Rita Dove

Begin reading aloud Thomas and Beulah
Check out link to her web site!
www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=6719 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/rita-dove
Critical article: personal.georgiasouthern.edu/~jpellegr/articles/dovearticle.html
www.suite101.com/article.cfm/african_american_lit_retired/62567

The poem cycle set to music:
www.amazon.com/Thomas-Beulah-Rita-Amnon-Wolman/dp/B000065CWO

Dead Fathers Club

Finish off GoAnimate cartoons, finish film treatment.

Contest entries for November 1 and November 15!  Bennington, Hollins, NEYWC, Scholastic

Discussion of Dead Fathers Club:
What are some of the parallels to Hamlet?   What "postmodern" narrative techniques does Matt Haig employ?   Do they make the novel more interesting?  Post a response.

Also, look at the discussion questions listed below.  Discuss with a partner and then we will share out some thoughts.

Characters

• Phillip – The protagonist, Phillip, is assigned to the task of avenging his father’s murder by murdering his Uncle. He is an outsider at school and is picked on by Dominik Weekly and Jordan Harper.
• Brian Noble – Brian died before the novel starts. He comes back back to visit Phillip to get him to avenge his death to save him from the terrors. He fades in and out of the real world.
• Alan Peter Noble – Alan, the antagonist, has supposedly killed his brother, Brian, by dismatling his brakes on his car. According to Brian’s ghost, he is only out to steal Phillip’s mother and take the pub for himself.
• Carol Suzzane Noble – Mother of Phillip, Carol marries Alan and is unaware of the presence of Brian’s ghost. Phillip cares a lot for his mother, who is one of his only last sources of comfort.
• Leah Fairview – The former girlfriend of Phillip is sister to Dane Fairview. Her mother died when Leah was young and her father is accidentally murdered by Phillip. At the end of the novel, Phillip saves her from committing suicide
• Mrs. Fell – The teacher and counselor of Phillip, Mrs. Fell is a lovely woman who offers comfort to Phillip. Ray Goodwin, is in the Dead Father’s Club; it is unclear whether or not Mrs. Fell knows this.
• Mr. Fairview – He is a father and a widower. He is murdered accidentally by Phillip.
• Dane – He is the brother of Leah and a friend of Phillip’s that at times has protected Phillip from Dominick. However he nearly slits Phillip’s throat when Phillip confesses that he murdered Dane’s father.
• Terry – He works with Uncle Alan in his garage. He chokes Phillip on Halloween night, he also revives Leah with Uncle Alan.
• Dominick Weekly and Jordan Harper – They are bullies at Phillip’s school that torment and physically abuse Phillip.
• Nan – She is a minor character that is the mother of Phillip’s mother. She is disapproving of Carol’s precocious marriage to Alan.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. During the course of his narrative, Philip Noble, commits a series of crimes that grow increasingly serious. Despite his criminal behavior, does he continue to move the sympathies of the reader? By what means does he do so?


2. Leah confides to Philip that she hates God. By contrast, her father, Mr. Fairview, has turned enthusiastically toward religion after the death of his wife. What commentary does The Dead Fathers Club offer regarding religion, and how does religion influence events and relationships in the novel?


3. Philip observes, “If you speak to yourself people think you are mad but if you write the same things they think you are clever.” Discuss examples from life or literature that bear out this observation on the nature of madness and intelligence.


4. Philip routinely omits standard punctuation and sometimes arranges words on the page to add visual meanings to the verbal significance of his writing. How do these devices influence the experience of reading the novel?


5. How might Philip’s mental disturbances be influenced by matters relating to sexuality, for example, his recent circumcision, his attraction toward his mother, and his ambivalent feelings about Leah?


6. Many of Haig’s characters, including Uncle Alan (Claudius), Philip’s mother (Gertrude), Leah (Ophelia), and Ross and Gary (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) have clear parallels in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Nevertheless, these characters have been reimagined with traits and motivations that distinguish them from their Shakespearean models. Choose a character from The Dead Fathers Club and reread the scenes involving that character’s counterpart in Hamlet. How has Haig altered the character? What do you think of these changes?


