Month: March 2020

Augustine starts his confessions by admitting he does not know if he is living life or his death and thus questioning human origin. He starts describing his infancy and how he does not have an answer as to where he was before being born, but all Augustine knows is that once he was born, he was already a living creature: a soul and a body united. Augustine proceeds to describe infancy as a form of torture since babies cannot truly express their desires or needs, thus totally depending on someone else to take care of them. He considers that he was a sinner ever since this stage since he was making demands on everyone whenever he cried and thanked no one for giving him something when he needed it. From here, Augustine proceeds to clarify that God is the one in charge of uniting the being or the soul with the body and that as we grow older, these two are more attached to each other.

Death played a major role in Hamlet. Almost every person died throughout the play. During the first act, the former king appeared in the form of a ghost to inform Hamlet that he was murder by his own brother. Hamlet was not sure what to believe. He spent his time thinking and discussing death,because he wanted to make his uncle pay for his sins.  Hamlet’s mood changed once he found out about his father. Also, what he wanted was to kill his uncle. He hired a few actors to help him work on a play. The role of this play was to see the reaction of his uncle’s. Once the play was a success Hamlet started to come up with a plan. A plan to kill his uncle. Later on, hamlet’s plan to kill his uncle was a success. His uncle drank the poisoned drink,as well as his mother and they both died. By killing his uncle he also suffers and was killed as well.

In The Tragedy of Hamlet, all characters help to show the theme of appearance versus reality. There are many minor roles we can consider in this play. The characters I will focus my analysis on are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They both appear to be good and honest. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet’s childhood friends but Claudius hires them to work for him. They betray Hamlet by spying on him and informing Claudius about his activities. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern represent the friends in life who can get you killed. Even though their role in this play is minor, their characters teach us, in the end, how betrayal can get you killed. 

 

An underlying theme in this work of art was the relationship between shame and truthfulness. This is evident as shown with the
conversation between Socrates and Callicles. Callicles says that his discussion will not be limited by false shame, but it ends up that Socrates is the only one who expresses truthfulness in front of the young men, without feeling a sense of shame. Callicles feels so much shame to the point where he has to boast to overcompensate. By him doing this he believes noone will think he feels shame. Callicles may feel as if it is taboo for men to feel shame and feels as if he will be looked down upon.

Lysias regards the non-lover to be preferred by the beloved. within the beginning of the speech, Lysias supports the non-lover by stating they’re going to voluntarily satisfy the beloved’s self-interest even as very much like they’d satisfy their own (Phaedrus 231A). In other words, by preferring a non-lover, a symbiotic partnership will arise where both individuals can healthily enjoy each other. In contrast, Lysias states an admirer will hold expectations for a beloved, creating a demanding “give and take” relationship; not acting voluntarily but acting selfishly to realize something reciprocally. Such as, in modern terms, a person buys a lady dinner and therefore the man expects the girl to exchange sex for the value of a salad. Socrates states the irrational, instinctual behavior of the lover and the “acquired judgment” of the non-lover to be within a single individual (Phaedrus 237D-237E). Following this idea, Socrates sees the desire to be overpowering and drives lovers to “seek pleasure in the beautiful,” leading the lover to become jealous and hinder the beloved by over-protecting them and never allowing the beloved to learn and progress their mind (Phaedrus 239B). Because of Socrates’ conclusions of the lover being overpowered by desire, making irrational choices and being captivated by the lustful sickness of Love.

The ancient goddesses believe that vengeance is a part of justice. The Furies want to punish Orestes by whatever means necessary. On the other hand, Athena does not want to solve the dispute by revenge. Athena tries to devise a new conept of justice. Under Athena’s judicial system, Orestes needs to be tried by a jury, not by revenge. Justice can be achieved through the courts, not through personal vengeance.

Under Aeschylus’s depiction, Clytemnestra is not a madwoman as he made her revenge seem reasonable. His perspective lets the reader have sympathy for Clytemnestra’s actions by helping them understand her behavior and where she is coming from. This is evident by his depiction of her husband who kills their daughter. For Clytemnestra, these actions are unforgivable and have a deep impact on her conscience. We can also look at another perspective such that in the third play, where the judge brought up the question, “Is the murder of the husband serious, or killing the mother serious?”. This question lets the readers truly feel that it was a tragedy because Orestes did not want to kill his own mother. Morality and his right to life are the main reasons why he chose to kill his own mother to get revenge on his father.

Aeschylus’ use of imagery is essential in understanding and visualizing the impact of the different scenes that occur during the play. The best example of this was definitely in the scene where Clytaemestra was speaking about killing Agamemnon and stated “he spattered me with the dark red and violent driven rain of bitter savored blood to make me glad, as gardens stand among the showers of God in glory, at the birthtime of buds.” This quote helped us imagine the blood and gore from the killing and also helped us understand and connect with how Clytaemestra was feeling after the killing. Reading literature is not the easiest task to do as often times I find myself having to read the same line twice and really break it down to understand it, Aeschylus did a great job of using imagery to help the reader better understand the scenes.

We see a change at the end of the trilogy when the cycle of revenge is broken. The Athenian people use a judicial system to determine whether or not Orestes is guilty and by doing so we see one of the first examples of judicial justice system in history. It fits well with the rest of the story because in the first two stories we see the how without an impartial third party to give out judgements and without consequences or laws for actions society can not work properly. Then in the third and final tragedy, the Athenian people get together and vote whether or not Orestes is guilty. The verdict is split and Athena herself weighs in to tip the scales. We see an example of people becoming civil and giving him a fair trail where he was proven not-guilty instead of someone next in line coming and murdering Orestes in revenge.

Our modern ideas of love align with Platonic ideas of it. The original concept of Plato’s idea of love is between an older man and a younger man, but it was then interpreted by society as soul love. Either way, our modern ideas of love is similar to Platonic. Compare to others back in times, there are more people look forward finding a soulmate. Also, there are more open homosexual being accepted. I believe Plato’s conception of love influenced ours. Some people disagree with his ideas, but there are still a lot of people who refer their love style to Plato’s. Referring to Plato’s concept of love, we should find someone who can see through your appearance and find a great personality that attracts you. One who can bring significant influence to us, as we can both become a better one.