Hamlet and Whitman Analysis PDF

## Hamlet * **"it is a commentary on the unreliability of appearances” – Milicent Bell.** Hamlet acting crazy in front of Ophelia is a way of protecting her. While many productions try and make Hamlet seem aware of Polonius listening in, it can be argued that these scenes are made to make a point...

## Hamlet * **"it is a commentary on the unreliability of appearances” – Milicent Bell.** Hamlet acting crazy in front of Ophelia is a way of protecting her. While many productions try and make Hamlet seem aware of Polonius listening in, it can be argued that these scenes are made to make a point that Hamlet is unaware. * **“Though he pretends to be mad it is not evident what purpose this really serves" - Milicent Bell.** * **"disregard his instinct to preserve himself by ignoring his guilty uncle.” – Joe Keener** * **"he employs drama to understand how to live in his world” – Joe Keener.** He means he uses drama to see is Claudius is evil or not. * **"Hamlet shrinking back from his revenge in "religious doubt" or a religious horror at the depravity of human nature” – John Gillies** * **""To be" refers to taking arms against Claudius and that "not to be" indicates suffering or inaction” – Vincent Petronella** * **"Oedipal echoes cannot be disentangled from Hamlet's grief," and “expand our understanding of the nature and intensity of his suffering." - Arthur Kirsch** * **"The true appearances of things are revealed by phenomena from outside the world of Elsinore" - Charles Forker** * **"Polonius is an actor in the world of hypocrisy” – Charles Forker** * **"his tendency to dramatize cannot be equated with Claudius' mask” – Jacqueline Latham.** Claudius uses a mask planted in reality; Hamlet uses a mask to escape responsibility. * **“their awareness of the odour, originating in the foul soul of Claudius, that permeates the kingdom.” – Richard Altick** * **"may justify murder to himself, there is no sign that he can bring himself to face the horror of doing it” – Richard Brucher** * **"a conflict between the moral failure and aesthetic triumph of artful murder" - Richard Brucher** * **"To others, the King's implied confession of guilt is meaningless." - Robert Reed** * **"When he got into difficulty, it was not because of pending senility but because of over confidence about his schemes” – Catharine Stimpson** ## Fortinbras: * **"Fortinbras, who is the one character whose hands will remain free of murder" - K.R. Eisler** * **"All the chief characters in the play, with the exception of Fortinbras, die violent deaths" - K. R. Eissler** * **"a conflict between the moral failure and aesthetic triumph of artful murder" - Richard Brucher** * **"Contrasting the activity of an ambitious leader with the inactivity of Hamlet" - William Lawrence** * **"We may infer that Fortinbras is related to the Danish Royal Family" - William Lawrence** ## Ophelia: * **"it is more "the pangs of despiz'd love" which cause her tragic fate than the death of Polonius." - Carrol Camden** * **"Her critical history, much like her treatment in the play, has been from the beginning a paradoxical one of possession and objectification” – Sandra Fischer** * **“the repression of Ophelia's voice is juxtaposed against Hamlet's noisy soul-wrenching soliloquies” – Sandra Fischer** * **"Ophelia's madness is all the more disconcerting and pathetic in its juxtaposition to Hamlet's macabre, playful madness” – Sandra Fischer** * **“Ophelia's rhetoric transforms us into judges who praise or blame Hamlet” - Richard Finkelstein** * **"As Ophelia resists parental intrusion, she exposes the problematic origin and nature of filial loans, particularly by examining their function in psychological processes of identification.” – Richard Finkelstein** * **“we read Polonius' over-involvement in his daughter's romantic yearnings in terms of desires for political advancement, but also in terms of psychological needs for identification” – Richard Finkelstein** ## Grave Diggers: * **"The gravedigger helps reveal a Hamlet tragically flawed in his inability to recognize how a major way of knowing restricts both his love and his philosophy." – Maurice Hunt** * **"The gravedigger's ridiculous equivocation here appears to act as a foil to Hamlet's serious making of distinctions.” – Maurice Hunt** * **"The gravedigger does not think that skulls and rotting bodies are identical with the characters who gave them life." - Maurice Hunt** ## Whitman: * **“Leaves of Grass sings the hopefulness of the plain man, sure that our country offers a chance for everybody” – Harry Neumann** * **"Whitman was content to feel and to chant his feelings, without justifying them to the intellect” – Harry Neumann** * **“He liked people just as human beings. Much as he loved the roar of rivers and of mountain winds” – Harry Neumann** * **“The poem wants to find a relationship between the soul and the material universe which is kindred to.” – David Bromwich talking about a Noiseless Patient Spider** * **"Whitman sets out to integrate the two antagonistic halves of the American soul: measureless pride (the liberty of the individual) and love (the law of humanity as a whole).” – Ronald Hagenbuchle** * **"He disturbed many of his early readers who found his celebration of sex, his radical rejection of creeds and schools, and his barbaric yawp offensive." - E.F. Carlisle.** In this Carlisle refers to how 19th century readers saw Whitman as being radical and strange due to his liberalism. * **"He virtually ignores evil and suffering” – E.F. Carlisle.** In this he refers to how modern readers are also disturbed by Whitman because of his lack of care and involvement which in some ways goes against our modern social fabric. * **"In Whitman transcendence does not mean rising to a supernatural level. Instead, the self is immerged in physical reality, but at the same time rises above them” – E.F. Carlisle.** Basically, Whitman was really into 'no pain no gain'. * **“Whitman was America's first Jacobin theorist of democracy” – Michael Mosher.** Jacobins were a group during the French Revolution who had many beliefs, but in relation to Whitman the main ones to focus on are: universal male suffrage, the dismantling of social hierarchies, justice against those who were enemies of the revolution (guillotine), and economic reforms to address poverty. * **“Whitman's chief problem in the calamus poems is to invent a way of speaking affirmatively about a subject that his audience considered unspeakable” – Joseph Cady** * **“Whitman's chief means of making this ‘translation' are his adjustment of homosexuality to the idea of radical democracy” – Joseph Cady** * **“Nationalist promotions of Whitman eclipsed the poet's sexual thematics” - David Metzer** * **"Individualism to Whitman did not mean that society would be made up of splinters" - Chris Carnahan** * **"There could never be a question of the state versus the individual. For Whitman the individual was the state" - Chris Carnahan**