"Fuck Formality," And Other Insightful Inmate Thoughts

I pride myself on being a very objective and aloof person.

Yeah, right. I’m a sobbing mess of pent-up emotions and unshed tears for every little thing.

This is why the thought of a prison doing such a common and heart-warming thing such as putting on a play seems to me like the cutest thing and makes me almost sigh in adoration. At the beginning of the radio clip, I had the wrong idea that when they said they were presenting Hamlet in a prison, they were literally converting the play to take place in a prison, in that way broaching a new take on the plot. So when the auditions came by, and the constant mispronunciation of words such as ‘Rogue’, ‘flaggen’, and ‘rennish’ were a common occurrence, I seriously questioned the director’s interests and the actors’ obvious inability to read.

But then I finally learned the reality of this scheme and it left me jaw-slacked. The narrator spoke of this play as being “different because it’s a play about a man pondering a crime and its consequences, performed by violent criminals living out those consequences.” Never have I ever witnessed such a display where the same actor playing a killer or an alien, is in actuality that same thing. This is a completely new take on Hamlet seeing that the actors themselves personally feel the emotions portrayed in the text. They can fabricate true conflict by giving great reasons to kill him and good reasons not to (because they certainly have the experience and guts to do it). In that same way, it makes Shakespeare’s Hamlet convert into a personal chronicle of the prisoners and become a reality on stage.

Besides the creativity of it all, as much as it is a completely imaginative innovation that for me means a great deal, there is also a sort of medicinal quality to the project. Forgetting that these actors are former gangbangers or post-office employees that in some way managed to get themselves thrown in this place, they are humans that want a new chance at life, and by no means are living anything close to it. One of the men who play Hamlet, Edgar, spoke of how the director and the play makes him feel human. He said that, after “all the humiliating things they do to us,” such as pride their bare legs open, spread their cheeks wide and other degrading things they wouldn’t do otherwise, “for that minute when they [the director, the play] come, I can at least feel human. In a way this is a coping mechanism and hope for them that is rare in their circumstances. The director has made this a production that has managed to not just entertain, but enlighten and relieve.

Another interesting thing is how they used four Hamlets instead of just one. According to them, it was solely due to the purpose of giving everyone lines and not burdening anyone with those never-ending histrionic soliloquys. But I find that to be so interesting because, seeing as Hamlet is such a complex character, with a variety of conflicting thoughts and multiplicity of mood swings, what better way to portray that than by making him out to be represented by four different people? In this way, they perfectly accomplish depicting the “fractured quality of bonded personalities” that is the character of Hamlet.

It’s funny when you think of taking advice from a prisoner. It’s like, “Oh, I’m having boyfriend problems, let me just as the woman who got put in prison due to her jealousy and her stabbing her husband to death.” Yeah. No. But for some reason, when these prison mates talk of the play and their opinions about it, they say some things that, for me, seem really interesting. They have such a fresh perspective on everything. Big Butch, for example, critiques Horatio for supposedly being Hamlet’s best friend but how he’s always saying “yes, milord,” and that if you’re someone’s real friend, you’re going to tell him everything and fuck any formalities. You’re not going to wait until the end of the freaking play to demonstrate that you care after acting like a completely subservient stranger the whole play. Then he considers Hamlet’s inner conflict and his hesitation for killing Claudius and wonders why it you already know you’re eventually going to do it, why bother waiting? And how “If I’m strong enough to believe in ghosts, than I’m strong enough to believe in what the ghosts tell me. “ The last one being so dry and funny that I couldn’t believe it. Those are questions I would have never thought of and it makes me feel stupid. Inmates make me question my intelligence. Who would’ve thought?

This is a turn from the usual interpretations of this well-known play. Taking people that are assaulted, strip-searched, and humiliated to share this opportunity to express themselves is a real feat. Not only are they creating a completely new analysis of the work, but it also makes for a very inspiring process. For them, this is a break from their harsh reality and a chance to finally use their minds for something important. One of these guys, Brad, says, “If you don’t keep exercising your mind, you lose it.” And it’s true. This is a way to make Hamlet more real and to give them a chance to, via the meaning and concept of the play, think about their actions and their wrongdoings and give them any hope they had ever lost.

