Month: April 2020

The conflicting imagery of Gertrude emerges from remarrying Claudius and being Hamlet’s mother. The marriage seems immoral and has no doubt strengthened the hate and Hamlet’s determination to revenge. However, in my opinion, marrying King Claudius is probably the only way for Gertrude to keep Hamlet safe and keep him with her. When Hamlet pretends that he is going crazy, Gertrude worries about him the most. Gertrude is just a mother, trying to protect his son from being hurt. In the final scene of the play, Gertrude drinks the poisoned wine that Claudius has prepared for Hamlet. Even though Claudius tells Gertrude not to drink, Gertrude does it for his son. Shakespeare depicts the role of Gertrude with a traditional view of women. Gertrude is criticized because of remarrying Claudius for her benefits. On the other hand, the role of being a mother keeps showing throughout the entire play.

As we can see from the play of Hamlet, Shakespeare depicted women as dependent and below men. This can be seen as Ophelia’s action of giving up the letter from Hamlet to his father Polonius, and how Polonius tend to have to the relationship between Hamlet and his daughter. Feeling and thoughts of Ophelia do not matter; she is more of a “tool” for her father and brother. And the word frailty is used to describe women, which also shows how women were being treated and seen in the time the play was written and even today. It is also shown that women are more of a “demon” than an “angel.” There are lots of hate to women, as we can see from the main character Hamlet to other women, especially to his mother after the death of old Hamlet.

Augustine describes the students in Carthage are gross and beyond all measure. Those students commit many outrages, extraodinarily stupid acts, deserving the punishment of the law. They blindly do something which make themselves to be suffered. Augustine also refers some students as eversores. Eversores is a diabolical name for those who are assailing newcomer with cruel mockery for no reason. Augustine thinks what the eversores do is very like the actions of devils and he does not want to be one of them.

Shakespeare’s depictions of women in Hamlet reflect the views of women during Elizabethan times. The women are depicted as having very little power and delicate so that the men can have consistency throughout the play and make most of the decisions. We see Ophelia obeying Polonius and  Laertes, and Gertrude obeying Cladius or Hamlet. The delicacy of the women leads to the men dominating their relationships and this affects the women’s views of love. The women also are used as connectors between men. They are minor characters in the story but they add definition to the story by tying characters through romance or family ties.

In my point of view, Tityrus and Meliboeus have very different character trait. For instance, Tityrus is simple, contented and stubborn; whereas Meliboeus is eager, driven and realistic. As we can see from the book that Tityrus is willing to stay at his land and grateful for what he has ever since he is a little kid. He thinks that being a shepherd is god’s will which it shows his stubbornness; According to the book, Tityrus said ‘… there was never a hope of freedom …’ he thinks that there’s no hope for him to escape, Hence, it is better to be grateful than complaining. In contrast, Meliboeus have been trying to convince Tityrus to leave the land and go find a new land for them. He thinks that Tityrus has been missing out all other great lands, such as the sacred springs, willow blossoms … Also, he believes that sooner or later the war will destroy everything Tityrus has now. Hence, Meliboeus is a man who speaks his mind and he is very realistic. This is very similar as the characteristic in modern-day, there are people who are not willing to change, and they are comfortable of where they are. Hence, he is grateful of what he has and set in his way. Whereas people like Meliboeus in modern-day are mostly entrepreneur and they’re eager to learn more, and not willing to settle down for less. Also, they’re realistic when facing problems.

Phaedrus is a philosophical dialogue that answers multiple questions about man’s reality. In the rhetoric that Plato uses in the text, seed and tree metaphors are especially significant. He compares a human to a heavenly plant, both of which are considered superior to an earthly tree, which has its seed grounded at the bottom in the soil. Plato’s central concept is that although human consciousness originates in the mind, it has the ability to conceive ideas that relate to the entire universe. Such an ability is most significant for Plato to consider humans as the most intelligent living form.

Ophelia is a small character in Hamlet, but she acts as a fulcrum in the whole play in three aspects. Firstly, Hamlet is emotionally fragile, therefore, her departure and death are the pivots of Hamlet’s madness. Their love makes the play more logic and tragic. Secondly, Ophelia is so innocent that all her dream is to be in love with Hamlet and live a happy life. Hamlet wanted to be like his father, but his father’ death and mother’s remarriage ruined everything. At last, Ophelia’s fake madness leads to Hamlet’s actual madness. Thirdly, Ophelia’s personality contributes to the tragedy a lot. Ophelia is kind, innocent and weak. She believed in the so-called truth that her father and king told her, and she followed what they told her. Hamlet saw the shadow of Ophelia in the image of his mother, so he did not care about whether Ophelia is innocent or not. What Hamlet did was to vent his anger to her, which leads to the tragedy of Ophelia. Although, Ophelia is only a small character, her emotion, dream and personality make Hamlet more round and vivid, and make the whole play more exciting and colorful.

I think the discussion of the story of the invention of the arts in Egypt has these significant functions. First, it stated the fact that the invention of words helped people pass their knowledge and experience to future generations. Second, it critically presented that the words might be misunderstood by others and was the fake of wisdom. Being more dependent on words, people gradually became more forgetful.  This discussion dialectically revealed the right and wrong of the words. Last but not least, it was also the self-questioning of Plato that words were dead and something deeper should be engraved on the soul of people. The rhetoric is vivid and makes the dead words more closed to the soul.

 

Socrates and Phaedrus describe various kinds of lovers’ behaviors based on Lysias’s speech which argues about the nature and form of a pederastic relationship between a boy and an old man. While they both agrees to Lysias’s idea of two kinds of lover: a lover and a non-lover, they hold opposite perceptions to define the behaviors of lovers in such relation. Phaedrus’s beliefs deeply based on self-interest which suggest that a young man should choose a relationship of other man who is non-lover over lover because as young men protect self-interest, they should also know that a lover faces troubled decision-making and often acts irrational. A lover, for example, is more probable to grow a physical passion and later may dislikes that about other person, while an affair based on friendship is likely to endure once passion is used up. Lovers also tend to become upset over meaningless things and to praise things about their lover that don’t deserve praise. In other words, presence of love and being out of one’s senses is habitually dangerous that complicates the truth and compromises a young man’s future. Although Socrates at first retorts Lysias’s speech with his own speech praising sense and sanity over love and madness, he argues that it’s preferable for a man to have a relationship with one who’s in love with him. If he doesn’t deal with the madness that springs from love, he wouldn’t be gaining the pleasures of philosophy and the eventual vision of true beauty. In contrast, if one holds the superficial virtuous sense of a relationship with someone who’s not in love with him, he would only gain miserable benefits of a mortal kind, causing him to trip mindlessly around the earth instead of expecting eternal truth and beauty.

Socrates and Phaedrus describe various kinds of lovers’ behaviors by they both agreed with Lysias that there are two kinds of lovers: non-lover and lover. Lysias makes an irrefutable argument in praising the non-lover for remaining more rational than the lover. The lover will regret giving favors after his desire subsides, while the non-lover will view favors like business transactions. The non-lover will be able to indulge in pleasures without having to worry about their negative impact on his business or personal life. Lovers are jealous and jealousy often leads to enmity; relations with a non-lover, who has attracted a boy with his personal merits, will always lead to friendship. Lovers are usually first attracted to a boy’s body rather than his character, so they may not want to remain friends afterwards. They believes the relationship between non-lovers is better than a relationship with lovers.