Robert Graves

Kenz just said that Claudius caused everything…even Ophelia’s death. I rebuttled at that comment with an outburst of “ummmm…helllllllloooooooo…Hamlet?” I hate that I have to say this because I am a Hamlet sympathizer, but Hamlet caused Ophelia’s death I think. He acted so rashly and stabbed Polonius (though it was by accident) and took the body himself without a proper “christian” burial. This is one of the causes for Ophelia’s grief. It’s true that if Claudius hadn’t killed Old King Hamlet, then the Prince Hamlet wouldn’t have done any killing, but that does not dismiss Hamlet as one of the causes. Then Kenz was discussing that someone said that he/she had lost total respect for Hamlet. I actually agree with Kenz and also still have respect for him aside from his new impulsive behavior. But my god, his own Uncle killed his dad, stole his mother, and throne! And the fact that Hamlet does not but barely touch on the subject of the crown, but rather him being more concerned with his mother makes me repect him even more. That is a hero-like quality. He has the power to love (I do believe that he truthfully loved Ophelia). Hamlet was also so loyal to his father. He was more grieved about the death about his father, that he didn’t care about the throne at all. I think that is an honorable and loyal quality to have.

That wasn’t really specifically over Act 5, but it was compelling to me. Act 5 was a MASSACRE!!! I can tell you, I was surprised at how honorable Fortinbras seemed. He held Hamlet with respect too, wanting to give him a soldier’s burial. And let me tell you, Claudius got a bite back in the buttox. “Gertrude…do not drink!”. Ouch…then she did, and she died, and she could have possibly been the only person that he cared about.

Overall, I LOVED THIS PLAY. Maddie said she ranked it last out of all Shakespeare plays. no, no. I rank it number one for tradegy. Much Ado About Nothing I loved for Comedy. I liked Hamlet because it was full of action and it was not just about love like Romeo and Juliet. It has kings, themes of honor, which I am naturally drawn to. Also, the whole going mad aspect was a new aspect that I had not read in other books before. And I like that as well. It provoked my mind to question the character of Hamlet..if he was really crazy or not.

How could Gertrude, mother of Hamlet, do what she did to her own son? She does not trust her own son’s judgement! She goes off to tell Claudius that he is all mad. She doesn’t even give a thought that what Hamlet told her is true! It is betrayal!!! Oh, and Claudius and Laertes planning behind everyone to kill Hamlet. is just horrible. The dramatic Irony just kills me! They are so intent on killing him that they think of a back up plan in case Laertes fighting him with the poison sword doesn’t work. This proves two things about Claudius. 1) He feels no remorse for killing Hamlet’s father. He only cares about keeping “his estate”. 2) HE IS EVIL!!! He even looks evil in the movie…he looks like a greedy rat. I feel no sympathy towards him whatsoever, but for Hamlet I do. He killed Polonius in the previous play accidentely. He is acting rashly now. Hamlet did kill somebody…in particular Ophelia’s and Lartes’ father. That is what happened to Hamlet himself. The only thing that seperates Hamlet from Claudius is the fact that Claudius’ act of murder was planned and on purpose where Hamlet’s was accidental and in the moment. Still, the same result is in the end of both deeds and both prove to be just as reckless as Ophelia drowns herself.

Oh yeah. My prediciton about Ophelia dying was dead on! I kind of still had hopes for Hamlet and Ophelia. I thought that maybe they could find some way. However, this is a tradegy, so it can never end well.

Everything is in mayhem..but it was to be expected. I gotta tell ya though, I did not see Hamlet killing Polonius coming at all. I had to reread it 3 times to fully capture what had just happened (Had to do that when reading the part where Dumbledore died. It happened so fast!). And Hamlet…oh god how tragic. He thought it was Claudius, not Polonius. I feel so bad for Hamlet for that, but not afterwards. Does Hamlet really feel bad? Maybe I read it wrong, but he went to England straight after the deed was done. It would seem that he was running maybe. Right did he listen to Gertrude and Claudius’ bidding him to go there. And I would hate to ever think Hamlet as a coward! He goes from being mad (crazy) to not mad so easily…it is becoming a second nature to him. This being a tradegy I am questioning if Hamlet is indeed now mad and not pretending anymore. Hamlet is so impulsive and he seems to forget to think about others while acting. Ophelia for example. She is destroyed after witnessing Hamlet’s craziness. How far will Hamlet go to get his father’s revenge? And oh god oh god, if he dies in the end!

