Blog #13: Socratic Discussion Final Materials

AP Open Question

Morally ambiguous characters – characters whose behavior discourages readers from identifying them as purely evil or purely good – are at the heart of many works of literature. Choose a novel or play in which a morally ambiguous character plays a pivotal role. Then write an essay in which you explain how the character can be viewed as morally ambiguous and why his or her moral ambiguity is significant to the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary

Thesis

In Hamlet William Shakespeare glorifies moral ambiguity through Hamlet's conflicting actions of obsessive plotting and revenge to which discerns the conflicts of division of self within Prince Hamlet. Although Hamlet's quest is to righteously avenge his father's death, Hamlet finds himself grappling with prospects of revenge through his choices of action and inaction- each force playing part on his mind tethering him into moral ambiguity. Implementing the paradox of right and wrong through the main conflict of the play Shakespeare emphasizes the use of moral disvalue to purify the community from rotting individuals as well as express how the divisions of values rots oneself.

3x3 Chart

FIRST THIRD	Quotation Support -- at least 3 significant quotations.
Call to Adventure (Slight- refusal to the call) Hamlet Seeks Reason	“Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift/ As meditation or the thoughts of love,/ May sweep to my revenge” (1.5.29-31) Hamlet Hamlet is talking with his Father’s ghost and had just discovered that he was murdered and he wishes for revenge. “Play something like the murder of my father/ Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;/ I’ll tent him to the quick. If’ a do blench,/ I know my course” (2.2.590-593) Hamlet As Hamlet plots he wishes to convince Horatio and himself of what the king had said so he uses the scape of the play to spy on the reactions of his uncle. To validate his course of action or inaction to come. He plans with himself, talking to himself. “I’ll have grounds/ more relative than this. The play’s  the thing/ wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” (2.2.598-600) Hamlet He is translating that he has more than one reason to kill the king, reasoning it out in his head as he realized what he must do, and the play will be the trigger. Letting the king have a hint that Hamlet knows.
SIGNIFICANT SHIFTS -- USE TEXT EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS.  PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO TONE. At the beginning of this he comes to realization of the weight of problems upon him and as what is to come to the decision he must do- inaction or reaction. He is fighting with the divisions of choices within himself to continue the battle, while during his discussion with Ophelia he becomes enraged and violent as his desire for revenge take roots and he claims that all should be weary of him. As he sets his mind on taking an action. “To be or not to be- that is the question;/ Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/ Or to take arms against the sea of troubles,/ And by opposing end them?” (3.1.56-60) “I humbly thank you; well, well, well.” (3.1.92) “Go to, I’ll no/ more on’t; it hath made me mad… those that are married/ already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep/ as they are. To a nunnery, go.” (3.1.146-149)
SECOND THIRD	Quotation Support -- at least 3 significant quotations.
Road of Trials Anger Rivals Truth	“Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you/ make me! You would play upon me; you would/ seem to know my stops… yet you cannot make it speak… Call me what instrument you will, though you/ can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me” (3.2.355-363) Hamlet Hamlet and Guildenstern are talking and Hamlet says to him that he knows the truth and cannot be played as fool. He knows that Guildenstern is in cahoot with king, therefore going to anger with him as he believes in the king's deceit. Turning on one of his closest friends. Moving around and changing how he views his relationships with the people of this world. “Now might I do it pat, now a’ is a-praying/ And now I’ll do’t - and so ‘a goes to heaven,/ And so am I reveng’d. That would be scann’d:/ A villain kills my father; and for that,/ I, his sole son, do this same villain send,/ to heaven./ Why this is hire and salary, no revenge.” (3.3.73-79) Hamlet He plans to kill king Claudius as he is praying in the confessional booth- therefore fulfilling his quest. Then a darker turn happens in his belief and mind. IT would not only be revenge to kill but to send him to hell- damnation. So he deters from killing the king now for fears of the ‘villain’ ascending into heaven. These dark thoughts urge Hamlet onto his spiraling downfall. “Such an act/ That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,/ Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose/ From the fair forehead of an innocent love/ And sets a blister there, makes marriage vows/ As false as dicers' oaths—oh, such a deed/ As from the body of contraction plucks/ The very soul, and sweet religion makes/ A rhapsody of words./ Heaven’s face doth glow/ O'er this solidity and compound mass/ With tristful visage, as against the doom,/ Is thought-sick at the act” (3.4.42-520 Hamlet Hamlet had accidently killed Polonius, mistaking him for Claudius. He turns on his mother who has always loved and supported him and disowns her, severing even more ties within his relationships. Becoming physically mad with anger- clearly unable to understand the truth of the mistake, blaming everything on his mother,
