As the title says, I am going to take this time to expound my thoughts, as well as some others', on procrastination. First off, I know the deal was that we are supposed to provide a blog entry for every class period. I haven't been avoiding that purposely, but I find that I will submit considerably more 'engaged' blogs is I postpone writing anything until the end of the week and then composing all my thoughts into coherent entries in which I can fully explain my thoughts instead of posting a handful of half-baked ramblings.
Secondly, I would like to harken back to our class discussion on "Hamlet and Procrastination." In ending the discussion, it seemed that we ended on the conclusion that Hamlet procrastinates in order to allow for a space for the drama of the play to take place. At the time, I didn't find too much of a problem with this conclusion because, frankly, I didn't have a better alternative. But upon further rumination and research I came to see that if this were truly the case, Shakespeare, being as clever as he was, would have written the play in such a way to allow Hamlet the time he needed to be able to be as dramatic as was necessary. So now, in lieu of this "Procrastination for Dramatic Space" theory, I would like to proffer another theory that I came across while reading through Hamlet's Enemy, the book Dr. Sexson was nice enough to loan me. Though I don't particularly care for psychoanalysis, particularly Freudian Psychoanalysis, I couldn't help but find an important example of reason why Hamlet finds himself procrastinating within the play. The Freud-Jones Interpretation of Hamlet's situation sheds an alternative light (although, I must admit, it is a shady-psychological light) on Hamlet's dilemma which ultimately leads to his procrastination. I must take a second here to warn against potential pronoun confusion in the following explanation. This play and this explanation create for difficult explanation. The Freud-Jones Interpretation basically has its roots in Freud's Oedipal Complex. The Oedipus complex, as I'm sure you all know, states that within every male child/adolescent there is an instinctual desire to kill one's father and therefore, with the father being out of the way, marry the mother. This being the case, especially Hamlet's case, he finds that he has identifies with Claudius. Instead of being able to quickly take the orders from his father's ghost and to take revenge upon his uncle, he finds himself at a moral crossroads seeing as Claudius has only done what Hamlet himself had wanted to do. This more complication is further exacerbated by the fact Hamlet's father commands him not to take revenge on his mother. Hamlet Sr. tells his son that his mother should be left to be judged by heaven. This frustrates the son because his largest cause for upset is not directed towards his uncle as is most likely to be expected but instead towards his mother. This is another component of Freud's theory. After the father's death, the mother's attentions should be directed to the son, and the son should become the sole focus of these affections. However, the mother overlooks the son and directs all of her attentions towards his uncle. So because the son identifies with the uncle and resents his mother, he would prefer to take revenge upon the mother, but being directly advised against such action Hamlet finds himself morally frustrated and forced to postpone any immediate action against anyone; hence the procrastination as well as a large component of the conflict of the play.
Perhaps this seems as shady to you as it did to me. Either way, it offers something new.
Also, one last note about the sonnet. Below is a version of the point I am at with my sonnet. It is not complete. Some of the technical points need modified for it to conform to the specs of a proper sonnet, but here it is:
A field of daisies dance in the wind,
They bow and twist and writhe;
And as I wander slowly by,
I turn and one catches my eye.
It does not stand above the rest
But caught my eye by happenstance;
And all the closer I inspect,
The purest beauty she does reflect.
She smiles up at the sun
and my heart catches fire;
Every petal glistens with fresh dew,
At each one, I fall in love anew.
My heart has been stolen like never before;
I can look at another, never more.
No comments:
Post a Comment