Ophelia is dead…I know it. It is Shakespeare’s way.

I find it very wierd that just last weekend I was watching Gladiator for the 20th time in my life and now this week I have found a connection between the movie and to Hamlet.

I just love Hamlet’s plan to “see the King’s conscience”. A play will be acted out in front of King Claudius and the story will be the same as what happened to Dead Hamlet. So clever! This way Hamlet can see how the king will react. Will he feel bad? I am assuming no since he moved on so quickly and told Hamlet to do so as well. And what will the reaction of Gertrude be?! Was she in on it? Anyway…a scene in Gladiator mimics this scene. Commodus (who actually killed his father to become emperor of Rome) finds out that his own sister, Lucilla, has been helping Maximus with his plan to escape. So as he is telling about a story to Lucilla’s son that is pretty much the same as what happened to him, Commodus observes his sister. His sister has tears streaming down her face. She fears what Commodus will do to her now that he knows his own sister has betrayed him.

It is the same plan that Hamlet had!!! Hamlet really is everywhere! Or maybe if this story is actually a historical happening, then maybe Shakespeare got his idea from this one.

Here are the lines…sadly no video clip…

Commodus: If you’re very good, tomorrow night I’ll tell you the story of emperor Claudius who was betrayed by those closest to him, by his own blood. They whispered in dark corners and went out late at night and conspired and conspired but the emperor Claudius knew they were up to something. He knew they were busy little bees. And one night he sat down with one of them and he looked at her and he said, “Tell me what you’ve been doing busy little bee or I shall strike down those dearest to you. You shall watch as I bathe in their blood.” And the emperor was heartbroken. The little bee had wounded him more deeply than anyone else could ever have done. And what do you think happened then, Lucius?
Lucius Verus: I don’t know, uncle.
Commodus: The little bee told him everything.

And its wierd that the name Claudius appears too.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172495/quotes

I decided to disect Act one for this blog to get the whole scene of the play.

Scene 1: Starts out with a changing of the guard. Bernardo and Horatio come to take over. Here we learn that Horatio is a scholar and the reasonable one.  The guards tell Horation and Bernardo of the apparition that they have seen the last two nights at the darkest hour of he night. They claim that it looks like the dead King of Denmark, Hamlet. Horation does not believe it uniil his own eyes see it that night. The guards all agree to tell Prince Hamlet of this apparition that looks so much like his father.

Scene 2: This scene starts out with now new King Claudius (Dead Hamlet’s brother) giving a speech about the grieving for his brother, but also his happiness of marrying the Queen (widow to dead Hamlet). Then Hamlet comes out who is in the most grievous of states. He still wears black and still cries fresh tears. His mother questions why her son is so sad still. She and her new king claim that it should not be so particular with Hamlet because it happens to everyone. Then everyone exits and Hamlet rambles on about his fury of his mother marrying so quickly. The physical aspect of the new marriage is quite disturbing to him.

Scene 3: Laertes is taking leave back to France as Claudius granted his permission to go back in Scene 2. He is talking to Ophelia, his sister. He doubts if she would write him. Also, he launches into an explanation of how Ophelia must be careful around Prince Hamlet. He is of royalty, which means Hamlet is strapped down by other responsibilities (and marrying other royalty). Laertes is concerned about his sister’s feelings. Then Polonius, the two’s father, warns Ophelia even more vigorously than Laertes did. He says that Hamlet does not mean honest love, and also forbids Ophelia from seeing Hamlet anymore.

