Guys, I am watching the opera version of Hamlet on SkyArts2. It sucks.

Claudius!

Last lesson we focused on Claudius in Hamlet. We looked at his speech near the beginning of the play, and watch a couple of clips in various versions of Hamlet.
Personally, I do believe that Claudius is the villain in the story. I think his speech when he is addressing the court is supposed to be 'put on', rehearsed and fake. He could be portrayed as very evil, or just a baddie, but I do think he is evil. Look at the facts; he kills his own brother to become King of Denmark, and then marries his sister-in-law. He insults Hamlet for grieving over his dead father, then he orders two of Hamlets friends to spy on him and sends him away.
Although we agreed that villains in tragedies don't have a motive, I believe this case is different and that Claudius did have a motive for becoming King. I think that he must have been jealous of his brother, which is why he killed him and married his wife, I also think that he is jealous of Hamlet. Hamlet is clever, young and witty, and I don't think that Claudius likes that. Therefore, Claudius's motive to kill the King (his brother) was to gain the throne and have a control over Hamlet.

Tragic Flaws

In today's lesson, we did a free writing exercise to see how much we knew about Tragic flaws. Everyone got similar ideas, that it is something bad happening in a play.
We then started to look at Aristotle, and his ideas of a classic tragedy:

• The idea of a plot
• Character
• Speech
• Reasoning (Not just blind aggression)
• Spectacle (Something exciting happening onstage)
• Lyrical poetry (Beautiful words to hear

Then we looked at the idea of Catharsis and what it could mean. Aristotle said that is was a ''purging of emotions'' and you take the lessons learned from the play to benefit your own life. Whereas Brecht said that you use a tragedy to change the world for the better. We then decided that a good definition of Catharsis was ''to feel an emotion with the performance/narrative''.

Aristotle also had '3 Unities' that made up a play.

• Action (one main plot)
• Time (Time span of the play should relate to 'real' time)
• Place (The play stays in one place)

Shakespeare was know for breaking these rules. He made his plays span across days such as Romeo and Juliet, and he changed the places of the play such as in Othello when he begins in Verona but ends up in Cyprus. However, a new take on tragedy has come from Karen Numan, who said that a tragedy is something which goes against nature, eg Othello sees a black man marry a white woman, and Macbeth sees a man going against the king. I think this is an interesting view on tragedy, and also believe that it is very relevant. If you relate her idea of tragedy to the real world, she is right. Things that go against nature (eg War [men killing men]) end up as being terrible tragedies (Death, suffering of countries, people). Therefore her idea of tragedy I believe is probably the most accurate.

Tragedy!

Last lesson we looked at Tragedy, and what makes a tragedy.
We decided that a tragedy has 3 main elements:

• Death
• Suffering
• Chaos

It also has 3 main characters:

• Victim (Innocent, beautiful, weak)
• Villain (Evil, fatal flaw, manipulative)
• Hero (Perfect, hubris, harmartia)

We also looked at the tragic structure:

1. Introduction
2. A Complication
3. The Climax
4. A New Understanding
5. The Resolution

Really looking forward to Hamlet and assessing its tragic structure.

Destinations In The Kite Runner

I have just written pretty much the whole blog post, and somehow it has all just been deleted. I am now writing it out all again. Annoyed.

I worked with Alice on this, we discussed that the main destination in The Kite Runner is Redemption. We both came up with a few ideas- here are mine:

• Baba's redemption. In Kabul, Baba never connected with his son Amir: "If I hadn't seen him being pulled out of his own mother with my own eyes, I'd never have believed he was my son." Yet in America, Baba becomes dependant on Amir, which allows them to grow closer. "'I am moftakhir, Amir,' he said. 'Proud.'"
• You could argue that Baba's whole life was spent trying to redeem himself from sleeping with Ali's wife, Baba's servant. This is illustrated by Baba's orphanage and other good deeds he did.
• It could be argued that Rahim Khan's redemption (perhaps for not telling anyone about Hassan's rape) is helping Amir find his. After Amir has left to find Sohrab, Rahim Khan is said to have gone away and is unreachable.
• When Amir stays with Fahrid's family, he gives his watch to the children. Although he is ignorant about what the kids are really looking at, it shows Amir is on his way to redemption, and he knows what he must do.
• It could also be argued that people, and the characters in the book, are driven to do good in order to achieve redemption. An example of this would be Baba's orphanage. He does all these good things in order to excuse himself from the bad thing he has done and redeem himself. Amir is also like this, throughout his life he feels guilty of what happens, yet he drives himself in Afghanistan to find Sohrab- he takes a beating from Assef and risks lives to keep him safe.

Merry Christmas!

Friday 10.12.2010

Today, we managed to finish The Kite Runner.

I have very much enjoyed reading The Kite Runner, (And will read A Thousand Splendid Suns), it has been brilliant in many ways and has been very thought-provoking throughout.
However, I am looking forward to moving onto a new text!

Update

Update of lessons- Sorry they are a bit late, but I have had various problems with the computer, and a lot of work to do. I wrote down what we did each lesson, but have been unable to actually post them onto the blog. So here they are.

26/11/2010
Today we looked at an analysis of a psychopaths behaviour. We talked about each point and we discussed how the majority of the points we similar to the character of Assef. Then we continued by exploring is Assef evil? In my opinion, when the word 'evil' is used to describe a person, I tend to think of Hitler, Stalin ect, the typical baddies of history. When it comes to the question of is Assef evil, I would have to agree that yes, he is. Reasons for my opinion of this are because he has no morals, he enjoys violence, and of course, he rapes boys. He is an irredeemably evil character, due to his shocking attack and rape on the characters martyr, Hassan.

01/12/2010
SNOW DAY!

03/12/2010
In our hour's lesson today, we looked at and compared each of our ''You're'' poems which describe subtly the character of Hassan. Mine really isn't that good, but I thought that Kyle's and Alice's were AWESOME.
Here's mine. It sucks.

You're
Whispering white linen in a breeze,
A lamb thrown to a slaughter,
Warm like the budding harvest,
The peaceful light shining in dark places.

A familiar tree on top of the hill,
Courageous like a sultan on his throne,
Ripples in a dried up pond,
Free as a kite,
My cleft lip friend.

Up to date now!