SIGNIFICANT SHIFTS -- USE TEXT EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS.  PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO TONE. “How all occasions do inform against me,/ And spur my dull revenge! What is a man/ If his chief good and market of his time/ Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.” (4.4.31-34) “And ever three parts coward—I do not know/ Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to do,’” (4.4.43-44) “Rightly to be great/ Is not to stir without great argument,/ But greatly to find quarrel in a straw/ When honor’s at the stake. How stand I then,/ That have a father kill'd, a mother stained,/ Excitements of my reason and my blood” (4.453-58) “Oh, from this time forth,/ My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!” (4.4.65-66) The shift here it from indefinite inaction to the belief and power of action. Hamlet is wasting his time and realized how weak he is for waiting and makes a promise of himself to fight for a worthy cause and revitalize the purity of Denmark through his Father’s revenge. He is definite, dark, and dangerous. Everything is about to go down and we can tell- Hamlet shows no mercy. Moral ambiguity is no more, he is set in stone.
LAST THIRD & HERO’s JOURNEY	Quotation Support -- at least 3 significant quotations.
Resurrection (Return with Elixir-> death) Revenge Revitalizes Purity	“I loved Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers/ Could not with all their quantity of love/ Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her? “ (5.1.247-249) Hamlet At the grave of Ophelia he sees Laertes actions for Ophelia and cannot take the thought that he loved Ophelia more than Hamlet himself. So he plays on part that loves Ophelia more than a thousands brother’s could- which contradicts the way he treated her while they were in the grand hall. “It will be short. The interim’s mine./ And a man’s life’s no more than to say ‘one.’/ But I am very sorry, good Horatio,/ That to Laertes I forgot myself,/ For by the image of my cause I see/ The portraiture of his. I’ll court his favors./ But sure the bravery of his grief did put me/ Into a towering passion.” (5.2.78-85) Hamlet Hamlet is discussing with Horatio about his troubles and how he feels his guilty about fighting with Ophelia's brother and decides that is best to make amends and continue being kind to him, for he is grieving too. Which again changes the enactments of character relationship. He is acting pure but Larities anger towards him still causes the impurity of rot to grow. “Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee.—/ I am dead, Horatio.—Wretched queen, adieu!—/ You that look pale and tremble at this chance,/ That are but mutes or audience to this act,/ Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death,/ Is strict in his arrest), O, I could tell you—/ But let it be.—Horatio, I am dead./ Thou livest. Report me and my cause aright/ To the unsatisfied.” (5.2.327-335) Hamlet Everyone is dead and Hamlet is proud to have avenged his father and for the fall of all the rot, but only with his following death does all the rot of Denmark becomes clean of the morally ambiguous or self divided consciousness.
FINAL SHIFTS AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE “CLOSING” AS IT RELATES TO ALL OF THE SHIFTS WITHIN THE TEXT. USE TEXT EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS.  PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO TONE. “If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart/ Absent thee from felicity a while,/ And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain/ To tell my story.” (5.2.344-347) “What is it ye would see?/ If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search.” (5.2.362-363) “Of that I shall have also cause to speak,/ And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more./ But let this same be presently performed,/ Even while men’s minds are wild, lest more mischance/ On plots and errors happen.” (5.2.392-397) A shift of deceit of being to that of purity as all the evil has been cleaned away with the tragedy to come.  Hamlet claims the story must live so that people don’t repeat the same errors and have tragedy befall again. It is a melancholy ending- with all dead, the kingdom's health much alive.