7. Philip takes a surprising interest in Roman history, especially in the reign of Nero. How does this interest relate to Philip’s overall mental state, and how is it woven into the novel’s plot?


8. Philip, who occasionally alludes to the wealth of the Fairview family and comments that “clever schools did Rugby and thick schools did Football,” is aware of the social and intellectual class system that surrounds him. To what extent is Haig’s novel shaped by issues of class?


9. What is the most useful way to understand the spirit that we come to know as Philip’s father’s ghost? Should he be thought of as a character, as an embodiment of Philip’s anxieties, as a demonic presence, or as something else? Why does Philip trust him for so long?


10. Philip grossly misjudges the people around him and, because he tells the story, we view these people only from his misguided perspective. Nevertheless, by some miracle of narration, we are able to see them more or less as they are: as somewhat limited but basically well-meaning human beings. How does Haig manage both to immerse us in Philip’s point of view and give us an objective understanding of his other characters?


11. In a famous essay, T. S. Eliot complained that Hamlet was artistically flawed because the hero’s emotions were in excess of the factual situation in which he found himself. Does Haig’s retelling of the story give Philip sufficient motives for his extreme conduct? Do you find Philip believable as a character? Why or why not?

Cartoon animation

Go to GoAnimate.com

Design an animated cartoon for Dead Fathers Club.  Select a scene that you would like to animate.
Look at the examples in the earlier post.

Short Story Workshop

In groups of 4, workshop your short story with peers and/or share your modernization "treatment."



Please read the following before we begin the workshop:

Participating in writing workshops is immensely rewarding, but getting feedback is only half of the job. Giving good, helpful feedback is equally important.

Writers who join fiction writing workshops often focus on getting feedback and improving their own writing – but in a writing workshop, responding to the work of other writers is just as important as receiving feedback. Acting as good, helpful, active workshop participants helps writers improve their own work and leads mutual respect and lasting relationships.

Ask the Right Questions
Sometimes workshop participants will receive a story and immediately hate it. This is one of the major reasons that writing workshops advise participants to read stories more than once – a story that seems downright terrible on the first read through might have merits that are easy to miss in just one reading. It is the job of a writing workshop participant to locate the merits of the workshopped stories and tell their authors how to take advantage of them, so a workshop reader needs to read stories multiple times to tease out their strong points.

Many people in writing workshops find it difficult to engage with stories that don’t fit their idea of “good” writing. Someone who prefers brooding, philosophical, thickly written stories might find a lighthearted romance difficult to appreciate or take seriously, and will then struggle to give good and helpful feedback. Workshop participants, then, must learn to differentiate between something that is poorly written and something that simply “isn’t their thing.” The best way to do this is to ask: “What is this story trying to do and how could it do better?”

It is unfair and unhelpful to advise an author to do something completely different than what they want to do. Writers in workshops should guide their fellow writers in the direction they’re already going and remain careful to avoid letting their preferences get in the way of providing good feedback.
Make Manuscript Marks and Workshop Time Count
Most fiction writing workshops ask participants to take home manuscripts of stories to make notes on. This saves time during the workshop. All workshop participants should understand that things that can be communicated clearly on the manuscript don’t need to be brought up during workshop.

Workshop time is valuable, and it’s much better to spend time discussing the nuances of a character’s motivation than to cite examples of cliché use. Writers responding to the works of others should make notes on the manuscript about everything they feel needs to be said, then use the workshop time to discuss only the things that need to be elaborated on verbally in the workshop.

When marking on the manuscript, make sure everything that’s written is helpful and clear. Simply underlining passages with no explanation frustrates the writer and doesn’t communicate well. Be sure to write legibly in the margins and explain feedback clearly. For example, it’s much better to say “great use of imagery” than “nice,” and scribbling a question mark is far less helpful than writing “why would this character say that?”
It is often helpful to use colored pens or editorial symbols to bolster clarity and avoid having to repeat yourself. Workshops always provide opportunities to elaborate on written feedback, but writers should do their best to be as helpful and clear as possible on the manuscripts.

