2. In feigning madness, Hamlet was able to take some of the accountability off him for being a reasonable person. If he was insane when he murdered Claudius, no one could have blamed him for not adhering to the morals he’s been raised on and such. Also, one can tell that insanity was sort of taboo in the era, because after Polonius was killed the identity of the killer was kept secret from as many people as possible, because the court was under the impression of his insanity. Also, when Ophelia became insane (this was real insanity because she being a weak character and the people who controlled her all abandoned her at once), not even her brother found out about it until he returned home. Being insane makes committing crime much easier because one doesn’t suffer quite as many consequences.

3. Since Freud was wrong about a great number of things, I don’t believe that Hamlet and Gertrude had an Oedipal Complex going on, just that the movie interpreted it that way. I mean, his obsession with his mother’s sexual behavior I believe stems from the uneasiness that anyone would have seeing their parents with another significant other. No one here wants to have sex with the other. Hamlet probably just wants things to be the way they were.  I think the portrayal of Ophelia represents a very real young female of that era: timid, controlled, and delicate. In the book The Count of Monte Cristo, Edmond Dantes is enraged to find out that his former fiance married his best friend only a month after he supposedly “died”, staged by his best friend to obtain his fiance. It is later discovered that she was pregnant with Dantes’ child, and married out of desperation to avoid scandal and shame. This was what women had to do back then to save their reputations. There was no room for them to be strong. I also think that Hamlet did love Ophelia, probably because she didn’t talk much and was a good listener–perfect for when you have a lot to say like Hamlet does. Part of me acknowledges that he is disappointed in humanity and now hates her, but another part believes that he just wanted to spare her from the world he was going to live in after he murdered Claudius. She would never be allowed to marry a criminal, and an insane one at that, and if she did, she would lose her status and her dignity for it.

4. I think that if the story had played out differently and Hamlet died before he could kill Claudius, that Claudius would’ve committed suicide anyway because he would’ve killed the woman he loves and his nephew, and thus that would’ve had an additive effect on the already heaving guilt laying upon him. He would’ve had nothing to live for, and with Fortinbras closing in, no land to rule over, either.

At first glance, these two masterpieces of art are truly juxtaposed: one is abstract, one is realist; one is dark, and one seems to be a little more cheerful. Putting aside the obvious, however, there is a set of similarities that reveal the mindset and society of the respective eras the paintings derive from, as well as some lessons about human nature.
The first thing one might notice is that both paintings are painted in the same orientation: portrait. Indeed, both are portraying humans (questionable for The Scream), and the subjects into both are facing the viewer with their bodies and faces. This confrontational stance serves different purposes in each work. In The Scream, it serves to reveal a reaction. In American Gothic, it serves to record a pose almost in the way that a photograph records information for future generations.
Although the subject in the Munch is far more expressive than those of the Wood, both can express a lot of information. A first viewing of The Scream might raise questions about what the subject is screaming about. A little research yields that the painting was inspired by a walk Munch took with two friends (depicted on the left edge). The sky suddenly turned a reddish color (brought on by the eruption of Krakatoa), and he “sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.” So, “The Scream” is referring to the scream outside the scope of the picture, and the subject is not pulling a Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, but is covering their ears from this scream. It was a moment of reflection, of unleashed emotions, of chaos, and of peace, all at once.
In American Gothic, the farmer and his wife/daughter are still hardly happy campers. Their long faces (both genetically and reactively) don’t help with that, either. The farmer is again posing out of obligation or because the artist told him to do so. The symbolism lies in the expression on the female’s face. Disappointment, apathy, sadness, judgment, and longing are just some of the things that I picked out from her countenance. The man stands in front, hiding part of her body, clutching a pitchfork that says to everyone and their mother “I need this pitchfork here so that everyone will know that I am a hard-working farmer.” One can almost see the woman rolling her eyes in the next moment, telling him to get off his alpha male high horse. After all, the suffragette movement ended almost a decade before, and the onset of the depression rendered all the poor as equals anyway.
From a technical standpoint, the paintings are very different, both being contrasting aesthetic and mood. There is a clear horizon on both paintings that separates the dark colors from the lighter colors: the clothing from the heads of the farmers, and the actual horizon in The Scream. The Munch contains much a much richer fire palette, of reds, oranges, and blues, appropriate for portraying chaos. The Wood comprises of wispy, pastel colors, except in the almost austere, rural clothing. The straight lines of the house in the Wood give it a sense of realism, whereas the curving, buckling lines in the background of the Munch give it a sense of abstractionism. One would expect just the opposite in regards to the respective time periods, realism being a late 19th century movement and the early 20th century being characterized by abstract art.
Some patterns are repeated in both: In the Wood, the farmer’s pitchfork is repeated to the right of it on his overalls, giving a sense of fusing with his environment. In the Munch, the figure in the center undulates, as if swaying with the motion of the environment. In the 1930’s, this could represent acceptance and complacency with impoverished farm life during the Depression, and utter helplessness in the face of nature in the late 19th century.
Wood painted American Gothic after he drove by a house in Iowa and imagined what sort of people would live in such a place. He painted this out of a fascination for the Midwest, as a representation of rural American life. Today it is seen as a satire of rural of the traditions and foibles of rural life. The same goes for The Scream, where Munch painted an experience that he had with the forces of nature, but is commonly interpreted as satire: the subject screaming at an internal frustration, or “existentialist angst,” if you will.
These two paintings reveal the context of the time periods they represent, and some observations of human nature, such as the submission to males and to nature. Both exist as symbols of their respective cultures today, inhabiting some, if not all, the meaning they had a century ago. They got to this status because although they look completely different, a lot of what they say has to deal with the human condition, which has never fallen out of interest with the human race.