Psychoneurosis and Other Bits of Hope

The psychology of the human mind is extremely interesting.

Okay, the truth is I only find it interesting because it explains love and hot steamy sex and all those other entities that all teenagers find interest in.

Or maybe it’s just me.

….

AWKKK WARRRD.

So. Ernest Jones analysis Hamlet from the psychological perspective. (Isn’t every analysis psychological though? Ooh. Deep.) According to him, Hamlet “never intended us to regard” him as “sane” so the “ ’mind o’erthrown’ must have some other meaning than its literal one.” Basically what everyone already knows, which is that Hamlet wants everyone to think he is insane but never truly is. This concept is further affirmed in Robert Bridges’s The Testament of Beauty described how Hamlet seemed insane as to confused people but never really left his reason.

Hamlet’s insight that “would take the world three subsequent centuries to reach” was granted to him by Shakespeare’s extraordinary powers of observation and over-all awesomeness. Hamlet, yet again, is then a very intelligent character. And this character is a perfect example of what Dover Wilson calls “that sense of frustration, futility, and human inadequacy.” I wonder if this is Wilson’s weird way of describing insanity or maybe he’s just onto a completely new topic of sanity and responsibility. Since Hamlet is a supreme example of these feelings that much of mankind recognizes personally, then Hamlet is a symbol for humanity and its negative feelings of inadequacy.

So in we go into the main idea of this analysis: Psychoneurosis and all its messed-up, lunatic, weird, Freudian (ergo the ‘weird’) glory. For those ignorant and unknowing of the concept ‘psychoneurosis’ (Never mind the fact that I myself just figured out it existed all but two minutes ago when I looked it up), it is state of mind where a person is thwarted by the unconscious part of their mind, the infant’s mind that was once hidden and yet still appears side by side with the adult mentality. Basically, their child-like state of mind never developed and is at odds with their more rational ‘adult’ mind. So you’re in constant internal mental conflict with yourself and unable to make decisions.

Maybe this is why Hamlet fails to ever come in agreement with himself? There is the slight possibility that this disease applies to him and when he was a kid he was in love with his mother. So of course, he was jealous of her affection towards his father and felt a bitter sense of replacement. Oedipus Complex, much? But there are three things that make this theory highly impossible. If this were true, either way he would be aware of that fact, which would make him being crazy implausible. (Fun Fact: Crazy people don’t actually know or even believe themselves to be crazy).

Just pretend you never know that former bit of enlightenment. Please.

The second one is that there’s no evidence of him recovering any memories from his childhood. Darn it.

And the last one is that his mother marrying Claudius wound deprive him of the same amount of affection as his dad’s presence did, so there’d be no reason for the histrionics. Because if this were to happen, he would be secretly glad of his father’s death and not casting evil glances and laser-beam glares at Claudius.

There goes our theory. How sad.

So the only thing that can explain his self-frustration and the delay in which he fills his father’s begs for revenge are that while he may try to follow through with parricide and incest, the thought of both actually disgust him. So he is not really crazy, but his display of lack of sanity isn’t just to confuse and trick other people. In the end, he is actually trying to make himself believe that he is crazy in order to justify his actions. But he views “Bestial Oblivion”, in other words, the incapability to remember (maybe a side-effect of insanity?...I wonder) with contempt. So he acts crazy to fool himself, and yet it doesn’t seem to work. It ends up as just being believed by others. But there is only so much you can take trying to seem a certain way until you finally end up becoming it.

Talk Talk Talk and No Action. Tsk.