Balance Gentleness and Truth
Writing workshops are great places to meet people, cultivate friendships, and network, but they can also be extremely frustrating. Dealing with other people’s writing can cause feelings of jealous inferiority, or it can cause a sense of annoyed superiority. It is tempting to respond defensively to negative feedback by tearing apart someone else’s work, and it is also difficult to respond fairly to a work that genuinely seems terrible. Still, writers in writing workshops must remember that sharing one’s writing is often frightening and painful, and all of their fellow writers deserve to be given feedback with gentleness and respect.

On the other hand, it does no good to a writer to be lavished with false praise. All writers join workshops expecting sincere and helpful feedback that will improve their writing. Writers looking to get feedback on their work hope to be told what works in their writing, but also want to be alerted to problems with their writing and areas that can be strengthened. Writers giving feedback in writing workshops do not fulfil their obligations if they are not honest and do not push their fellow writers to improve.

Dead Fathers Club

Continue to work on your "film treatment" modernizing an old story.

Continue to read Dead Fathers Club to pg. 200 for Tuesday.

Look over the discussion questions posted earlier.  

RPO Poems

Mahler's 5th Symphony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRy6CRHSBTw

Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO-H37t1fQQ&feature=related

Sample Film Treatment

Lilly

It's 2006. The political climate in China is very unstable. When ANNA, the young pregnant wife of an outspoken journalist is left widowed after a vicious assassination, friends whisk her out of the country to sympathetic expatriates in Queens, New York.
In Queens she's given a grim room in the local syndicate head quarters. Anna is lethargic, lost in pain. JON VAN, the charming head of the syndicate comes to see how she's doing, and expresses romantic interest in her. Anna's lack of enthusiasm angers him, but he writes it off to her recent experiences.
Lost in shock and grief, Anna, is placed with JUNE, another widow, who has adjusted to the new life. They share a run-down apartment in a maze of tenement buildings, serviced by a few small markets in a bad part of town. June runs the local daycare center for the working mothers in this closed Vietnamese community.
Anna, now seven months pregnant, is speechless and depressed until early labor forces a bone-chilling howl of pain from her parched lips. The baby is born, Lily, a perfect little girl, but Anna is too deeply distressed to bond.
It's June who holds the tiny girl, and cuddles her.
As the weeks pass, Anna slowly recovers. She starts to ask questions about the new world she's entered. Anna sees the mothers drop off and pick up their children, tension and fear in their faces.When Anna asks why there is so much stress, June explains that everyone owes the syndicate, the local arm of the people who helped Anna escape. Jon Van is the boss.
June reveals her hatred of the syndicate, telling Anna of their exploitation of their own kind. "That's why I make so little money, Anna, half of it goes back to them. That's why everyone's afraid, they use threats of deportation or death to keep us in line."Anna denies this, insisting that since the syndicate saved her life and the life of her daughter, June must be exaggerating.
June helps Anna improve her English, warning her to keep it a secret. Their nightly practice bonds them together like sisters. But as time passes, June becomes more and more depressed and decides to run away. Anna feels for June, but warns her that it's wrong to flee. Late one night, June tries to escape. She's caught and is beaten to death.
Horrified at the death of her only friend, Anna's emotional agony returns and she takes refuge in her relationship with Lily. When Lily wants to know about her father, Anna makes up a wild story. She tells Lily her daddy was a famous patriot, who died to save her and many others from the oppression in their country. When Lily asks if he's really dead, Anna hasn't the heart to confirm the truth. She pretends that there's a big secret. She tells Lily that Daddy really escaped and came to America, where he is searching for them everywhere.
This fantasy helps Anna to resolve her trauma over the death of her beloved husband and she begins to mend. Jon Van visits, and puts her to work. She takes over June's former duties and runs the local daycare center.
Jon Van lays down the rules: traditional food, dress and language. No English in the home, no western clothes, no contact with TV. Jon Van makes his usual pass, but Anna only looks at him with scorn.
Five years later.
Anna's daughter, Lily, is ready to go to school. On her first day, she's made fun of and returns home in tears. She begs her mother to teach her English and buy her regular American clothes. Lily's daily humiliation at school upsets Anna. She goes to Jon Van and asks that her daughter be allowed to wear American clothes and learn English.
