Chelsea's Blog

Gosh this year has gone by so fast. I remember reading this blog from last year’s students like it was yesterday. When I found out that I had Mrs. Duke for English III, I completely admit that I was really scared. Not just of the class itself because I heard that it was pretty brutal, but also of Mrs. Duke because when she’s not turning people into stone by making eye contact, she’s eating babies. That was a joke, but not the last time you’ll hear it. I don’t think that I ever got over my fear of English class, but it did get better as the year went on. I know that I could have done better if I wasn’t so scared, so that’s the first thing I’m going to tell you. Do not be scared. Most of the things that she will make you do will be brand new because no other teacher has ever made you do things like that before and this will be scary. It’s okay to be at first, but just remember that if our class survived through it, then so can you.

The second thing that you must do is keep up with your homework. This really doesn’t sound fun, and, most of the time, it’s not, but you have to do it. She gives you a ton of outside work and this is pretty much what determines your whole grade. If you keep up with your readings and blogs, then you will pass, but if you don’t, then you will fail. This sounds kind of lame, but blogging is actually kind of fun sometimes. You get to do a lot of free posts which is pretty cool because you get a chance to write about anything you want to and people come up with some pretty interesting  and unique stuff. The blogs are really important because they give you other views and understandings of whatever it is that you are discussing at the time. Yes, it does take a lot of time, but you get a lot out of it. You just have to be sure that you do your blogs on time and throughout the week. It’s an automatic 50 points which is really nice to your grade.

If you keep up with your reading then class won’t be so bad and that will make Mrs. Duke happy. When everyone is on the same page and knows what’s going on, class discussions are easier and more thoughtful which is more benefitting to you and the rest of the class. My class was kind of bad at this and we got off the path a lot.

AHHH I JUST LOST THE REST OF THIS BLOG!!!! IT WAS SO GOOD BUT I DONT REMEMBER WHAT I WROTE!!! Here’s a tip, save what you write so when your computer randomly decides to shut down you won’t loose all of it and have to start over.

Okay, well, I think what I was saying was that when no one does their homework or reads, then class is kind of pointless because there is no thought being put into the discussion. My class was kind of bad at this. There are two groups that we could be put into, both not so good. There was the people who talked too much and who could be obnoxious and always off topic and then the group, like me, who were too quiet and never talked or joined in on the discussion. You should try to go for the group in the middle of those. Be the people who talk just enough to voice your opinion on the subject. It is okay to get off topic every once in a while, but it is important to know when to get back on subject.

This was the most interesting and challenging english class that I have ever taken and probably will ever take. There’s not that much I can really tell you, just make sure that you always do what you are asked or told to do. Do it on time and to the best of your ability. This time next year you will be in my position, trying to write this blog. I am looking back on this year at all of the things that I could have done better. There are a lot. I just hope that you don’t take these blogs full of advice for granted like I did and that you actually try to do what they tell you. When you are here next year you will want to be able to say that you did all of the things that you are telling to the class coming after yours. There are a lot of things that I wish I would have done differently and even though I sometimes did my best and gave my all, I know that I could have done better. Don’t be like me and ignore all of this thinking that you will figure it out on your own because that’s exactly what I did, and it did not happen.

Just a few more tips:

she knows when you do nothing and when you do everything,

she can tell when you stayed up till 12 a.m. Sunday night blogging,

she knows when you didn’t read or do your homework,

she doesn’t like it when you talk about or compare other classes,

think before you speak,

she has eyes in the back of her head and supersonic hearing so you can’t pull anything on her.

Oh, and she likes it when you compliment on her outfits, especially the scarfs.

Have fun this year!!!….but not too much.

Ros and Guil are on the boat to England with Hamlet when Guil starts talking about how safe and free boats are. He feels free on the boat, but, still, he is trapped in the play. They talk about how much the king paid them and that he would pay them both the same because there’s no way he would discriminate between them. They say that he wouldn’t even mix them up, but they do get mixed up in Hamlet because it shows how expendable and interchangable they are and how Hamlet doesn’t feel any remorse for sending them to die in order to save himself.

