Hamlet Essay

To be or Not to be, that is the question. This line is at the core of Hamlet, it is articulating the difference of knowing and doing, and through this delves into the ideas of Perfromative utterance and over analyzing. The To be or not to be soliloquy is essential to the story because it is the story's deep philosophical theme. ( if one looks past all the other topical ones) 

When I memorized the Soliloquy there was a section of it that stood out to me. From ," that's the calamity that makes of so long life...'' till the end of  it. It stood out because hamlet starts naming things in life that seem pretty universal. " The Oppressors Wrong, the proud mans contumely...' Shakespeare makes a connection with the audience when he does this. He also makes the performative utterance connection with Hamlet. When Hamlet names off all these things, it suddenly becomes real. After this soliloquy we see the last real change in Hamlet; he becomes a man of action. 

So what I mean is that the To be or not to be soliloquy, even though he was talking to himself, seemed to incite action in Hamlet. And by doing this he bridged the gap from idea to reality. So with that being said many of our actions can only be as good as the qquality of our language. Not small things but cearrtainly things like killing your uncle. Because if you now you need to take him out, and your not a pyscopath, your gonna need to talk yourself through it. Again performative utterance. 

A while ago I was watching a youtube video about Slaughterhouse-5 and John Green was analyzing it. He went on to explain that the reason Billy Pilgrim made up all the aliens and their odd sense of time was that it alleviated the gulit he felt and in his mind took away his free will. Basically the Aliens that kidnapped him said that time is happening all at once. there is no future. past or present just all one thing. So if everything in the future is already decided then it's not his fault. So thats what Vonnegut said, I don't know if he believed it but that sounds like a pretty accurate analyzation to me. What shakespeare said was that we have a choice. We have free will,we can choose to listen to ourselves or others and act. Or we can choose not to. But why do we choose at all. It all comes down to passion. If you really care about something. Hamlet obviously has a hatred for Claudius. But in broader, more open source learning terms I believe that we can apply this. I'll give you an anecdote to help explain. 

Most High School students know that they have to do their work. And back in the late 70's my Uncle Bob was just your average High School Student. But at the start of his senior year he just completely lost interest in schhool. " Why do somthing you don't care about." So he dropped out and joined the military. 35 or so years later he's a truck driver living in Arizona. But everytime he visits he will sit and talk about his gun ammo reloading. This dude has it down to a science. He dropped out of high school andhe's telling me about the ballistics for a ceartain caliber, a ceartain gun powder and a ceartain grain bullet. The point is that he found something that he is passionate for. And I think that our public education system should allow students the best oppurtunity to find out what they are passionate about and allow them to pursue it. Because as John Lennon said, " when I grow up I want to be happy." And one way to do that is to allow children to find their passion. If a kid doesn't operate on math, like his brain just doesn't think that way, whats the point in forcing him to take high level math classes? Make sure he can add and subtract and then let him do his thing. I know I went off on a major tangent but Ive been thinking about this whole idea for a while so i felt like it needed to be said AND it did relate to Hamlet.