Jon Van warns her to stop this revolt, reminding her of her illegal status. When she argues, he reminds her about what happened to June. He then offers to help Lily if Anna will respond to his advances.
Defeated and repelled, Anna returns home, realizing that June had told her the truth. The months pass, and Lily continues to attend school. Every day, she comes home crying. Lily becomes a faint shadow of her former cheerful self.
Anna can only attempt to comfort her. The only cure is a new story about Dad. Anna's helplessness turns to anger and depression, and she neglects her work and this causes her to lose her day care center.
Jon Van appears with his usual request, but Anna resists. She pleads with him to give her more time to respond to him, and to give her a job.
Meanwhile, after a rash of local thefts, the regular collector, another woman, is attacked and robbed.
Jon Van asks Anna to collect the deposits from the local stores and put them in the bank. She does this gratefully, and without question.
After a few months of doing this work, it's Lily's birthday. Anna steals the daily deposit and buys Lily American clothes and a gold necklace.
Meanwhile the thefts continue throughout the neighborhood.
When Jon Van confronts Anna about the missing money, she pretends the thief has attacked her.
Jon Van believes her, offers her safety in exchange for sexual favors. Again, Anna rebuffs him. She realizes that Jon Van was hoping this would happen, and it makes her even more determined not to give in to him.
DANIEL, the thief, burgles one more store, and is caught by the enforcers of the syndicate. They drag him to an alley and try to beat him to death. Ankle broken, severely wounded, he manages to escape into the maze of tenements.
Daniel breaks into Anna's apartment and hides. Anna is out collecting, and Lily is in school. He finds the necklace and pockets it.
Lily returns from school. She finds Daniel, and assumes he's her long lost father, just returned from a new adventure. Daniel's touched by her innocent acceptance and cannot hurt her. Anna returns. She's appalled to find Daniel in her house, alone with her daughter. She's about to turn him into the syndicate, when Lily joyously announces how happy she is to have found her father at last.
He's so badly beaten that he's not even a threat, and so, Anna doesn't have the heart to destroy Lily's joy. They have a little party, and Daniel and Anna pretend that the necklace is from her "father."
Anna is overwhelmed to see her little girl finally happy.
They continue to enact this uncomfortable charade until Lily leaves for school the next day. Finally alone with him, Anna tells Daniel to get out. He refuses. She threatens to call the syndicate. He threatens to tell Lily he's not her father. Anna realizes that she will be accused of harboring a suspect. She asks Daniel what he wants. Daniel tells her that all he wants is a chance to recover and the get the hell away from there. Anna says she will let him stay if he will maintain the lie. Daniel agrees.
That night the charade continues. Daniel teaches Lily some cool English words and how to fight back. There is as much tenderness between them as though he were her real father. Anna is upset at the situation, but Lily goes to sleep, happy in the lie.
As the days pass, Lily and Daniel grow closer and closer. Lily changes and becomes more secure and out going.
After Lily leaves for school, Anna and Daniel talk. As the time passes, the conversation becomes more personal. Anna realizes they have a lot in common. She softens and takes care of him.
Daniel wants to know who beat him so badly. Anna tells him about the syndicate. Anna goes to the stores to collect the deposits. Friends warn her that the syndicate has found out that she bought the necklace.
She runs home and asks Daniel for help. He sees the poverty she lives in and demands to know where she got the money for Lily's gift. She tells him, commenting that they're both thieves.
Daniel realizes the danger Anna has placed Lily in, and tells her they must get Lily from school. They arrive in time to see Lily kidnapped on the way home by the syndicate. They pursue, but cannot follow inside the syndicate headquarters.
Daniel takes Anna to stay with his friends. He agrees to help her find Lily. They decide to turn the tables on the syndicate and break them up. The question is how? He and his friends are former soldiers, now fallen on hard times. They plan an elaborate scheme to break in and rescue Lily.
Anna must go in to the head quarters alone and face Jon Van. She pretends to be ready to give in to his advances in exchange for Lily, and they go to bed.
Daniel breaks in with his team. A firefight ensues.
Daniel rescues Lily, but is shot down. As he dies, he tells Anna he was happy his life added up to something after all.
Now Anna must save her own daughter, and kill Jon Van.
She meets the challenge, leaving the syndicate shattered behind her.
With new resolve and confidence, Anna takes over the syndicate, but brings prosperity and a new modern tradition into the community. She never tells Lily that Daniel, the thief, wasn't her father.

