Ghost of my Father

In reading Hamlet so many different ideas come forth even just from the first two scenes. First, is the ghost of Old King Hamlet really there or is it just madness or false vision? Second, what is to come with the ghost of Old King Hamlet? Why has he risen again to walk the earth is it to warn and help the country or to protect his beloved son? Third, with the knowledge gained what can Hamlet do in the future?

One of the main themes of Hamlet as we learned well doing our pre-work for Hamlet is madness. Is Hamlet truly mad does he really see and speak with his father? This question can change a persons whole perception of the events taking place. Me personally, I believe in ghost or spirits. I believe that our loved ones are around us watching over us and protecting us. Some people believe that I am crazy but I believe that I have seen a ghost of my great-grandfather whom I never met. I saw him in my grandmothers house where she has also said she has seen and felt her fathers spirit. This I feel affects how I feel toward young Hamlet and the situation he is in. I do not believe that he is mad but yet merely being visited my a protecting spirit.

Old King Hamlet is lurking but what has he come to protect his country, his son, or possibly both? I believe that within protecting his son with his otherworld knowledge he will in turn help Young Hamlet to save Denmark, mind you this is without having yet read the play. I have come to this conclusion because I believe that most if not all parents first and most important concern is for their children.

What will this all mean for the Hamlet's future and the future of Denmark we will all just have to continue to read and see where Shakespeare will lead us.

(What is your stance of "Hamlet's condition" do you believe he is really seeing his dead father or do you believe that he is truly mad? Why? Have you ever had what you believe to be an experience or encounter with someone from beyond the grave?)

Kubla-Klan and Ozymandias

1. In "Kubla-Klan", I think that the author is warning against letting your imagination run away with you. When the poem first starts off, with a beautiful paradise with imagery to make the reader think that the poem is going to be about a wonderful dream place. But the poem quickly takes a turn to the total opposite spectrum by the end of the poem. The author then talks about this place in the total opposite spectrum. He says this place is "savage" and has "caves of ice". By the end of the poem the author is telling the reader to beware by saying "and close your eyes with holy dread, for he on honeydew hath fed, and drunk the milk of paradise." To me this is saying that the author is warning the reader to watch out for what you imagine could be a paradise because in reality it might not be as great as you thought it would be. I believe Coleridge wrote this to show people that what they think is better is not always best, and that things aren't always as they appear.

2. As I read Ozymandias, I heard three speakers within the poem. The three speakers are the narrator, the traveler, and Ozymandias. The narrator tells what a traveler once said to him about a broken statue he saw in the desert. From this we hear the third speaker, Ozymandias, he says "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" This statement I believe is important to the overall meaning of the poem. This quote that Ozymandias says suggests that this man was once a great leader and had eventually fallen in his rein of power. The fact that the statue is now broken when the traveler describes it in this poem, could suggest that the leader had fallen or been taken over by someone else. I think this poem is trying to explain to the reader that things can be taken away in a moment so never take a single thing for granted.

The Chimney Sweep

1) Yes, I agree with the editors of our textbook that Blake’s poetry had the power to enact social change by appealing to the imagination of the reader. I think that through painting the images of exhausted, overworked, and deprived children Blake was able to reach at emotion of the people. Through the words of his poetry, in both The Chimney Sweep from the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, Blake verbally illustrates a picture of meek and mild mannered boy who has very much known nothing but his life as a child worker, where he is deprived of the major essentials of shelter, warmth, proper food, and love. Even though in the Songs of Innocence the boy, Tom Dacre, has a greater outlook on life and his place in heaven which lightens the mood of the poem it doesn’t take away from the main picture of an abused child. Both versions of the poem, even though they express different emotions from the point of view of the boy, the boy is still in the same situation. After analyzing both poems I believe that the boy described in both poem could possibly be the same boy. In Songs of Innocence, the boy has not experienced this world so long and still believes there is hope for a better future whether that future is here or in Heaven. In the Songs of Experience, the boy could be now jaded by the horrible world that he is forced to live in and has lost his once young childish idea about his fate.

2) The editors of the textbook might have included the Parliament transcript as a primary source document to transform the fictional child that Blake creates through his poems to a real living breathing boy who experienced this horrible type of life as a child laborer, or in my opinion child slave. This document for me brought the image I pictured in my head to life and made me think of what this must have been like to be the same situation as this young man. So for me the document made Blake’s poems that much more real for me. It made me happy for how far society where I live has progressed that this is not something that I need to fear for myself and the generations that follow me. But at the same time it saddens me that this is still occurring in other parts of the world.

Gulliver's Travels

Questions
1. What could the difference in height between Gulliver and the Lilliput people represent?
2. Knowing about Swift’s past, who might the Gulliver and the Lilliput represent?
3. Who is truly the norm in this story? Is Gulliver average size or is he truly a giant?
4. At what point do you believe Gulliver begins to see the Lilliput as people and why?

Excerpts
"And would rather conjecture that you dropped from the moon, or one of the stars".
(Pg. 658) This quote brings up a question that goes back to what we were previously studying. What does this quote reveal about humans intellectual limitation? I chose this quote because I believe it goes back to the topic of human limitations and what is within bounds of our knowledge.

Predictions
The class might possibly be confused about why Gulliver chose to stay calm throughout his ordeal among the Lilliput. But besides this I think the excerpt from Gulliver’s Travel is pretty straight forward.

Reflective Journal
My group worked very well together, we were able to have all our ideas down on paper within the first day of working on the lesson. I don’t think there would be anything that I would change I chose a group that I would work well with and that I thought could bring different interpretations of the excerpt to the table. From the group work I was able to think about it in a different light, each member of my group was able to bring a different idea about the section to the discussion.

Monday In Class
On Monday in class my group will work on the presentation aspects of our work. We have created our chart out answered and spoke out all of our questions as well as the excerpts that we have chosen. We will now come up with a plan to execute our lesson effectively.