Essentially, Pacino’s use of a modern and more flexible medium enables a 21st century audience to obtain a clearer and more accessible understanding of key concepts and connections within this duo of texts. I often have trouble understanding every word in Shakespeare's works, and I’m certain I’m not alone. Kevin Spacey describes Shakespeare's verse as being formed from “ words that may sound slightly like a foreign language.” I believe this is an interesting insight, as it is apparent that a significant barrier which separates a contemporary audience from a deeper appreciation of Shakespeare's works are its language forms and features. The prevailing attitude towards Shakespeare, is that it is a form of literature that only academics can appreciate. Kevin Kline’s humorous anecdote of “we just tuned out, we just kinda made out in the back row” reflects how contemporary values of sexual relations have superseded the appreciation for high epic drama.
Hamlet on Film Compare and Contrast Hamlet by Williams Shakespeare is expressed and portrayed in multiple versions and with different interpretations. They each take place in different setting and time periods. The Kenneth Branagh version, directed in 1996, takes place in the medieval era. Now the Micheal Almereyda version, directed in 2000, was more modern and edited. I prefer the Branagh version over the Almereyda version because it’s more depictive and more relevant to the play than the Almereyda version that lost the true value of Hamlet.
After spending some time in the trenches, they realized the true brutality of war, including the humiliation the soldiers must endure, such as using outdoor toilets in the open. During the progression of the novel, Paul is given leave to visit his family. While there, he feels truly disconnected from everyone around him. There is a point in time where Paul reflects that at the end of the war, he would be unable to reintegrate into society, as all he knows is war. All Quiet on the Western Front very strongly achieves its goal of showing how a generation was destroyed by the war through its intense use of showing how the men have gone from everyday boys in school to almost less-than-human soldiers.
Nick Gregory English 10b Mrs. Phillips 2/14/2012 All Quiet on the Western Front: A Brief Summary and Analysis In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque tells the story of a group of youths through Paul Baumer, as he comes to realize the horrific reality involved with serving his homeland of Germany during World War One. Paul discovers many negativities of war and this changes him forever. Many aspects of war caused soldiers to develop serious conditions forever altering their lives. Paul watches his friends fight and die for their country. There was a serious story told about the character Paul Baumer and his friends in World War One.
To start with, in the original version as well as Branagh’s version of “Hamlet”, the “To be or not to be” soliloquy comes before Hamlets encounter with Ophelia, where as in Zeffirelli’s version of the play, Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy comes after the scene where he speaks with Ophelia. Also, Zeffirelli’s version doesn’t completely follow the original script word for word. I personally feel that Zeffirelli’s version is better in both of these regards. As far as the scene sequences, I feel that Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” had become more relevant after his encounter with Ophelia because that encounter only added to his frustration and broken heart, which could have helped further explain his reasoning for considering whether life is worth living or not. In regard to the faithfulness of the original language in the script, I believe that it is better to differentiate a small bit as Zeffirelli did.
Keller’s ‘Libretti’ contain stories throughout the world where terrible events have taken place. Keller uses this as a mechanism to stay in touch with Vienna, and to remind himself of the atrocities that occurred when his wife and son were killed in the Holocaust. Paul’s ‘Form Guide’ contains the bad news that struck him – his competition results that confirmed that he would never be able to become a famous concert pianist. However, Paul realises that he still has a wife and a daughter. Keller knows that he does not have any family to love and care for, and uses his ‘Libretti’ as a constant reminder.
A common theme used throughout the novel was dehumanisation in which the soldiers were deprived of their basic human qualities and personality due to the numerous horrors of war they faced each day. Remarque manages to introduce and develop the theme of dehumanisation through such techniques as symbolism, imagery and first person perspective which therefore effectively engages the reader’s interest in the novel. In the epigraph Remarque says that he “simply try to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by war.” Ironically Paul and his comrades represent a whole generation of men known to history as “the lost generation” in which eight million men were died in battle, twenty one million were injured and over six and a half million civilians were killed. This also reveals Remarque’s hatred towards the war and how affective it can be although soldiers may escape its physical injuries. The novel is continuously in first person from Paul point of view which makes it seem more real and dramatic as we can see exactly how he feels at a specific time.
Also, Vonnegut wants the reader to learn to accept things and to understand that change is inevitable. Through the deaths and violence in the book, Vonnegut's audience is not only overwhelmed by the absurdity of war but also by the grudging acknowledgement of the unavoidable. In the book, the death of Edgar Derby is both shocking and impacting. Derby was a middle-aged high school teacher who chose to fight in the war when he did not have to. Although Derby was a seemingly unimportant character, his death spoke volumes.
Tim O’Brien did a fantastic job at describing each soldier’s load that they carried both emotionally and physically. This really tells a story in itself about each man. It gives you compassion for each man, you learn who they are and where they come from. The most important item that was described in the story is the letters that First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross received from Martha, a girl who he had met in college and hoped to start a relationship with. These letters from Martha were in no way love letters even though they were and deep down he knew that, however to get him through the war and have something to survive for Jimmy Cross would daydream about her and he became obsessed with envisioning their life after the war.
Anthem For Doomed Youth is a sonnet written by Wilfred Owen about the realities of war. Wilfred Owen was a soldier during WW1 and therefore understands fully the true experiences of war. He was against war and was appalled by the effects of war on people and their families. The purpose of the poem is to inform the public of the true realities of war and how young men where dying needlessly. This was because during war times the media would tell the public that the war going great and that the men where doing just fine, but this obviously just wasn’t true.