Dead Fathers Club Cartoons

Dead Father's Club Cartoons

Click on the following links to view the cartoons that were made for The Dead Father's Club project!

Cartoon 1

Cartoon 2

Cartoon 3

Cartoon 4

Cartoon 5

Cartoon 6

Cartoon 7

Cartoon 8

Cartoon 9

Revenge play

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Title page of the Quarto edition of The Spanish Tragedy(1615)

The revenge play or revenge tragedy is a form of tragedy which was extremely popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. The best-known of these are Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The genre was first categorized by the scholar Fredson Bowers.

Origins, conventions, and themes

The only clear precedent and influence for the Renaissance genre is the work of the Roman playwright and Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger, perhaps most of all his Thyestes. It is still unclear if Seneca's plays were performed or recited during Roman times; at any rate, Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights staged them, as it were, with a vengeance, in plays full of gruesome and often darkly comic violence. The Senecan model, though never followed slavishly, makes for a clear definition of the type, which almost invariably includes

• A secret murder, usually of a benign ruler by a bad person
• A ghostly visitation of the murder victim to a younger kinsman, generally a son
• A period of disguise, intrigue, or plotting, in which the murderer and the avenger scheme against each other, with a slowly rising body count
• A descent into either real or feigned madness by the avenger or one of the auxiliary characters
• An eruption of general violence at the end, which (in the Renaissance) is often accomplished by means of a feigned masque or festivity
• A catastrophe that utterly decimates the dramatis personae, including the avenger

Both the stoicism of Seneca and his political career (he was an advisor to Nero) leave their mark on Renaissance practice. In the English plays, the avenger is either stoic (albeit not very specifically) or struggling to be so; in this respect, the main thematic concern of the English revenge plays is the problem of pain. Politically, the English playwrights used the revenge plot to explore themes of absolute power, corruption in court, and of factional concerns that applied to late Elizabethan and Jacobean politics as they had to Roman politics.