The part where Guil gets mad at Ros for not being able to say anything original shows their characters the way that Stoppard wants them to be portrayed. He always has Guil saying all of the important and philisophical stuff and Ros is alway there for the support, but here Guil is furious at Ros for only repeating what he says and not putting in his own sense. The fact that they start freaking out about loosing the letter and their emotional breakdowns shows that they are really beginning to loose it; they feel confused and isolated. Ros tries to imagine what England will look like, but his mind is blank. He says that they are slipping off of the map, a reference to their death. They speak of death and Ros considers suicide, but decides to stick to his lines that he is expected to perform.

They read the letter and see that the king has written for Hamlet’s head to be cut off. They question their friendship with Hamlet and how they have only been depending on other people’s words to determine their friendship. I like the idea that is expressed by Guil when he says that since we don’t know anything about death, we fear it when it could actually be nice.

They are trying to decide if Hamlet is mad or not when the boat is attacked by pirates. Ros, Guil, Hamlet, and the player all hide in barrels, but when the lights come back on Hamlet’s barrel is gone. Ros: “He’s dead then. He’s dead as far as we’re concerned.” Player: ” Or we are as far as he is. Not too bad is it?” (119) They read the second letter that Hamlet has written and switched with the first. It says that Ros and Guil are to be put to death. Guil stabs the player out of anger at the fact that actors supposedly cannot die, but then they talk like they know everything about death because they have experienced it so much. The player dies, or so I believed. He stands up and all of the tragedians and Ros applaude for his performance.

Their death kin dof confused me. They don’t really die, just disappear. Ros goes first and after him, Guil thinks back on a place that they could have said no and stopped all of this. I think that they disappear because they stop caring so much. They know what has to happen and they have been through all this so they get tired of it at the end and just stop, so they disappear. It ends with the last scene of Hamlet which ties it all together because the ambassador tells Horatio that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.

This part starts off with Hamlet coming back and Ros is wanting to take his chance to talk with him, but his nerves get the best of him and says that “When it comes to the point we succumb to their personality….” (pg. 75). This part adds to our discussion in class about how Hamlet is portrayed to the two as a mean and scary guy. A lot of what Ros and Guil say and do is very sarcastic and silly, something that would not be expected of the two in the actual play of Hamlet. I guess that I would probably have the same sarcastic emotion if I knew that I was soon going to be killed. There’s a lot of joking, not only from Ros and Guil, but also from the player. He has gone from strange and nervous about the whole death thing to joking about it in a somewhat crazy way. It shows how emotions can get the best of you.

It’s weird how Guil is giving advice on how the actors who are playing them in their death scene should die. When I was reading this part, I had a feeling that the actors really do kill each other, not just to make it believale, but also to get out and be relased. Thankfully they don’t do that because that would just be weird. Whenever the two are just talking alone to each other, they have completely different personalities than they do when they are talking with the queen, king, or Hamlet. They have much less to say and are only in agreement with whoever it is they are talking to. The only person that they are their real selves around is the player. They want to go to England because they think that it is their way out of wherever they are. So they go…

This was my favorite part of the play so far, mainly because it made everything easier to understand and made a lightbulb go off in my head. The connection between Hamlet and this play is now much easier for me to see. Ros and Guil are trapped, dead as they call it, in Hamlet’s world. They are waiting for someone to let them out, which is where the whole burried in a coffin, but still alive discussion comes from. Hamlet gets Ros and Guil mixed up which shows that they are either innerchangeable, or that he has really gone mad. They play the rhetorical question game some more, counting up Hamlet’s points and it was really funny when Ros offered to lick Guil’s toe and wave it around for him. They are trying to find their way out, but they also know that they cannot leave, even after their jobs are done. All they have to look forward to is the entering of the cast of Hamlet and they do not even like that. I think that because they did not stay to watch the player at the beginning, that’s why the player ended up here and the reason why Hamlet is able to put on his play. Also, I found that whenever it is jusst Ros and Guil, their conversations never really add up. I mean, they have a point, but the main parts are right before, during, and right after another character comes onto the stage. This is giving the effect that they have very different personalities in both plays, but both also share the characteristic that they care about Hamlet’s sanity and friendship enough to try to help him.