Scene 4 and scene 5- Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus keep watch outside where the last sight of the apparition was. It appears again. Hamlet orders his guards to let him follow the ghost, which is indeed his father’s. Dead Hamlet tells his son of who killed him!!! (Claudius did that jerk). Hamlet promises to remember thee. Hamlet also makes Horatio and Marcellus swear upon his sword to not speak a word of what happened that night.

And this is where it all begins.

This is about the only comment I could find on this specific poem, but I can make something out of it. I couldn’t post an actual comment on the page because it required memborship and asked for info that I didn’t want to give out.

“There is no way we – of the modern generation – can possibly empathise with the sickness that was ww1. This poem gives a hint of horror”- Phillip Wilmot http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/escape/

I do agree with most of this statement. Many critics say that Graves is the most accomplished in being able to describe the war in a “horrid” way. There are many other poems other than Escape that prove this. One that specifically comes to mind is “The dead Boche”, which I have discussed in an earlier post. Graves’ description of a dead body is similar to Seigfried Sassoon’s description of a dead soldier in ”The Rear Guard”. I think that Graves also creates the same sort of morbid, solemn, inescapable, and horrid feeling that Eliot created in his “The Hollow Men”.  Even though this poem “gives a hint of horror” (I would say more than that), happiness is seen at the end. The Lines ”O Life! O Sun!” hint at this. At the end, the soldier (Graves) wakes up from his death- sleep and he beats the 3 headed beast in his imagination. Its only that fact that he was confirmed dead and literally taking a mental trip down to hell that was so agonizing and horried. I think it is quite happy in the end. I am not sure that happy is the quite word, but I am not a poet either. But the soldier feels a sense of freedom at the end.

Ok. So Robert Graves used a lot of Mythology in his poems as you probably now know. One of the things he did in one of his poems was retell a folktale. For example, in “The Frog and the Golden Ball”, Graves told of the well known story of the frog who turned back into a prince when kissed by a princess.

 ”Homeward Man”

The Battle of Troy has long past

and soldiers of war have left the shores

But one remains

Entrenched between satisfaction of death and happiness of life

No will to die

But to get home he countlessly tries

Ten years gone

And the journey ahead slow and long

In chaotic ruins Ithaca still stands

And weary Penelope faces Antinous

The suitor of greed

And Telemachus, helpless against his mother’s likely fate

Desperately seeks his father’s companions of war.

Menelaus and Nestor tell of Calypso and her tricks.

She could not deny the will of great Zeus.

The weeping soldier set sail homeward

Poseidon in his fury mastered the sea a storm

Intending to take the free man’s life.

Swim he did, against the will of fate,

And with Athena’s kind spells, slept through his laborious pains.

On the land of the Phaeacians,

He tells Nausicaa, princess of the land,

 Of his odyssey across the seas,

Of the one- eyed giant, the Siren’s deadly songs,

The sea monster Scylla,

The dead-land of Hades, and the blind man.

Telemachus returns unknowing of plots to kill

An old man comes to Ithaca

He is none other than a disguised soldier,

The long lost hero from Troy

The good nurse, recognizing that long scar,

“My King! My wonderful King!”

But promising him, she must, secrecy.

Penelope, suspicious she is, derives a crafty plan,

Crafty as the wooden horse of the Spartans,

None but her husband could draw his bow

Shooting the arrow through the twelve axels,

And he turns to the suitors,

With unforgiving revenge and justice.

His loyal servants call

“Odysseus, Odysseus, our great king. You’ve come home”

Her fingers to his face, Penelope thanks the Gods.

“O wife, O Life! At last I have come.”

I ATTEMPTED to retell The Odyssey. I loved that story. Its the same exact idea of The Frog poem.  Graves does talk about war in his poems a lot, and he sometimes talks about being in between death and life (trenches are a symbol for that). T.S. Eliot, whom Graves was influenced by somewhat, also presented this idea in “The Hollow Men”.  It is the same for Odysseus who is stuck either out at sea or trapped on an Island. He has no will to die, but he cannot get home as much as he tries. Therefore, he niether is in the underworld nor living a happy life. He is in between. “O Wife, O Life, is almost directly taken from Graves’ poem, “Escape”. The last line of that is “O Life, O Sun!”. The soldier in that story is escaping a dream of being in hell. Very similar to Odysseus’ reality. I also used some dialogue as Graves used this in a number of his poems.

