Connection: Hamlet and The Pact

The play Hamlet has a question that is reinforced time and time again throughout the play. The question "To be or not to be", as Hamlet the main character puts it is a question that has poped up in various works of literature, one of them being The Pact by Jodi Piccoult. The Pact is a book about two young people who have known each other for their whole lives and have been in love for as long as they can remember. They spent every waking moment with each other and one day, the girl decides that she has gotten everything she wants out of life and that she wanted to kill herself. She decided that she wanted her boyfriend to be there when she did it, so that he would be the last person she saw. Whether it was on purpose or not, when the police showed up, it looked like the boyfriend shot her and she did not commit suicide.
In the play Hamlet, the main character also ends up killing himself (although it was in a more non-direct way). The two main characters of these works of literature both dealt with the question "to be or not to be" and they both chose to end their misery on earth. Both of the characters had been corrupted not only by society in general, but by the people that they loved the most. Hamlet had been forced to reconsider his being and human nature in general when his father was killed by his uncle and the girl in The Pact was corrupted by her boyfriend, who made her realize that there was nothing more to live for. The one difference between the two characters is that in the play Hamlet, Shakespeare made it obvious how much Hamlet was sufferring and the reason for his demise, whereas in the The Pact, Piccoult left out several details about the girl until the end of the book, making it a sort of mystery.
This connection is really interesting, but it involves two characters that are almost complete opposites, that end up doing the exact same thing. The decision to off themselves is very interesting because it shows how there isn't exactly one type of person that has suicidal thoughts and that even though a person may look happy on the surface, in reality, they are miserable. It's interesting because it shows how fake our world is. Both of the characters were opposite people when it came to their public and private lives and they seperated the two as if to form two different personalities for each person. By doing this, it showed that neither of them truly knew who they were and their true identity and this is the core reason why they decided to escape from this world. This reason created a sense of self loathing and uselessness that none of them could escape from.

360 Degrees: Agnosticism

I think the concept of proclaiming oneself as agnostic is really interesting, because it has so many degrees to it. Recent studies show that the second highest "religous group" ( if it can be called that) in the United States today are agnostics and atheists. Where did all the protestants and Catholics go? It's really interesting because all of the people that are my age (and a little younger) seemed to have that bit of religious ferver and zeal that the older generations still hang on to. It seems as if my generation is the first generation to not actually identify themselves with any sort of religious affiliation and i'm not yet sure if it's a good thing. I mean, most of my friends and fellow classmates seem to have this sort of "fear" of religion in general. Whenever I try to spark up a conversation about God or whether or not a certain person believes in it, that person gives me the most peculiar look i've ever seen.
Being agnostic isn't as bad as some may think. I'm sure that the older generations are looking down and frowning upon us, for we are nothing but sinners in their eyes, but in my opinion, being agnostic is better than being an atheist. Acknowledging that there is some type of God out there that has created us all and that even though he/she is unknown, we still believe in him/her because we so desperatley need to believe in something bigger than us. We so desperatley need to feel as if the fate of the world isn't in our hands, that we are not the ones responsible for the tragic disasters that happen in this world. If a person has the decency to acknowledge a higher being, I think they are smart to do so because they themselves are going agasint the status quo. They are essentially saying that they refuse to refuse any religion or diety that exists. That they refuse to be looked at and judged by a stereotype that a lot of us in this world fall under. But is this such a brave thing? I definitley think it is, in fact I think it's the bravest thing we can do as humans, refuse to be stereotyped, refuse to be judged by what we identify with religiously.
On the other hand, it is also very risky to be an agnostic. Since the beginning of time, people have needed something to believe in, to have faith in. This of course was hard to do until the concept of religious icons and names and stories were tied down to these religious leaders. If we suddenly slip and don't stick to a certain religion won't that be bad? Won't it ruin who we are as humans? I think only time can tell, but as for now, i'm thinking that if we have no bigger entity to stop us from becoming "sinners" or being "condemned" on judgement day, then won't we all just rebel and do repulsive things to one another? If not, then is there truly a way to accept one another and have peace amongst one another?

Carry It Forward: Hamlet

In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, he uses the dialectic of the private vs. public persona that Hamlet obtains and has to distinguish between in almost every situation that he faces. Shakespeare demonstrated how Hamlet is very different in private because it is the only time where he can actually show who he really is. In private he is this severely depressed and over-analitical being that is trying to make sense of the choatic world around him, whereas in public, he chooses to hide his private side and act "fake" towards everyone. Instead of talking about what's really on his mind (his father's death), he represses these feelings for more welcoming ones whenever he is around others. The interseting thing about Hamlet is that in a way he does bring out his private side in public, but in a very sarcastic way and because he brings it out through sarcasm, most people don't catch on to it.
I think that this idea of being a whole person and not having to distinguish between the private and public is very important. The reason I bring this up is because I want to carry this idea into my future. I want to actually atempt to be a more whole person by showing exactly what I am feeling and thinking at the time and not having to be fake around anyone anymore. Even though most people I know have to be fake and supress their true emotions and thoughts because they either have a job that requires you to do so or are in a circumstance that never allows you to be yourself (like a persons's family) , I think it's important for people to at least realize that they are being fake. I think that it is important for them to stop doing this, and just become themselves. If we all act as two different people all the time, then how are we suppossed to know who we really are? How are we suppossed to trust each other and love each other?

