April
30
ELA B30: Ap 30 Act V… the end begins!
- We watched a short clip from the movie What About Bob. The doctor’s son is a very deep thinker and co
ntemplates death and all sorts of dark things. He’s laying in bed at night and talking to Bob about death and the reality that “it’s inevitable. I am going to die. You… are going to die.” This is exactly where Hamlet is in the play currently. He is about to have a dark and humbling conversation with the gravedigger and comes to the realization that regardless of how you lived in life or what status you had, all people arrive at the same end – fragments of particles in the dirt. - We followed along with the reading and audio. I stopped the audio for a second to ask the students what Hamlet’s mindset at this point should be. He’s just recently sent a snarky letter to Claudius, hinting that he’s on his way to “have a word with him”, giving readers the impression Hamlet is finally going to take action. Here, though, it seems as if he’s lost all energy, hope, determination, or anything else needed to care about his task.
The question here is (and yes it’s a nagging question, Nicole!) is whether Hamlet’s actions / mindset seem inconsistent and just are more of the same putting off of his task or is this a gap in Shakespeare’s writing? Hard to say! - We finished reading just at the point where Hamlet has agreed to participate in the dual planned. Students took note that Hamlet has now committed almost all of the same crimes he believes Claudius has committed and therefore is almost equally as guilty. Can Hamlet continue killing a man who acted as selfishly as he himself? We compared the death of Polonius (a rash act without thought but much consequence) and the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (which Hamlet carefully planned and had carried out). Whether he should hold guilt over Polonius’s death, the death of his friends is surely more proof of his own corrupting mind.