I wonder if I should do it. Maybe I shouldn’t. But maybe in the long run it will reflect positively on my role as a very well rounded student. But then again, I’d also have to wake up extremely early on Saturday to carry piles of dirt around when I could be dreaming blissfully in the softness of my bed.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Thinking things twice never works out. Overthinking things brings about cowardice and the eventual happening of inaction.

In Friederich Nietzhe’s analysis of the character Hamlet, he takes into account his overly thoughtfulness and compares him the ‘Dionysian’ man.

Friedrich made up the whole concept of the Dionysian state as being based off the god of wine, which stands for intoxication, impulsiveness, intuition, and exuberance. And apparently, said state brings about an indifference towards reality which makes memories and the like slip from your conscience. And when you’ve awaken from this state and are brought into reality, you experience a nausea that renders you so full of will and self-discipline you’d probably seem as if you have a stick stuck up your ass.

Apparently, Hamlet is like the Dionysian man in that he is impulsive and accepting of reality. They both have “gained knowledge, and nausea inhibits action.” Hamlet is an intellectual who is smart (obviously) but that intelligence causes him to overthink things which is actually him doubting himself and pronouncing himself a coward. But in not acting he is actually still in silence that may bear all of his arguing thoughts as well as possible evil plots. This thought is even expressed by Hamlet himself in a soliloquy where he is having an argument with himself. And those types of people find it ridiculous to try to set the world right, and the possibility that they, a grain of sand and hugely populated world, could make a difference, is laughable. They are realistic.

“Action requires the veil of illusion,” and in sarcastic humor, Nietzsche refutes “Jack the Dreamer’s” cheap wisdom of reflecting too much on all the possibilities not letting him get to the action. In essence, you need to have hope and some sort of positivity to do something because actions are humans’ idea of something done to receive something in return. We need to have an illusion that what we’re doing will succeed. Hamlet and the ‘Dionysian’ man don’t act, not because they spend too much time hoping on all the possible leprechauns and smiley rainbows they might encounter, but because they are realistic and know that they can’t change the world.

Any by change the world I mean somehow bring your dad back to life and make your uncle disappear with a flick of your hand. Or that’s what Hamlet would want.

Friederich is actually onto something here because even halfway through the play, it is visible that Hamlet only talks endlessly and rants like a freaking parrot and yet doesn’t do anything regarding his thoughts.

Talk talk talk and no action.

That’s Hamlet for you.

Please Don't Go Insane. Or Do.

The intricacies of the human mind are so that not even we can understand ourselves completely. No matter how much we try to dissect our faults and our every talent, there are still some aspects we fail to ever grasp.
And let’s face it. We’re pretty simple. Not like a piece of very stale, plain bread, but simple in that we don’t have multiple personalities or a possessed uncle going all Ax murderer on the local neighborhood, which end up affecting us psychologically. Well, some of us.
So the fact that trying to discern every inch of us is termed difficult, imagine trying to suss out the infamous Hamlet, the embodiment of twisted branches and puzzle pieces all wrapped into one persona.
In a brief critique of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe gives us a glimpse towards Wilhelm Meister’s journey in trying to truly capture Hamlet’s character on a stage. This personal account travels through Wilhelm’s thoughts of Hamlet being too complicated and impossible. He endeavored to figure out the young prince’s personality before his dad’s death, endeavoring to “distinguish what in it was independent of this mournful event.”
This seems to be like a very difficult task seeing as the play starts out after Hamlet’s dad’s death and rarely do we find any references to how Hamlet was before hand, if at all. In order to figure out if the death affected him whatsoever we would need to either see some flashbacks, some one speaking of how Hamlet was before, or somehow conjure a way to bring Shakespeare back to life with magical powers and ask him ourselves.
But we don’t and we can’t.
Either way, Wilhem manages to describe Hamlet as a prince born to be king and well aware of it, pure in sentiment and ‘artless in conduct’, and ‘pliant courteous, discreet, and able to forget and forgive an injury.” Apparently, the murdering of his father is no meager injury. God knows how Meister managed to gather up all of this information. It was probably due to inferences taken from passages said later on in the work.
Then he brings up Hamlet’s reaction towards his father’s death as being one of not ambition or happiness in succeeding him in the throne, but of bewilderment. Maybe if he had managed to acquire the throne, the play in itself would not exist. The whole plot revolves around his uncle stealing his place and ergo creating the suspicion that would lead to unravel the unruly plot. He is deprived of what is rightfully his, and instead of seething like a raging lunatic, he is stuck in a state of neediness and degradation. But maybe this is him in a state of shock which later falls away to reveal his inner lunatic.