Stoppard’s whole point is to show how influential Ros and Guil are to Hamlet. If they had not done many of things that they did in this play, then many important things that happen in Hamlet would not be there. He is trying to show that with post modernism, you can tie two sort of stand-offish characters in one play to the same character in another play, but that are the whole focus and creators of everything that happens in both plays.

Here’s my attempt to paraphrase the soliloquy:

The question for Hamlet was whether to continue to exist or not, whether it was more noble to suffer an unbearable situation or to declare war on the troubles that bother him. To die. He pondered the outlook. To sleep, as simple as that. With that sleep we end the heartaches and the thousand natural miseries that humans have to go through. It’s an end that we would all eagerly hope for. To die. To sleep. To sleep. Perhaps to dream. Yes, that was the problem, because in that sleep of death the dreams we might have when we loose our mortal bodies must make us pause. That’s the consideration that creates the misfortune of such a long life, because who could tolerate the scorn of time, the bully’s offences against us; the contempt of proud men; the pain of rejected love; the disrespect of authority; and the advantage that the worst people take of the best, when one could just release oneself with a naked blade? Who would carry this load, under the burden of a worn out life if it weren’t for the dread of the afterlife. That’s the thing that stuns us and makes us put up with those evils that we know rather than go to those that we know nothing about. Thinking about it makes us all cowards and the first thought to end our lives is abscurred by reflecting on it and great and important plans are weakened to the point where we don’t do anything.

At this moment in the play, Hamlet is being compelled by his madness to speak like this. He is torn between his emotions about his mother, uncle, and father/ghost and does not know whether to kill himself or go on living with these burdens. My first thought was that the audience would be the king and Polonius hiding and spying on Hamlet, but the directions say that the audience is not on the stage. This makes me think that the audience is the people in the audience, the one’s watching or reading the play. The audience is influenced by Hamlet’s choices because they see everything that he is thinking and all of his actions, like the soliloquy. They get the first hand experience of all of his emotions and thoughts which drive his choices.  The purpose of his speech is to convey his feelings about the choices he has and how he is torn between life and death and how he comes about to make a decision. Hamlet uses the appeal of pathos, emotions or interest of the audience, to convince and/or motivate the audience. He does this mainly when he is referring to how people think of their lives and death and societies authority. As of right now, I think that Hamlet is going crazy. Not many people who think about committing suicide are totally sane and that this is not the last we will hear of his madness.

I thought this part was going to be less confusing, but it wasn’t. Their relationship with Hamlet is probably going to end up being really important and influential because they are very concerned with his “transformation” and are starting to plan out what they will do about it. They bring up home again and talk about how much they miss it and then they start to finish each other’s lines showing their closeness, but the words of both are all out of order. I think this is to make a point that they are both confused. I can tell that Stoppard was big on the questioning aspect of post modernism because practically this whole section was about questions, especially when the dialogue is only questions.

They are both worried about Hamlet which shows that they are close to him and respect him. They plan to question him in order to find what is really wrong with him which could tie into Hamlet because maybe they influence him to make a decision about seeing his father’s ghost or what to do about his uncle. The fact that they are even able to converse with Hamlet makes a point that they are worth something, especially since Hamlet greets them with great respect like he wants to listen to and be with them.  Post modern themes are emerging such as abstract thought, unusual dialogue, confusion, and  playfullness. Also, exestensualism, nature of life,  (as discussed in class) was seen when they said that the beginning is birth and the end is death which was something that stood out to me.

