Prompt #1

When faced with the decision to support my home country or to deny the United States my obligations to fight is a very complicated decision that I would have to face, if I ever have to face it. In the event that I am forced to make this decision, I would be very inclined to join the army and give back to the country that has protected me for so long. This decision would not come lightly though, and it would be very hard to want to leave everything behind and not be sure if I would be able to return.

If I was to be asked tomorrow to join the army and fight for my country and to protect those that I love, I would surely feel similar to Tim in “On the Rainy River” and the fact that I am too young to be preparing myself for the possibility of death. I know that I would feel less egotistical about it then Tim did, there would be no feelings that I am better then someone and since I am better then someone that they should go instead of me. More of what I would be feeling is the need live out my life before I am forced to challenge death. I would want to live out the life I had started to plan for myself, like getting married, having kids, having a career, buying my first car, my first house, going to other continents to travel, and vacationing in exotic places with friends and family.

Apart from personal feelings, and the feelings I would have towards going off to war, there would be the feelings that my friends and family would have of my departure to war. I know for a fact that my family would be so much against it, that they, themselves, would do anything to keep me from going, even if it meant moving me to Africa and giving me a new name. They would be very put out if they knew I wanted to go, that this choice was predetermined. It just is an obligation to me; I feel obligated to serve my country, just like I felt obligated to coach a volleyball team for my old middle school because I went there for ten years of my life. To me, serving my country would be an honor.

Hamlet as the "Player"

In the first video, Hamlet senses they are referring to him when they speak, “I hear him coming,” leading Hamlet to believe that they want something with him. And in this circumstance, he is a pawn because they want to see if he truly loves Ophelia. Polonius sets up the meeting to see if Hamlet’s heart was truly with Ophelia, because her father and brother were worried that Ophelia would fall for this prince that could not love her because she was basically a nobody in the royal court. Also, Polonius reads a love letter from Hamlet to Ophelia, and he reads some of the inappropriate things that Hamlet has written to Ophelia, and that is another reason why Polonius wants to be sure that Hamlet’s heart is in it, and not just there for sexual reasons.

In the second video, Hamlet speaks his “To be, or not to be” soliloquy. It is here that Hamlet dances with the idea of death to relieve himself of being this “player” in the “play” that is his life, in which he is not the director or the writer. He can no longer deal with the pain of the act that he must put on, or that he is facing, and so, his gathers that he, himself, as a player is doomed to die and that will end his part of the play, and that he everyone else in the play should also meet the same end. To him, the close of this play, when the curtain is drawn, is when every “player” meets their fateful end, and when they truly can be “players” no more. 

As well as determining death as a means to an end, he takes advantage of the fact that he cannot be one-hundred percent controlled by Polonius and Claudius, and so he uses Ophelia as a tool. He does not see it now, but this brings about her sad end, with her committing suicide , embarrassed by the fact that she thought that her’s and Hamlet’s relationship was blossoming into something more, even though Hamlet only acted that it was not. This is the start of the “players” beginning to leave the “stage” that is the production of King Cladius’ play.