How poetic.
His mother remarrying just two months after doesn’t help. It’s like, “God, woman, do you have no decency whatsoever? And what is up with your heart? Is it so plastic and fake that it can mold to accommodate to anything that your eyes happen to set sight on?” Jeez. That’s just the cherry on top of a fantastic family tragedy that ends up robbing any hope Hamlet had on a shoulder to cry on. Goethe proceeds to say, “With the dead there is no help; on the living no hold. She also is a woman, and her name is frailty, like that of all her sex.”
The first sentence just ingrains itself into my mind. Maybe because we really can’t find solace in the dead and because we never truly obtain a strong hold on other living people, unless we happen to be old millionaires that sustain gold-digging bimbos who couldn’t manage on their own and ergo follow everything we say and lack any respect. But those are rare cases so let’s just assume this pertains to all of us mere mortals. As to the second part, the guy is basically dissing Hamlet’s mom as well as the female gender in terms of their frailty and weakness, which is kind of biased, let me say. Not every woman is a defenseless damsel in distress. Please.
Then he goes to say that it is after seeing his dad’s ghost that Hamlet grows “bitter against smiling villains and says “The time is out of joint: o cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!” He is not brought on by mere anger but more so the idea for setting things back to how they should be and yet his is a soul that is unfit to perform great action against this injustice. Goethe describes this as an “oak-tree planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the jar is shivered. “ This imagery capture the crucial circumstances in which Hamlet seeks t revenge and to make everything better and ends up deeming an unworldly chaos that amounts to unimaginable heights. Disaster.
Hamlet is of a “lovely, pure, noble and most moral nature” whose strife for unburdening himself and finding some sort of peace of mindset actually works to pin him into insanity.
TUN. TUN.TUN (Insert high-pitched screams)

(Curtains close)

Thank you.

Death: I Cannot Attend. Sorry.

With life comes death.


There can’t be one without the other. We know that eventually we are going to be ashes spread across a flowing river or rotting flesh buried in the muddy pits of earth.

Whether we consent to it or not is a completely different matter. Woody Allen, in his typical witty humour, once said, “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Obviously, he is one of those people that are startled by death and ergo refuses it. But some people embrace death. They don’t fear it and they swim through life floating on with no worries as to the inevitable. Some even anticipate it.

In Emily Bronte’s poem, “Fall, leaves, fall,” she orders the leaves of youth to fall, and instructs the recently blooming flowers to die. She commands youth, in terms of summer, to leave, while she beckons winter, the end in terms of old age and death, to approach. She desires winter. She is openly pining for death. She “shall smile when wreaths of snow Blossom where the rose should grow.” The thought of snowy death consuming the life that existed in the presence of the flower enthuses her.

She has no fear.

In The Road, death is a very popular theme, seeing as the novel subsists on survival and the resoluteness to stay alive. Unlike Emily, though, the father and son don’t embrace death. They hide from it, and yet they have simply grown resigned to it. It is clearly engraved into their minds that death is a high possibility and it resides nearby.

They don’t exactly summon it.

But they accept it.

Blind Eyes, Departing Lives, and Evil Little Snakes

Cruelty is what leads rough men to willingly throw live snakes into a roasting fire and stand by while they thrash, scream, twist, burn. And indifference and lack of altruism leads them to walk home to supper, minutes later, as if it were just an ordinary day.