History

Some early Elizabethan tragedies betray evidence of a Senecan influence; Gorboduc (1561) is notable in this regard. The "hybrid morality" Horestes (1567) also offers an early example of the genre.^[1] Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, however, is the first major example of the revenge plot in English drama. First performed 1587 and subsequently published in 1592, The Spanish Tragedy was a popular smash so successful that, with Tamburlaine, it practically defined tragic dramaturgy for a number of years. Refitted with additions by Ben Jonson, it found performance intermittently until 1642. Its most famous scenes were copied, transformed, and—finally—mocked; the play itself was given a sequel that may have been partially written by Kyd.
Hamlet is one of the few Shakespeare plays to fit into the revenge category; indeed, it may be read as a figural, literary response to Kyd, who is sometimes credited with the so-called ur-Hamlet with which Shakespeare worked. As regards revenge tragedy, Hamlet is notable for the way in which it complicates the themes and deepens the psychology of its models. What is, in The Spanish Tragedy, a straightforward duty of revenge, is for Prince Hamlet, both factually and morally ambiguous. Hamlet has been read, with some support, as enacting a thematic conflict between the Roman values of martial valor and blood-right on the one hand, and Christian values of humility and acceptance on the other. Some academics would also argue the Othello could fit into the category of revenge. A more purely Jacobean example than Hamlet is The Revenger's Tragedy, apparently produced in 1606 and printed anonymously the following year. The author was long assumed, on somewhat unconvincing external evidence, to be Cyril Tourneur; in recent decades, numerous critics have argued in favor of attributing the play to Thomas Middleton. On stylistic grounds, this argument is convincing. The Revenger's Tragedy is marked by the earthy—even obscene—style, irreverent tone, and grotesque subject matter that typifies Middleton's comedies. The play, though it lacks a ghost, is in other respects a sophisticated updating of The Spanish Tragedy, concerning lust, greed, and corruption in an Italian court.
Caroline instances of the genre are largely derivative of earlier models and are little read today, even by specialists.

Influence

A number of plays, from 1587 on, are influenced by certain aspects of revenge tragedy, although they do not fit perfectly into this category.
Besides Hamlet, other plays of Shakespeare's with at least some revenge elements are Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. Other revenge tragedies include The White Devil, The Changeling, The Duchess of Malfi, The Atheist's Tragedy, The Jew of Malta, The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois,The Malcontent and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore.
Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 contains an extended parody of the Jacobean revenge-play formula, titled The Courier's Tragedy and written by the fictitious Richard Wharfinger. Most of the action is simply described by the narrator, with occasional snippets of dialogue.
In Edward Gorey's masterpiece, The Unstrung Harp, the protagonist, the novelist Mr Earbrass, sees a performance of Prawne's The Nephew's Tragedy, a fictional revenge play performed, "… for the first time since the early seventeenth century, by the West Mortshire Impassioned Amateurs of Melpomene."

Modernization of old stories

Sometimes, an author will write a story that is consciously based on an older story (typically in the public domain) but with a modernized setting and characters.

Films

• 10 Things I Hate About You – William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew re-located to modern suburbia
• Apocalypse Now - Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness set during the Vietnam War
• Bride and Prejudice - Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
• Bridget Jones's Diary – Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice
• A Cinderella Story - Cinderella in modern Los Angeles
• Carmen: A Hip Hopera - Carmen
• Carmen Jones - Carmen
• Clueless – based on Jane Austen's Emma but set in modern California among valley girls
• Coriolanus - a 2011 film adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy Coriolanus by Ralph Fiennes. Set in modern times; using the original dialogue
• Crime and Punishment in Suburbia – Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment set in a suburban high school.
• Cruel Intentions - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's novel Les Liaisons dangereuses set among wealthy teenagers in modern New York City.
• Damn Yankees - Faust
• The Dark Knight Rises - based loosely on A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.^[1]
• Dracula 2000 - Bram Stoker's Dracula
• Easy A - a self-referential adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter set in a modern high school.
• Ever After – Cinderella
• Freeway - Modernized Little Red Riding Hood movie whereas "hood" is a slang term referring to a low-income urban neighborhood.
• From Prada to Nada - Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility set in modern Los Angeles.
• Great Expectations – Charles Dickens' Great Expectations set in modern Florida
• Hamlet – William Shakespeare's Hamlet set in modern Manhattan
• The Hours - self-referential adaptation of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
• A Midsummer Night's Rave – William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream set in the rave scene
• My Own Private Idaho - William Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2, and Henry V
• O – retelling of William Shakespeare's Othello in a private school
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? – Homer's Odyssey adapted to the 1930s American South
• Pretty Woman - Pygmalion
• Romeo + Juliet – William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet adapted for modern California; used mostly the original dialogue
• Scotland, PA – William Shakespeare's Macbeth set in a fast food restaurant in Scotland, Pennsylvania
• Scrooged – Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol set in 1980s Manhattan.
• She's All That – Pygmalion
• She's the Man – William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or What You Will re-located to modern suburbia
• A Simple Twist of Fate - George Eliot's novel Silas Marner
• Spike – Cupid and Psyche, Hades and Persephone, Beauty and the Beast
• Sydney White - Snow White
• Tempest - William Shakespeare's The Tempest
• Trishna - Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• Tromeo and Juliet – A modern, punk adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• The Truth About Cats & Dogs - Cyrano de Bergerac^[2]
• Roxanne - Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac
• West Side Story - William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• Whatever It Takes - Cyrano de Bergerac