References:
“American Gothic.” Wikipedia. 15 Apr 2008. 18 Apr 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ American_Gothic>.

“Grant Wood.” Art Institute of Chicago. Aug 2004. 24 Apr 2008 <http://www.artic.com/ artaccess/AA_Modern/pages/MOD_5.shtml>.

“The Scream.” Wikipedia. 17 Apr 2008. 17th Apr 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ The_Scream>.

“Why the sky was red in Munch’s ‘The Scream’”. CNN. 10 Dec 2003. 17th Apr 2008 <http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/12/10/scream.munch.reut/>.

TV if good for you. It is a way to learn and develop socially acceptable behavior. For those with parents that didn’t grow up here or just don’t understand society in this generation, tv can be a valuable asset. Okay, so maybe most of the world thinks that tv is bad for you because of the reasons above. But they really have no right to be. TV, like anything else, is a choice that people make. TV is not what makes you go and buy that Miracle Blade knife set, or what makes you get Jennifer Aniston’s latest haircut. The audience takes that and makes decisions of their own. Studies have shown that subliminal messaging is not a widely accepted concept because of its inefficiency. So what excuse do we have? Don’t blame tv for your problems. Blame the fact that most americans aren’t educated properly to critically process the information they receive from the tube. TV is bad because we make it bad.

Paragraph 1: “Democracy”

-We say that we are a democracy, but make it paradoxically unrepresentative by making it a representative democracy.

-People don’t exercise their voting rights, so it really isn’t a representative government.

Paragraph 2: Politicians

-The people we choose to make our decisions for us are people of a certain kind of background

-They have to be rich to get enough publicity to get elected

-They need to be of a certain socioeconomc background to get a certain kind of vote

-They have more similarities to each other than differences, so they are not representative

Paragraph 3: Conformity

-What is socially acceptable is  constantly changing, but in some cases, not for the better

-Even as we are becoming more and more advanced, it makes everything more available to everyone.

-Mass market production, lowered prices, better transportation of ideas and products.

-At least when it comes to material things, society has made it not only easy, but the norm to own the same things as everyone else. And if you stray from that norm, there is something wrong with you

Conclusion: Kennan’s observations might have made more sense in his day than in ours, but there are still many things that he didn’t take into consideration, that are more prevalent in our modern society.

After he gets past this initial gripes about reading this book, however, his review becomes a comprehensive commentary about what the book gets into. Yet he can’t resist continuing to explain why the book itself refutes what the author claimed about his character “Even Bayard’s personal revelation that he’s “read relatively little” turns out to be untrue.” His final comment is reflective: about how reading is a lot of prodding through text line by line, but the part that actually matters is whatever message makes an impact on the reader. The moral of the story: not quite that one shouldn’t read book, but pretty close if the effect you want is humor.