical and even biblical interpretation. Frodo and company may have been literal wanderers through the forest, but for the rest of us throughout daily life, we have our own forests that have heavy shadows cast over them. Whether it’s the bustling hallways of a crowded high school, the narrow side-by-side cubicles in a resented job, or even our own homes at times, we all know scarily well the places where the light is shut out and we are trapped by our own surroundings of darkness. In these times, the world seems like a cruel, bitter, and cold place, but Tolkien fervently writes to reminds us that this is not the end, that to “all woods there be must end at last/and see the open sun go past”. Through these words, a Biblical interpretation could be validated, not surprising since Tolkien himself was a fervent Christian. From the start, the “shadowed land” could refer to our own world plagued with sin and death, where so many wander aimlessly without the knowledge of God and those that do know him are constantly beaten down by the world and work to their full extent to cast aside the encroaching shadows. But there is still hope with the coming of the “open sun”, referring not only to the physical light to cast away darkness, but also to the coming of Christ that is to wipe all shadows from the earth. Even if it may be difficult to see, there is an end to the woods, and because of that knowledge of what is at the end of the woods we cannot let ourselves be trapped by the forest, but pursue our way through it, and charge headlong to the end where the sun can be revealed in all its glory. Tolkien ends the poem almost prophetically, pronouncing, “For east or west all woods must fail”. Again, here is a beacon of hope to those trapped within their own forests, reminding them that all woods must fail and give way to the open fields where the sun shines brightly across a clear blue sky. For that reason, we must remember that all woods must fail.

 

 

All Woods Must Fail

by J R R Tolkien

O! Wanderers in the shadowed land
Despair not! For though dark they stand,
All woods there be must end at last,
And see the open sun go past:
The setting sun, the rising sun,
The day's end, or the day begun.
For east or west all woods must fail.

 

 

I Sit and Think

While trying to think of a poem to write about for my next blog, I immediately had the realization that I have not made a single mention of my favorite author: JRR Tolkien. While I am obviously a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Simillarion, and all things Middle-Earth related, I wanted to explore a different side of Tolkien that not too many people seem to appreciate, which is that of his poetry. To begin the exploration, I chose “I Sit and Think” by Tolkien, because I saw it as a powerful and personal reflection that is equally moving and mesmerizing because of its somber perspective of both the life that has been lived, and the future of the world to come. The poem opens by creating a beautiful backdrop to the narrator sitting there; something that immediately evokes the ornate sceneries and landscapes that Tolkien created across the rolling pastures of the Shire and the blinding white capped Misty Mountains. But alongside the harmonious images lavishly painted across the words there is also a reflection of how much things have changed over the course of a lifetime, as he recalls “meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been/of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were”. However wonderful the sights may have been to the narrator, he now realizes that they are simply just a memory of a time that has long passed, one where the beauty of the past can never equate to what he sees now. Here Tolkien himself can easily be inserted as the narrator, being one whose life spanned across nearly three quarters of the twentieth century, where several technological changes occurred that began to replace the beauty of the natural world with that of industry and advancement. It is both a reflective and harrowing thought to think of how much the world has changed before one’s own eyes, and even scarier to think of what will become of the world when one’s own chapter draws to a close. Such are the narrator’s thoughts when he pictures, “a spring that I shall [n]ever see”. Life will go on without us, however much we may not wish it to, but such is the way of the world, and so it shall continue. An even greater thought is of how even when we are gone, the people that we know will still carry on with their lives and continue to experience all that this world has to offer. Tolkien touched on thought within his other writing in The Return of the King, when Frodo prepares to leave for the Grey Havens and tells Samwise how his, “part of the Story goes on” (1006). In the same way, Tolkien muses again “of people long ago/ and people who will see a world that I shall never know”, a sad truth that all must come to terms with after the twilight of life has passed over. But until the final moment comes when all of this must finally come true, the narrator returns to his peaceful reflections that he reveled in earlier, all the while “listen[ing] for returning feet and voices at the door”. Personally, I think that those feet and voices are those of either children or grandchildren who come to visit him, spending as much time with the narrator as they can before his inevitable parting. Ultimately, I think the greatest message behind this poem is to enjoy the fleeting moments of life, and to not dread the unknown of the future, but revel in your chance to have a chapter of life that was well worth living.

 

I Sit And Think

I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

© J R R Tolkien. All rights reserved

 

 

 

 

Invisible Man: An Opening Observation

It’s a new year, and one thing that means is a whole new set of books to read for AP Lit, the first of which being Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. With this book, I feel it necessary to make a blog similar to my first one on The Age Innocence, that is, one where I look at the prologue and first chapter of the text and recite my initial thoughts and ideas on what some of the major underlying themes could possibly be and examine how they could work into the overall meaning of the book itself. Ralph Ellison, through his nameless narrator, explores the culture of 1950s America, a culture that America would like to forget that it was ever a part of, which is one of brutal racial discrimination and bigotry. It was also one that would have a devastating effect on those who were forced to suffer through the ceaseless physical and verbal torture of living in a society that thought them to be not fully human. From the first few lines in the prologue, the narrator decries in a lament how he is “surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination…everything and anything except me” (Ellison. 3). The ‘invisible man’ that the narrator calls himself is one who is ignored by society and that constantly has the views, opinions, and judgments of others pressed upon him. For that he remains eternally marginalized by society, never to be fully accepted because he can never be fully seen for how he really is as a person. From the start Ellison already begins to emphasize the idea of sight and vision and how they both tie into the question of reality. The narrator comments on this himself, saying he must “walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to… [For] there are few things in the world as dangerous” (Ellison 5). The narrator remarks how everyone else around him is trapped inside the illusion of their dreams, blind to truth of reality that awaits them if they were to open their eyes and see the light of day for themselves. But instead, they choose to stay locked away in their fantasy, where they believe to have a tight grip of control over life, a falsehood that the narrator recognizes would be better left undisturbed. This is also why the narrator is so physically attracted to the light, because it “confirms my reality, gives birth to my form” (Ellison. 6). With every light that he surrounds himself with in the hotel basement, the narrator can rest assured that it is he who remains surrounded by the truth and enlightenment that comes with the light, much like the freed prisoner in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” who reveled in the free air and sun burning bright in the sky that helped him to identify it is as truth and all the past shadows in the cave as mere illusions. To conclude, I want to step outside the Prologue and delve into Chapter 1, where there were several key analytical points that need to be discussed. In short, the chapter revolves around the narrator having given a graduation speech and is called to give it at a ballroom with other classmates, but turns into a battle royal in which the blacks are forced to fight each other for entertainment. But before they are forced to fight, a naked blonde struts across the ring and is eyed out by all the men and is barely able to escape from the hands of the drunk men surrounding her. To the woman the narrator thinks, “I wanted at the same time to run from the room…or go to her and cover…to love her and murder her, to hide from her” (Ellison 19). I feel like this moment is important because it shows both how the narrator hates how he is falling to the same lustful desires as the vicious white men who have propped him up in the ring, but that also he sees a bit of himself in that woman. He sees a person who has been propped up solely for the entertainment of others, and a person who will never be valued for whatever they may have to offer on any moral or intellectual grounds, but instead will be forced to adhere to strict physical appearance. And just like the woman, he is ultimately doomed to fall to the hands of the cruel upper white men and forced to do whatever they want, which for him meant being forced to fight other blacks and forced to kneel onto an electrocuted rug in a vain attempt to grab some money. The narrator knows after seeing the blonde woman, that they are both doomed to suffer the same curse of invisibility.