Hamlet Summary 10/9/2012

 

 

Work on finishing short stories for Fugitive Pieces

Read Dead Fathers Club 

Go to Matt Haig website--check it out

video: 

 

http://www.matthaig.com/pressmediacoveragetdfcarticles.htm 

radio interview:   http://wamc.org/post/book-show-971

 

Plot Overview

On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first by a pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resembles the recently deceased King Hamlet, whose brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the king’s widow, Queen Gertrude. When Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge on the man who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost disappears with the dawn.

Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness. Claudius and Gertrude worry about the prince’s erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause. They employ a pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous Lord Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes to ban marriages.
A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncle’s guilt. He will have the players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which Hamlet imagines his uncle to have murdered his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he will surely react. When the moment of the murder arrives in the theater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the room. Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill Claudius but finds him praying. Since he believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius’s soul to heaven, Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to wait. Claudius, now frightened of Hamlet’s madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once.
Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his sword and stabs through the fabric, killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, Claudius’s plan for Hamlet includes more than banishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders for the King of England demanding that Hamlet be put to death.
In the aftermath of her father’s death, Ophelia goes mad with grief and drowns in the river. Polonius’s son, Laertes, who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius convinces him that Hamlet is to blame for his father’s and sister’s deaths. When Horatio and the king receive letters from Hamlet indicating that the prince has returned to Denmark after pirates attacked his ship en route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes’ desire for revenge to secure Hamlet’s death. Laertes will fence with Hamlet in innocent sport, but Claudius will poison Laertes’ blade so that if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides to poison a goblet, which he will give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet score the first or second hits of the match. Hamlet returns to the vicinity of Elsinore just as Ophelia’s funeral is taking place. Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and declares that he had in fact always loved Ophelia. Back at the castle, he tells Horatio that he believes one must be prepared to die, since death can come at any moment. A foolish courtier named Osric arrives on Claudius’s orders to arrange the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes.
The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, but declines to drink from the king’s proffered goblet. Instead, Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by the poison. Laertes succeeds in wounding Hamlet, though Hamlet does not die of the poison immediately. First, Laertes is cut by his own sword’s blade, and, after revealing to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the queen’s death, he dies from the blade’s poison. Hamlet then stabs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies, and Hamlet dies immediately after achieving his revenge.
At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who has led an army to Denmark and attacked Poland earlier in the play, enters with ambassadors from England, who report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight of the entire royal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves to take power of the kingdom. Horatio, fulfilling Hamlet’s last request, tells him Hamlet’s tragic story. Fortinbras orders that Hamlet be carried away in a manner befitting a fallen soldier.

The Dead Father's Club

Matt Haig's website:

http://www.matthaig.com/thedeadfathersclub.htm

NPR Review:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7713667

Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain spoilers!

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. During the course of his narrative, Philip Noble, commits a series of crimes that grow increasingly serious. Despite his criminal behavior, does he continue to move the sympathies of the reader? By what means does he do so?


2. Leah confides to Philip that she hates God. By contrast, her father, Mr. Fairview, has turned enthusiastically toward religion after the death of his wife. What commentary does The Dead Fathers Club offer regarding religion, and how does religion influence events and relationships in the novel?


3. Philip observes, “If you speak to yourself people think you are mad but if you write the same things they think you are clever.” Discuss examples from life or literature that bear out this observation on the nature of madness and intelligence.


