'Reflection on Blogging'

Honestly i kinda liked blogging in this class just because it was something new and i had never done it for a class before. When the professor said in the beginning of the semester that this would be a requirment for this class i thought it was strange cause i'd never heard of that before. At times, it did start to get a little lame to me because i didn't always feel like doing sometimes because of the fact that i always couldn't get one because my computer would act up and that got me frustrated. them but i tried. The most part that i liked about blogging this semester was that i got to read other people's responses and to see what they were thinking. That was pretty cool.

Also the comments were cool to. Some of the comments i got were kinda helpful and others were just there just to be there. What i didn't like is that we had a deadline because i think we should have a little more freedom with that but i did like that we could choose what we wanted to write about because everyone might not have anything to write about just one specific thing some people are more creative than others and other people do better with writing facts and explaining things.

The fact that the professor had some blog choices where you could draw things or come up with your own twist on things was good. Everybody doesn't wanna write about the same thing as eachother all the time because you end up getting the same responses repeated over and over again I don't think that i will be blogging on my own after this. I've never been interested in it before, it's just not my thing.

Deception

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair" (1.1.12)
This quote was made by the three witches who are chanting around a steaming cauldron in a desert. This line sort of sets the tone for the play basically saying that foulness or bad doing is fair and can be justified. These lines are like a eye opener to make the reader a little more interested and focus on what might happen or to hint that something foul is about to go down sooner or later in the play.

This line also relates to the quote in 'Hamlet' "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" because it also meant that something was really wrong or someone did something wrong in Denmark and was one of the important themes in the play which was stated in the first act of Hamlet.


"There's daggers in men's smiles" (2.3.)
This line was said by Malcom, one of King Duncan's sons and he says this because everyone is claiming to be loyal to the king and his sons but you can never really trust anyone at this point in the play. This is bascially saying that people can be very fake, behind their friendly smiles but really they want to stab you in the back.

I really think that this qoute would refer to Hamlet's uncle Claudius because he was truly a backstabber when it came to him and Hamlets father. Claudius pretends that he's a good guy when we see him become king but really he is the villain for killing his brother/Hamlet's father in the play but no one knows it until the ending. There were daggers behind Claudius's smile...in his case poison.

murder
"Nothing is what but what is not" (1.3.141-142)

Macbeth says this quote and he makes this remark because he's talking about the subject of murder and imagining horrible things. He also states that the thought of murder "ratteles his nerves" and talks about how the predictions that the witches have made and told him, frighten him alot.

I don't know how this can realte to Hamlet but i'm guessing it would in some way go with the murder of hamlets father and Claudius and Hamlet.




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"There's A Divinity That Shapes Our Ends"

It's really difficult to state weather or not Hanlets fate was shaped by divinity or not but there are different things that happen in the play that could lead you to believe that it was. Hamlets father coming back as a ghost to tell him about how he was killed could be seen as divinity because Hamlet had no control over that event happenning at the time and it led him to seek revenge for his fathers death. On the other hand he did have control over how he went about dealing with it. Also Hamlet was supposed to be killed when he went to England with Rosencrantz and Guildestern but he came back to Denmark alive. That can be shown as divinity playing a role in what takes place in Hamlets life and the outcome of things. I think that divinity has a major affect on everything that happens to Hamlet throughout the play. Even though Hamlet's plan for the whole play was to kill Claudius and he did, it wasn't in his plans to also die in the process to, so i think that also can be shown as plain fate.


Personally i think that there is a higher force that controls what we become and how we beccome that. As human beings we can always plan things and plan how we want our life to turn out but in the end...that's not how it works. Your outcome in life is a result of your experiences and how you deal and learn from those things. You can't plan the whats gonna happen to you next...it's not realistic. Plenty of people have planned outcomes for themselves or said that their gonna be this or that but it's turned out differently.

Othello's "Fit"

Othello's fit in Act 4 scene 1 is a big eye-opener and window into the characteristics of him. As a reader, i feel that Othello is now showing a side of him that we can't imagine him being because we see him as a calm and rational individual. I felt more sympathy for Othello because he is very hurt and angry from what he is starting to believe and it's making him act crazy. I also feel sorry for him because he's being played with by Iago. I also feel sympathy for Othello because he and Desdmona really love eachother. Othello's fit also shows how great a manipulator that Iago is because obviously this is part of the result of Iago getting into Othello's head and making him think that Desdmona is being unfaithful when infact she really is. Iago proved that he could bring out a side Othello that's really not in his character. In Othello's fit, he mentions the handkerchief a couple of times and about confessing "Handkerchief-confess handkerchief! to confess..." Othello's fit also did make him look childish and deeply insecure because he really didn't have any solid proof of knowing that he was being cheated on by Desdmona. Even though he felt that his relationship with Desdmona was totally normal, he still knew that he was different and that he was considred an outsider to a certain point. I think that was beginning to play into what Iago was telling him at the same time.

CLAUDIO: Genuinely Panintent or Shallow and Insincere?

In act 5 of Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio shows his anger towards the situation with Hero and this guy that was supposedly "at her window" at night. He expresses that he is sad and angry through his little performance that he put on at the wedding. It also showed how immature he is. I don't think that Claudio deserved another chance with Hero because he never really proved how much he loved her. When he found out that Hero was dead, he didn't seem likie he really cared. He showed no emotion, he didn't seem sad at all. All he cared about was that some other man took her virginity. When Leanarto came to challenge Claudio he took it as a joke and laughed at him and said he was too old for him to fight. That doesn't show much respect for a man who's daughter that u caused to die. Claudio was was clowning around with Don Pedro as if nothing had happened. If Claudio was really hurt by Hero's death he would have cried and mourned even if she did do what she was accused of, just like he did when he found out she was innocent. If you truley love someone you would show it no matter what the situation is, weather they did right or wrong.

"Benedick the Married Man"

I think that Benedick trys to come off as this guy who swears to god that he will never be a sucker for love or get married, but deep down he really does believe in love. He even said that he never wants to get married because the wife isn't going to do anything but be unfaithful to him and he rather just "save his money and dress himself better with it" than to spend it on a wife. I also believe that he has some kind of love for Beatrice deep down weather he wants to admit it or not. Even though they always argue and isult eachother, there is some kind of connection or bond in that alone. If you look at how they argue, their responses anticipates one another's. I think Benedick will soon realize that.

'ShakesP's World'

Ok so from reading Shakespeare's World, there were a few facts that stood out to me from everything else. The fact that during that time there were no hospitals like we have today and almost all birth's and deaths happened at home. But thats not the worst part. People had no way of physically relieving pain and suffering (which i can imagine is horrific) so they used liquor as a substitute but really didn't help any. That fact also reminded me of the movie 'John Adams' (about the second president of the United States). There was a scene where a woman had breast cancer so her breast had to be cut off, but not the way a hospital today would do it. Two men had to hold her down and cut off her breast but before they did it, they had the woman down half a bottle of Vodka. It was interesting to read that married woman didn't have the same privilages that single woman did. Single women could own land and sue people without a male guardian but married women couldn't? I thought it would be the other way around (shocking). Another thing that was interesting to me was the way that people would be punished. There were all of these wierd methods used like the 'Skimmington Ride', riding on a donkey backwards? how did they come up with that?? and public humiliation. I think Shakespeare would have used some of these things to put his writing and plays together. I also think that some of his insiration came from depressing times like the Plague since almost all of his plays are about tragadies and deaths. It made his work believable and strong.