The first 35 pages of the play starts out pretty seriously which sets up the stage for the Tragedians to come do their thing. Ros and Guil are betting on tossing coins which lands on the same side 90 times. Guil gets aggravated and explains his philosophies of probability. There is tension between Ros and Guil as kind of a botherly competitive tension where one will fight with the other to be right. They seem to be really close and know each other very well, so their arguing seems to be normal and regularly occurs. The fact that Guil asks Ros what he remembers about home and the way he comes to talk about home makes me think that they have left home, maybe family tensions or some sort of war or economic fall. This could be related to when they later talk about how they were woken up by some man who made them leave (tensions of their country). Guil seems to be the witty, smart, philosophic guy while Ros is more of the relaxed kind of spontaneous one who just goes with the flow.

The play is a postmodern adaptation of Hamlet because the Tragedians use the same characters from Hamlet to put on their show. This section did not get that far into them putting on the play, but I get a feeling that they are going to be mocking Hamlet by using comedy and making fun of it. They might incorporate the economy of their time into that of Hamlet’s because they make a big deal with the Tragedians about how bad times are, especially when they are willing to give up Alfred as a bet. Since they start with Ophelia and Hamlet, whose clothes are all messed up, they will play a lot on the sexual aspects.

I love tea parties. I went to one this afternoon for NCL, National Charity League. It’s a mother-daughter organization where each grade is given different philanthropies and we do charity work for the community. It doesn’t sound that fun, and sometimes its not, but there are those moments when I can’t wait to see those girls. At the end of every year we have a tea where everyone gets recognized for all their hard work and hours earned. It is probably one of the most looked forward to events of the whole organization just because it is so fun to be able to go and goof off with everyone. The girls in my grade are really close, we are all pretty much like best friends, so whenever we get together its amazing and always makes my day.

The food at the tea is awesome and there is a long running tradition, that my class started, to have penut butter fudge. It’s amazing. Everyone gets to get all dressed up and bring their fancy and dainty little tea cups and saucers to sip out of. All the decorations are always beautiful and we get presents. It’s just really nice to get to relax at the end of the year after all your hard work with the people that you love to be with. Of course, the junior class is always the one that gets in trouble for something and today was no different. I’m not sure why we got in trouble, but all of our moms were really mad at us because the new president chewed us out in the middle of the ceremony, but we always get told how much fun we are by the younger girls. I am really looking forward to the upcoming year because we get to have our Senior Soiree and wear big ball gowns and get presented to society. I’m excited.

Im not pregnant…!!! But this weekend kept reminding me of the Mtv reality show 16 And Pregnant. No one realizes how much work taking care of a baby really is and TV shows don’t even come close to showing everything that it involves. I’m no expert, I don’t even want to have kids, but my new cousin, Aeva, hits my soft spot real hard. She is only 10 weeks old and this is the second time I have gotten to babysit her. She is probably the most beautiful baby that I have ever seen and I’m not just saying that because she’s my cousin. Her situation is really sad and what’s even sadder is that she has no say in what happens to her. Baby’s are dependent upon the people that they are with at the time. She has been with so many people and thankfully they have all been trustworthy family members who care about her well being.

Good thing I was so exausted this weekend that I did not want to go out, only stay with Aeva. It was nice to see my mom taking care of her because it ensured me that moms really know what they are doing and now, not that I didn’t know this before, I am positive that my mom took really good care of my sister and me. She was explaining to me that there’s no other feeling than that of having a child. She couldn’t explain the feeling, but said that you will never know it until you go through it and that it completely changes you and your whole outlook on life.

I don’t know when I will see Aeva again, but I pretty much have her future planned out for her. It got a little messed up when my dad said that he wasn’t going to let us adopt her, but that’s okay because now I can be that person in her life that she looks forward to seeing, kind of like my aunt that I have always thought is the coolest person in our family and I can tell her anything and trust that she won’t tell my parents. That’s what I want to be to her and I want her to be the flowe girl in my wedding, I already picked out her dress. Actually, I just want an excuse to buy that dress for her. It’s amazing how one little baby can bring out the intentions of other family members and the opinions that they have the courage to say. I know that she is going to have a hard life, her path has already been set for her, but I don’t agree with that path and I hope that someone else sees that it needs to be changed. I love her, but it’s so sad to see her leave on Sunday afternoons not knowing if I will ever get to see her again.