4. Philip routinely omits standard punctuation and sometimes arranges words on the page to add visual meanings to the verbal significance of his writing. How do these devices influence the experience of reading the novel?


5. How might Philip’s mental disturbances be influenced by matters relating to sexuality, for example, his recent circumcision, his attraction toward his mother, and his ambivalent feelings about Leah?


6. Many of Haig’s characters, including Uncle Alan (Claudius), Philip’s mother (Gertrude), Leah (Ophelia), and Ross and Gary (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) have clear parallels in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Nevertheless, these characters have been reimagined with traits and motivations that distinguish them from their Shakespearean models. Choose a character from The Dead Fathers Club and reread the scenes involving that character’s counterpart in Hamlet. How has Haig altered the character? What do you think of these changes?


7. Philip takes a surprising interest in Roman history, especially in the reign of Nero. How does this interest relate to Philip’s overall mental state, and how is it woven into the novel’s plot?


8. Philip, who occasionally alludes to the wealth of the Fairview family and comments that “clever schools did Rugby and thick schools did Football,” is aware of the social and intellectual class system that surrounds him. To what extent is Haig’s novel shaped by issues of class?


9. What is the most useful way to understand the spirit that we come to know as Philip’s father’s ghost? Should he be thought of as a character, as an embodiment of Philip’s anxieties, as a demonic presence, or as something else? Why does Philip trust him for so long?


10. Philip grossly misjudges the people around him and, because he tells the story, we view these people only from his misguided perspective. Nevertheless, by some miracle of narration, we are able to see them more or less as they are: as somewhat limited but basically well-meaning human beings. How does Haig manage both to immerse us in Philip’s point of view and give us an objective understanding of his other characters?


11. In a famous essay, T. S. Eliot complained that Hamlet was artistically flawed because the hero’s emotions were in excess of the factual situation in which he found himself. Does Haig’s retelling of the story give Philip sufficient motives for his extreme conduct? Do you find Philip believable as a character? Why or why not?

Fugitive Pieces

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Continue writing short story--due Tues. Oct. 9

Answer 2 of the following questions in a post:

9. Music is an important element of Fugitive Pieces, and it is central to the lives of at least three of the characters, Bella, Alex, and Naomi. What does music mean to each of these characters? Why has Michaels given music such a prominent metaphoric role in the novel?

10. What does Fugitive Pieces say about the condition of being an immigrant? Jakob never feels truly at home anywhere, even in Greece. Ben's parents feel that their toehold in their new home is infinitely precarious, an emotion that communicates itself to Ben. Does Michaels imply that real integration is impossible?

11. Can you explain the very different reactions Ben's parents have had to their experience in the Holocaust? What in their characters has determined the differing ways they respond to grief and loss?

12. The relationship between Ben and Naomi is a troubled one. Why is he angry at her for her closeness to his parents and her attention to their graves? Why does he reject her by leaving for Greece without her? How can you explain his intense desire for Petra--is his need purely physical? How do Petra and Naomi differ? What is the significance of their names?

13. Science has as important a role in the novel as poetry and music. Why is geology so important to Athos, meteorology to Ben? Does science represent a standard of disinterested truth, or does it merely symbolize the world's terrifying contingency?

14. Why might Jakob have named his collection of poems Groundwork, and in what way does that title relate to his life? Jakob calls his young self a "bog-boy" [5]. Why does Ben take such an interest in the preserved bog people he reads about [221]?

15. The last line of the novel is Ben's: "I see that I must give what I most need." What does he mean by this? What does he most need, what will he give, and to whom?

16. What is the significance of the novel's title? What do "pieces," or "fragments," mean within Michaels's scheme? Where in the novel can you find references to fragments? 


ANOTHER INTERESTING BLOG ABOUT FUGITIVE PIECES:
fugitivepiecesgroup.blogspot.com/2007/12/outline-of-what-ill-say.html