Research: William Shakespeare

http://www.bardweb.net/man.html
http://www.bardweb.net/language.html
William Shakespeare was a very mysterious man because little about his life is actually known, aside from his works of literature. The only other documents that exist about his life are a few church and legal documents. Shakespeare was born on April 23rd (which is a weird coincidence that i'm writing this on April 23rd!!) 1564. He was born to a leather merchant and local heiress and he was the third of eight children (three of who actually died). Because his parents couldn't really afford an education, they enrolled Shakespeare in a free grammar school where he learned about Greek Classics and Latin but because he never chose to attend a University, his works of literature were controversial. Many people debated whether or not his works were actually acurate and authentic.
In 1582, he married Anne Hathaway and had twins Hamnet and Judith and Hamnet later died at the age of 11. Then in 1592, he once again appeared in London, after showing no signs of life for four years, establishing himself as a devout actor and playwriter. The irony of his life was, of course, that he ended up dying on his birthday, April 23rd, in 1611.
Another interesting thing about Shakespeare is that in the time period that he was writing, there was no dictionary or any word reference source where he could of looked to helped him write. He had a vocabulary of 17,000 words, which is quadruple that of an average writer which is highly impressive considering that he didn't even attend a university. Also, it is said that he added almost 3,000 words to the English language, which is absolutely incredible and inspiring. This definitley makes me respect him more as a person and certainly as a writer.

Carry It Forward: Letters to a Young Poet

Although Letters to a Young Poet was a quick and easy read that would take anyone about an hour to read, I actually took my time reading it and finished it over the course of a few days. My intention wasn't to do, but the more I read, the more I found myself thinking about Rilke's statement on solitude. Throughout the whole book, he encourages Kappus to live his life in solitude and rely only on himself. Rilke claims that the only way in which someone can get to become to a great poet (or a great anything for that matter) is by being in solitude and being introspective. He says that if you remain in solitude, you will have time to explore your most inner feeling and experiences and interpret them for what they actually mean. By doing this, one will know exactly who they are what their experiences have done for them and they will subconsciously transfer something meaningful into whatever work they are doing (in Kappus's case poetry).
To me personally, this is really interesting because it made me realize that I live my life by the opposite manner of what Rilke is encouraging people to do. Instead of spending my life in solitude and looking for answers within my own mind, I depend on other people for answer. I depend on my teachers, family and friends to provide me with comfort, security, knowledge and happiness. It's not necessarily that I don't spend time alone, it's just that in a society like this, where there is constant interaction with other people, it's hard for someone like me to live in comeplete solitude. It's hard for me to solve everything on my own because (in my opinion) i'm not mature enough and I still need some guidance in my life. In the future however, perhaps one day when I feel ready to take on the challenge of living a life where I comfort myself and am happy by simply being with myself and enjoying myself. Life is full of tragedies and i've learned that sometimes you just simply can't trust other people. I hope that by attempting to live my life in solitude in the future it will make me trust myself and truly understand the reason for my being and from this interpretation be able to live a happy life devoted to me, myself and I.

Captured Thought: Religion

It's very interesting how more and more people in the U.S. are starting to look down upon religion and are starting to disregard it as an effective means of living one's life. Many people are starting to claim that they are atheists and that there is no reliable proof to prove the existence of any type of diety, (which I find kind of absurd and ironic). We are probably one of the few countries in the world that don't have any steady base of religion. This trend is significantly ironic considering that the foundations of the U.S. was based off of religion. As I started to think about this more and more I realized that maybe democracy played a major factor in this trend. Maybe our "freedom of religion" and "freedom of speech" has given us too much liberty and we now feel as if we can disregard all of the philosophical ideas about religion and deities in favor of our new 21st century philosophy of meaninglessness. I don't know if this completely makes sense, but if you take a look at all of the other countries around like the globe, you would see that they are almost the exact opposite.
Take India for example. They are a fairly socialist society and although there's a large amount of poverty in the country, the people there are extremely happy. The reason why they are so is because they are religious. They (the majority of the people in India) practice Hinduism and even though things might be falling apart in their country and they might not have enough money for food to last them for the whole week, they are still extremely hopefull and greatfull of what they do have. I find this incredibly influencial and extremely hopefull. I believe that if the U.S. were to have some unifying force (and i'm not saying that religion is the only example of a unifying force), then I think we would finally be able to escape this materialistic society that we live in and find peace and happiness within ourselves and within the world.

Metacognition: Frank Gehry Project

For the Frank Gehry project, our group had the task of building a 21st century library that reflected the worldview and philosophy of our community in the present time. Before I started sketching and brainstorming about what this building would look like, I first had to reflect and think about how people view the world today. In order to do this, I looked over the Modern Art packet and other handouts from class and kind of reminded myself of the 21st century's philosophy; that we are meaningless and essentially, nothing and that there is no way in which we can know every aspect of ourselves. After reflecting on this, I started brainstorming about what the library might look like and wanted to make sure that whatever the design turned out to be, that it wasn't the typical symmetrical two story building and that it had sort of an incomplete look to it. 

Once I established these guidelines for building, I started sketching different type of architecture for our library. I started out with one simple sketch and then after I completed it, I looked at it and decided which parts I didn't like and then erased and made revisions to it. While making these revisions, I always had the present day philosophy in the back of my mind and used that as a guide to shaping and designing our library. Also, I wanted to make sure that my sketches had a sort of inviting and appealing outlook to the people in the community and that the library had a design that completely differed from the traditional; a design that didn't look like a storehouse. 

Overall, I think that my thinking process throughout this project was fairly effective because I stuck to our rubric and compromised with my group about the final revisions. The only thing that surprised me about my thinking was the fact that I kept in mind my group members suggestions, which made the final piece a great work of compromise. The only thing that would be better would be to have the time to brainstorm and sketch together as a group, using all of our ideas and thoughts and revising them so that we came up with the best possible model.