The Role of Ghosts and Spirits in Shakespeare’s Hamlet Hannah Petro ENG 4U D. Janisse 2012 04 02 Throughout history, humans have been fascinated with death and what comes after it. Therefore, it is not uncommon that these topics appear often in literature. Shakespeare is no exception, having death and the afterlife play major roles in his plays. One of the most well known examples of this is in Hamlet, where Shakespeare has a ghost as a main character. The role of ghosts and spirits in Shakespeare’s Hamlet is to provide important information to Hamlet, to highlight key components of Hamlet’s character, and to engage and excite the audience.
The grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” tells her sons family and him to go to Tennessee. Disregarding her words, the family ends up going to Florida where things seem to go terribly wrong. Half way through the story, the grandmother speaks about a house the kids are fascinated about. Eventually realizing that the house was actually in Tennessee rather than in Georgia. She realizes she has made a huge mistake and needs to revise things.
Shakespeare’s writing shows the significance of Act 3 Scene 4 with the importance of the character of Lady Macbeth. We see this by Lady Macbeth’s diction and her questioning Macbeth repetitively about being a man. The ability of Lady Macbeth to keep Macbeth calm and in line, also to revoke tension surrounding Macbeth shows the consequential role she plays to the play. The unveiling of Macbeth’s new personalities begins in this scene, when the news of Banquo’s death but Fleance’s survival is broken to Macbeth. This scene introduces us to a new Macbeth no longer brave and confident but “cabin, cribbed and confined in his doubts and fears”.
When Mrs. Johnson tells Dee that she cannot have them because she has already given them to Maggie; Dee gets furious that Maggie could come before her. Dee tries to argue that Maggie will ruin the quilts by using them everyday. Maggie tells Dee that she can just have the quilts, but Mrs. Johnson won’t have it. Dee gets mad that she did not get her way, and says hateful things to her sister and mother as she is leaving. You see, one person’s glamour, may be another’s misery; just as what someone may display, someone else could put to personal everyday use.
These women would spend all hours of the day cleaning the house, washing the dishes, caring for the children, gardening, and many other things. As if this job wasn’t tiring enough, they suffered more abuse in the community. In relation to the book, Mayella Ewell is a perfect fit for this role. As Scout was walking past the Ewell’s house, she noted, “Against the fence, in a line, were six chipped-enamel slop jars holding brilliant red geraniums, cared for as tenderly as if they belonged to Ms. Maudie
In William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, he conveys ideas of main psychological challenges that human’s face daily. In the passage above, Lady Macbeth is responding to the news that Duncan is on his way to the castle after learning from Macbeth’s letter about the fulfillment of the three weird sisters’ first prophecy. In this soliloquy, Lady Macbeth’s character is given another personality, and that reveals that under certain circumstances and that in certain situations she cracks. Although the challenges in the play are not necessarily the same ones that an average human faces, Shakespeare conveys ideas of the psychological challenges and develops Lady Macbeth’s second character through his use of diction and structural elements. Firstly, through diction, Shakespeare develops Lady Macbeth’s second character.
Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy Hamlet, composed at the turn of the seventeenth century, is one of the best known and most quoted works of its time. Set in the Kingdom of Denmark, this piece is thematically concerned with the dramatic ideals of confrontation and resolution. Audiences throughout time have been exposed to the underlying themes of confrontation and resolution exercised by the tragic hero Hamlet himself, to reveal the dramatics of self-analysis. As modern audiences we endure this portrayed to the extent of frustration, mirroring the catharsis effect felt by Elizabethan audiences, as Hamlet questions his inner self, confronting his cowardice with divinely purpose on multiple occasions throughout the play. Hamlet questions whether to take action in avenging his father’s death or to commit suicide in his fourth soliloquy, located in the rising action of the dramatic structure of the play, seen particularly in the lines “puzzles the will/ And makes us rather bear those ills we have/ Than fly to others that we know not of?” Here, Shakespeare foreshadows the recurring theme of Hamlet’s inaction towards avenging his father’s death and uses rhetorical questions to aid in his self-analysis.
Hamlet- Soliloquy Assignment Hamlet has many emotional soliloquies in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which include him reflecting on his many life troubles, contemplating suicide, and making plans for revenge. Hamlet’s Act II Scene II soliloquy, which is a lengthy one, is broken down into four main thoughts; the first being how upset Hamlet is over the Player’s ability to get into the role of seeking fictional revenge with no emotional investment in a play, whereas he is a “John-a-dreams” who has made no real plans for revenge. This leads to the second main idea: Hamlet is chastising himself for procrastinating avenging his father’s death. At this point his is mopey and whiney about his lack of drive to accomplish his task. Hamlet increasingly gets angrier and angrier with himself as he keeps talking, and his anger turns to Claudius.
By living with other women in the camps, Sara saw a lot of families on the verge of splitting, “she wanted to die with her mother. They tore her from her mother by force” (Nomberg-Przytyk 34). Death was an everyday occurrence within the camps, after a while people got used to seeing dead bodies, felt that they were next. With the number of deaths racking each day, others were pregnant and delivered their babies within the camps of the holocaust. Since Sara worked within the hospital of the camp she witnessed the birth of a baby who should have been born dead.
For instance, before the performance of The Murder of Gonzago, Hamlet explains to Horatio, “There is a play tonight before the King. / One scene of it comes near the circumstance, / which I have told thee, of my father’s death. / I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot, / even with the very comment of thy soul / observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt / do not itself unkennel in one speech, / it is a damned ghost that we have seen” (Ham 5.2.80-87). In this scene, Hamlet devises a plan to determine Claudius’ guilt and outlines it to Horatio and asks for his help with absolute sanity.