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/10416-Siegfried-Sassoon-Does-It-Matter-    “Does is Matter” comment

http://literarybonanza.blogspot.com/2008/07/concept-of-myth-in-literature.html     Legend, myth, folklore. I made I comment out of what I learned of the difference between the three of these and commented on Jessie Wood’s wall. It was somewhat relevant to her poet.  http://jessieegr1.edublogs.org

http://mayaegr1.edublogs.org   – first comment assignment.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/escape/ - I didn’t realize this part of the assignment until quite a bit later! I hope thats ok. This is about my post about the poem Escape.

Overall, I think this project was very educational. I think I have learned something valuable. At times it was frustrating because I was new to the whole thing but it turned out fine. The assignments were not to strenuous and I actually became very interested in my poet. I usually dislike poetry, but I began to like it because of this project. One thing I do think would be better if you are going to do this again is give us a little more time for each post, at least for the intertextuality ones. I felt like if I really wanted to dig really deep like I did for the first intertextuality paper, then more time was needed. I was able to pull through though.  Oh, and I definitely like how flexible you were with the assignments. If it was hard to find information of some sort, you let me attack some other angle.  This is a good project for next year. I think having a research paper during the Grapes of Wrath Era (era because it took 5 weeks to read not 2) would have blown everyone outta the water!

“The word ‘myth’ is derived from the Greek word ‘mythos’, which means a traditional tale common to the member of a tribe, race or nation. It usually involves the supernatural elements to explain some natural phenomenon in boldly imaginative terms. Today myth has become one of the most prominent terms in contemporary literature analysis.”

Since Robert Graves and T.S. Eliot reference a ton to myths and folktale, I thought that I should define them and their differences. I came upon a post, and thought it was interesting since I never knew that myth, legend, and folktale had much difference.

“ But the application of the term ‘myth’ is very wide as there is a large variety of applications in contemporary criticism. We also need to understand the difference between myth, legend and folktale. M.H. Abrams has clearly defined all of these. ‘If the protagonist is a man rather than a supernatural being, the story is usually not called myth but legend; if the story concerns supernatural beings, but is not part of a systematic mythology, it is usually classified as a folktale.’ As mentioned earlier a myth is characterized by the supernatural elements.  ”

Graves uses both myth and legend that I know of. For example in “Babylon”, he references Sir Galahad from the knights of the round table. Galahad’s story is a legend, not a myth because he was not supernatural in any way. But then in “Escape” Graves reference to 3 headed beasts, “Lady Proserpine” (daughter of Hades), and ghosts too.

Mrs. Hazle, this is on Jessie Woods blog with a few extra comments about Beowulf. http://jessieegr1.edublogs.org

 

“Does it Matter?”

Does it matter?-losing your legs?
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter?-losing your sight?
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they matter-those dreams in the pit?
You can drink and forget and be gald,
And people won’t say that you’re mad;
For they know that you’ve fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit.

 

A guy commented,  ”This poem is sarcastic by the way”

This poem is not sarcastic. I mean, I can see how it can be APPLIED, but reading it in a non sarcastic way is better. I think that this is a poem written by the Sassoon that reflected his old romantic ideals of war. The last line says…”For they know that you’ve fought for your country, and no one will worry about it.” it practically shouts PATRIOTISM right off the page.

oh yeah! And then this other guy replies from the same blog…

“What does this poem meannnnn”

 Anyway, I think it is rather obvious of what this poem means. A soldier returns from war, having been scarred rather dramatically. But nobody cares because they hold so much pride knowing that he fought for the country’s cause.

This poem contrasts a lot from Sassoon’s “The Rear Gaurd” (previous post). This is why I think that this poem might have been written before Sassoon either met Graves or allowed Graves’ influence to teach him.

Mrs. Hazle, I put this post on the actual blog, but I also copied it here.