Final Synthesis Chart

	Hamlet	Hamlet Literary Criticism	Contemporary Novel: Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg	Poem 1: “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley	Poem 2: “London, 1802” by William Wordsworth	Poem 3: “Their Lonely Betters” by George Gascoigne
POINT 1 The actions of what others say to them often reflect to opposite of how the person portrays themselves.	“This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” (1.3.78-80) Polonius tells his son that the worse thing a man can do is to others say one thing and not be true to himself so it makes him morally ambiguous and confused to where one’s own morals may lie. This is a quote against the prospect of ambiguity though as we find later Laertes is driven by his anger and will of the king to be untrue to himself. His own morals of  others affecting and dividing himself.	““Given the hypocrisy of the court, where one may not say what one means, honesty must either hold its tongue or express itself through indirection” (Levin, 271). All characters in Hamlet must not portray their real selves, or else even more trouble will appear. Though even as they deceive each other with words and actions unlike themselves. The characters also in fact deceive themselves, dividing their attention between being themselves and acting.	“NOW HEAR THIS. Lydia has shouted, the words not even hers. She is standing, her chair scraping like a scream as she rises, turning to Face these women. NOW,  she shouts again, her voice a shock to her ears, the loudest sound she has made in many months” (Clegg, 38) Lydia is very shy and lives most of her life isolated from the town. They portray her as evil and unloyal and evil- yet she is very gentle and kind and just… broken. Though as people bustle her about her son's death they make her into someone she isn't.	“And on the pedestal, these words appear…/Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!” (Shelley, 9-11) A pedestal is a place of worship but then we hear that he is to be despaired, not loved. For what are the leader’s ideals if he seems so loved and feared? Very unknowing of his desires leave him ambiguous. For his thoughts and the actions of his people do not seem to align. The kingdom fell so it can be assumed the people feared him but he in fact believed the people had adored him.	“In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart/ The lowest duties on herself did lay.” (Wordsworth, 13-14) London is said to be working in cheerful godliness in state but is juxtaposed when she is said to be doing the lowest of jobs. If England is of the highest assessment of power and praise in godliness then why are the lowest jobs and dirtiest or saddest put upon her? Is it because she has the forced hand of the people and cannot think for herself or is she caring for her people?	“We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:/ Words are for those with promises to keep.” (Gascoigne, 15-16) We see words of knowledge as advancement in thought and reason and connectivity. But the opposite is true as words separate us and cause us to be lonelier than that of which w appear to be. Nature we would see as more disconnected because it cannot communicate but in truth it is more aligned and purposeful together, the opposite of what people would assume.
POINT 2 Major conflicts that affect the internal belief of a character is a person vs person conflict. These actions truly show how characters interact with one another as well as themselves.	“God hath given you one face, and you make/ yourself another” (3.1.143-144) How previously Hamlet saw Ophelia as one person though as their conflict continues he being to realize even more that she is someone entirely different.	“Hamlet’s double edged comment, ‘O, but she’ll keep her word,’ (3.2.217-218) is ostensibly another bit of polite conversation. Actually, he is distorting the play-within-the-play queen in order to drive home an invidious contrast. The Play-Queen will have no chance to keep her word; the Queen of Denmark had a chance and failed” (Levin 271-272). The character vs character snarl here shows publically and passive aggressively brooding anger towards his mother for her remarriage. It twists the conspiring Hamlet deeper into actual madness as he pulls himself away from his loving mother,	“When luke was born, it was clear to everyone that Lydia’s husband… was not the father. He packed Lydia’s bags that very night and told her not to come back… Lydia Morey was for a while was as banished as one can be in a town of fifteen hundred people” (Clegg, 25) Lydia is a very stand still keep quiet character but has her passions. This character conflict displays how her passions get in her way with the connections with other characters. Her ex-husband now puts a feeling on her that allows her to believe that she will never be loved.	“Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown/ And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command… The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;” (Shelley, 4-8) There is a vision of here of a strong king allowing his land and people to shatter and demolish into the sand. Though he had a duel side as he interacted with the people, he had mocked them and commanded them with his hand. Though he did care for them and fed them with the passion in his heart. Dividing the views of him between self and others.	“Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,/ Have forfeited their ancient English dower/ Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;/ Oh, raise us up, and return to us again;” (Wordsworth,4-7) It can be assumed that the people of London are having conflicts with themselves and each other that leads to this moral downfall. While the positive can result from having contact with Milton. Milton can make all of the conflict go away, causing all purity to flow through and correct all of London once again.	“Not one of them was capable of lying,/ There was not one which knew that it was dying” (Gascoigne, 9-10) Nature has no true internal conflicts between character and character accept to live (hunting). We do not know of plants holding grudges or mice plotting revenge. Only because character and people have problems with other characters and people do we interact different with others and plot differently than others.