Fahrenheit 451

If I had to memorize one book for the rest of my life because all the others were going to be burned, it would have to be The Great Gatsby. It’s the kind of book that when I finished it, I felt like a part of me was gone. The plot interested me to the point that I never wanted the book to end. I was dying to know what happened to Daisy and Tom after they disappeared. I also wanted to know if maybe Nick was going to start a over in a new city, and what happened to old Owl Eyes.
Gatsby was the first novel I read for school that I read with a critically and by doing so I feel more in love with the novel.The drama that went on was nail biting and fascinating. The over all theme of the corruption of greed got me to actually think how greed can apply to today's society as well.

Annotated Bibliography

Downing, Crystal. “Reading Hamlet.”  Hamlet: with Contemporary Essays. Ed. Joseph Pearce. San Francisco: Ignatius Pr, 2008. Print
           Through the eyes of Downing, Hamlet is a play based on the interpretation of the text. She uses various in text examples to enforce her argument. She states that the often use of the "that" in Hamlet's "to be or not be" soliloquy is usually misinterpreted.  According to her, when the "that" in the soliloquy is emphasized readers or audiences interpret the line as if Hamlet is debating whether he should commit suicide or not. The article also points out that interpretation is tricky because of "the reliability of the audience/reader and the reliability of the speaker/ writer"( pg.188). By stating this, the author ultimately re-enforces her main argument.
           The article is a good source for information if people want to learn more about interpretation and its affect on the audience experiencing the play, movie, novel or poem. The goal it's putting forward is that the author wants to have the reader gain a deeper understanding of the Elizabethan era language in Hamlet.The article gave me a lot of insight into the word of Shakespearian language. I learned that maybe my point of view while reading Hamlet can be seen differently by other people, and their interpretation can be completely different to mine. If i had to write a paper on how Shakespeare worded Hamlet, I would definitely use this article as a source to re-enforce my argument when I want to discuss that Hamlet is a play based mostly on what people perceive from it.

 

Flowers

(On the card to Queen Gertrude from Hamlet)

"To my mother, the woman who loves me and my late father:  

      Violets for faithfulness and innocence that tho' lacks. Rosemaries for remembrance of thy 'love', my father. One long stem red rose for thy undying passion for that ogre you call a husband. Camellias for my never ending gratitude from me to you for my birth. Red chrysanthemums that symbolize my love for you, my mother. I  may not return from England, so enclosed with these flowers may be my final good-bye. 

-Your son, Hamlet"

         

            
                
        
      The flowers Ophelia gives away symbolically represents something to each character in a way; a secret messgage she sends to each of them. Rosemary for remembrance of their father and pansies for thoughts to Laertes, so he can use his mind wisely when dealing with King Claudius, who is only using him as a tool to kill Hamlet with out getting his hands dirty. Fennel and columbines to Gertrude symbolizing flattery because she was a mother figure to her and adultery for how quickly she forgot about her late husbands recent death. Rue to Claudius representing repentance, meaning that he should repent for what he did. Violets meaning innocence that she had in this whole sitiation and roses symbolizing  her love to Hamlet. At this point in the scene it apprears to me that Ophelia has an idea of what she is doing. That she like Hamlet pretended to go mad just in this scene or that maybe in this exact moment she has a short moment of sanity. The flower scene fits in with the whole garden motif of how King Hamlet was killed in the garden where the whole conflict of the play began.

Did Shakespear know about Dante?

 The article does have some good arguments to whether Shakespeare knew Dante, but each argument is weak and cannot be backed up by circumstantial evidence. One argument states that they both had the same line translated into "I drink, I eat, I array myself, I live" the problem with that is that Shakespeare had no knowledge of Italian, and according to the article, if he had any it wasn't much to read a whole work written by Dante. In my opinion, it seems like a coincidence, and if Shakespeare did indeed know something about Dante he had someone who knew Italian read Dante's works for him.