Top Ten Things We Want to Hear Hamlet Say to his Ghost Dad

1. "You know what else is most horrible? Thy breath. Tic-tac, sir."

2. "Do you think I'll get two Christmas gifts from Claudius this year?"

3. "Can I get some money to go see Mockingjay?"

4. "Yes, they made it into two parts. This is only part one. Yes, just like Harry Potter. And The Hobbit."

5. "Wait, you're a Harry Potter fan?"

6. "Did you know how to pronounce Her-my-oh-knee before you heard it in the movies? Me neither, for like three books. Man, that was a murder most foul."

7. "See the thing is, I like Claudius better."

8. "What's a Lethe wharf?"

9. "If there's something strange, in the neighborhood, who ya gonna call?"

10. "I didn't understand a thing you just said. Hold on, I've got my footnotes right here..."

Lear's Lament

Somewhere in Act 3 Lear claims that he is a "man more sinned against than sinning." And I suppose he is, considering that his daughters (at least two of them) prove to be terrible, terrible people who are married to terrible (Cornwall) or passive (Albany) men, which only strengthens the machine that torments the king. Clearly we have plenty of details to fill out both the "sinned against" and the "sinning" sides of this matter.

To be fair, let us not forget that Lear brings this on himself. I can't seem to shake the idea that Lear is kind of whining right here. After all, he is out in the storm that rages both onstage and in his head. But that doesn't make this statement false. At least not entirely. Perhaps Lear is really, really culpable here, but if we stack up his personal guilt against everything else, everything else still tips the scales. Right? Shakespeare's exploration into suffering focuses on internal and external causes, and while King Lear is tormented from within, he is e'en more so from without.

Doesn't this sound like poor Willy Loman? Both Lear and Loman find themselves staring down an awful loaded gun of circumstance. Make no mistake, they load the gun themselves, but it is their environments that take the safety off and cock the hammer. The real question, and the really good analysis, is in what comes next: How do these two men, one who is common and the other a king, handle it all? How do they react to a circumstance stacked against them, partially (or greatly) of their own doing? Do they dig themselves out? Can they? Do they attempt noble action? Can they?

Struggle defines us. Whether we bring the struggle to our doorstep or not is of no consequence. Struggle defines us. And we know that it breaks Willy. What about Lear?

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

What a great line. Am I right? It's just a phenomenal line. Thanks Will. It's the bees knees.

It's what really good literature provides us: reminders of the fantastic elasticity of language. Images so clear they must have been carved out of bedrock. Phrases so subtle they recede before us like vapors, crinkling our brows into that frown that means: I don't quite get it, but I actually do, somewhere in the deep and pleasant places of my brain/heart/soul.

Got line? Share a favorite in Comments.

Up next: Death of a Salesman

Willy Loman, beware. We are headed your way next week, valises in tow, big foamy football-fan fingers waving in the wind.

A gentle reminder, gentle reader: we begin Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on Monday. Please have Act 1 read, thought about, and ready to discuss.

Guiding question: Is Willy Loman, i.e. a common man, an apt subject for a tragedy?

Our esteemed author has some thoughts on this idea, and we want yours as well.

Lesson #37

Never trust the milk sitting out on your counter.


Or the clowns ringing your doorbell. Halloween, indeed, gentle reader.

If I were writing the Grendel essay...

...I would discuss isolation, suffering, and the human position of such ideas as it pertains to my passage. Remember Auden, gentle reader, from Musee des Beaux Arts, when he posits that suffering, as it is observed by the old Masters (who are never wrong!) "takes place / [w]hile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along."

Suffering happens! It "occurs" (to graciously steal from a first hour student) without us caring, without us granting permission, without us.

Us includes Grendel. Suffering, like the rest of the world, doesn't ask for his permission. Doesn't consult him at all. And he doesn't like that. Doesn't know what to do with that fact. Like walls.

Consider this: Auden's poem, like Brueghel's painting, positions suffering and tragedy so that it is not the center of attention. Which means something else is at center. Like life. Normal, routinized, humdrum life. So when suffering occurs, while it may be at the center of your life, it's not necessarily...

You get the idea.

The Nature of Art, the Deletion of Gatsby

What would the world be like without The Great Gatsby? I am thinking absolutely here. If we took Gatsby out of the world entire, what would the world look like?

Would the world notice? Would it truly be impacted?

After all, there are other stories about the American Dream, other protagonists that go for it all and fail due to a tragic yoking to the past. Right? Nick Carraway doesn't corner the market on a friend who cares too little too late; Tom isn't the only jerk; Wilson not the only man swallowed by life's circumstance; Daisy isn't the worst (she is the worst, but for the sake of argument).

What makes Gatsby so blasted special?

Isn't it the very heart of the book, the very fact that Mr. Fitzgerald somehow captures, like bits of the Skittles rainbow, the essence of Gatsby's fantastic capacity for hope and somehow translates it onto the page, to stand as cool and poignant and refreshing as Gatsby himself?

Isn't it because, despite ourselves, we love Gatsby and also we love what props him up? Isn't it because of the hope?

We want hope. We want to know where it resides, how to get at it, what to do with it once we have it. The tragic component here, I believe, is the fact that Gatsby's hope fails him. Or rather, how he commends himself to life based on that hope fails him. Gatsby is a dreamer, a Romantic, a man in love trying to sustain the best parts of himself in a world that devours sustainability. Gatsby doesn't change, but, then, neither does his hope.

Yet as good as that sounds (and I don't know how good it sounds, not at all...), let us not forget, gentle reader, that Gatsby fails. He goes down. Hard. Life gets him. Tom Buchanan wins. Gatsby, and his life and his figurative goodness all get exploded by brutish acts. No shiny veneer then. The Great Gatsby is about the failed American Dream; it is about how Idealism is Naivety; it argues against the notion that a person can cling to good and make good happen. What then? Where do we go from here?

Shouldn't Gatsby be driven out of the world? It is a book of lies, of awfulness packaged in million-dollar wrapping paper. It is a book that causes hope. And hope is dangerous. Because hope is not sustainable. Right?

And so we beat on, ... oh you know the rest.