This is a memory that clogs the man’s mind, a memory that took place when he was his son’s age. God knows in what circumstances and his reasons for witnessing said atrocity in the first place, but there must be a reason the recollection is so distinctly exposed.

Snakes are a symbol for evil. Adam and Eve and just the fact that the food chain and Animal Planet portray them as sinful, wicked creatures leads towards this denotation. So the destruction of evil, the burning and suffering of wickedness, is taken as a good thing and even praised. The man recalls this memory, and I have yet to know why. Maybe he’s merely seeing the indifference with which we view death when we find it just and deserved. And in a way it makes life easier to deal with, and it makes the suffering and emaciated people somewhere down the road, or the carcasses on the rubble streets seem less impacting. Less traumatizing.

He and his son happen to come across some imprints and corpses scattered around. When the man tries to shield his son from said sight, and tells the boy, “I don’t want you to look,” the boy responds with, “They’ll still be there.” This brings us to the topic of turning a blind eye. When you know something is obviously and clearly there, but its existence affects you negatively, we sometimes try and make ourselves believe its not their. We lie to ourselves to protect our wellbeing. But not acknowledging something won’t make it all the less real. The boy sums up a concept that plagues us everyday. No matter how hard you try to pretend or not believe something, it will still be there. You might as well accept things as they are.

After the treading past the dead-infested woods, they make their way through the country, Cormac describing them to a T: “The country went from pine to liveoak and pine. Magnolias. Trees as dead as any. He picked up one of the heavy leaves and crushed it in his hand to powder and let the powder sift through his fingers.”

Nature in general, trees, represent life. They symbolize the act of growing, living and existing. So the man and son are actually walking through a road of life, longevity, and immortality. The liveoak being such a twisted and spaced-out tree, demonstrates the twists and warped courses one takes while alive. The magnolias represent perseverance, blooming in an all-out lifeless world. This walk through the country seems like a positive outlook and reassurance for both characters. But then we find that the trees are dead. Life has departed. Just its ashes remain. But the man lets the ashes of life slip through his fingers. In a way, this means he is not truly grasping the fact that life can end so easily. He still has hope.

And that’s all he needs.

Fuel and Punishment in Commissaries of Hell

Fuel.

Oil and petroleum distilled from the earth’s crust come to mind. Power stored to make cars run, lights ignite, and set the world in motion.

And in The Road we see fuel in its common form when the father is in dire need to build a fire.

But fuel is not only the physical and concrete article that powers energy, but a more figurative symbol for a trigger, motivation.

Fuel is what inspires perseverance in the man, and in turn, his son. Fuel is a symbol for the catalyst, the stimulus that keeps these two going. In the father’s case, his incentive to persist in the struggle for survival is his son while the kid himself is probably pushed by the fact that his father is a constant that regularly bleeds motivation. And we can see this when his father asks him if he believes him and the son proceeds to say, “I believe you, I have too.” Because believing in his father is the only reason he hasn't given up, the reason he's still trying.

Fuel is why they carry on.

“We carry the fire.” They carry enough drive to handle the scattered carcasses piled on a deserted and ash-strung floor that remind them of death. They carry enough fuel to handle anything.

Speaking of carcasses littered everywhere imaginable, McCarthy vividly describes the beginning of this frightful era, his beautiful words contrasting with their gruesome significance:

“The world soon to be populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunnelled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell.”


You can’t help but picture surly shadowed men sinking their teeth into the flesh of your child, their screams daunting and rendering you agonized with the memory. Cities that are only upheld by strings of robbers and evil thieves crawling out like unwanted and suspicious bats come nightfall. The nylon nets protect the mysterious and dreadful food that you might as well have gotten in the deep confines of a burning and excruciating hell.

Cormac sets the beginning of this horrendous tale as something comparable to the pits of the underworld, which is known a place of eternal punishment, torment, and anguish. And so it’s as if the people caught in this abyss are in some way being punished.

Punished for what, I have no idea.