May 31

ELA B30: May 31 Hamlet reading begins…

1. We started off today’s class with a question, posed to one student. Andrew K, you have a dilema! Your best friend, Kale, has just come to you, at the party you’re enjoying, to tell you that your girlfriend, the one you’ve loved and been with for two years, Chelbie, was over in the corner with another guy! Chris Noll, of all people! You don’t believe it but Kale is adament that he saw the two of them making out!
You are in shock, but you talk to Chelbie about it and ask her, “What’s up with this!?!?” Poor Chelbie is at a loss because she swears she hasn’t talked to Chris, hasn’t seen him, and certainly wasn’t fooling around with him. “Why would Kale make up his garbage,” she cries. She reminds Andrew of how much she loves him, to which he absolutely believes. He never really could believe she’d make out with Chris, but why would Kale approach him and tell him that?
What does Andrew do? Does he take any action, or does he mull over the situation, put off making any changes to either relationship, because he doesn’t trust himself to make the right decision? Maybe, he thinks, if he does nothing, nothing with have to change, things can stay as they are. Then it’s like nothing really happened.
Except Kale has been a little “touchy” wondering why Andrew hasn’t dumped this girl yet. “Dude, you know what she did to you! Why is she still around?!”
But Andrew has no real response, other than he’s not sure.
Chelbie, too, is getting more annoyed. “This guy is trying to cause problems! Why would you still be his friend? He told you lies about me! If you love me, you’d trust me and lose him!”
Things are getting tense for poor Andrew. He does not know what to do. Act, and he could make the wrong decision, put everything off, and maybe nothing has to change. Except it is already. Things cannot go back to the trusting world he used to know. Nope, now he’s suspicious of everything, mistrusting of everyone, and acting jumpy with every moment. Poor Andrew is only putting off the inevitable.

**********************

Students laughed at this little story but they carefully mulled over the potential agony of the moment. What would you do, in Andrew’s place? Both people you trust dearly, yet one of them must be mistaken or toying with you.
Hamlet was in a similar situation, except it wasn’t a friend that told him something and a girlfriend that denied it. It was his dead father’s Ghost that told Hamlet that he was murdered, a murder most foul, and that it was Hamlet’s own uncle, brother to his dead father, who did the deed!!

Hamlet isn’t sure whether to trust this ghost though. Everyone knows ghosts tell you slight truths to lead you to your death, they play with your fate, and they cannot be trusted. But what if this is true? Hamlet spends the whole play putting off his decision until he is absolutely forced to act, and through his delay he causes the deaths of almost all the rest of the characters of the play.

It is a crazy story! Intruiging and absolutely one of the most detailed and vivid stories to read. How do you make your decisions, and how much do you doubt yourself when you do? You have to decide which post-secondary school to go to. Hamlet had to decide whether to Kill his Uncle, and fear that it would lead him to eternal hell!! Don’t YOU have it easy. lol
2. Students were handed out play books, they read through a typed sheet of information to know before beginning the play, and then we read along as the Audio CD wonderfully acted out the play for us in our mind’s imagination.


Posted May 31, 2007 by Waldner in category ELA B30

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