Breaking Away

        Umuofia is a clan centered around spiritual and ancestral ceremonies. Throughout a week in the Umuofia clan, many ceremonies are performed. The Umuofia have ceremonies to celebrate marriage, death, harvest, planting, and burrials. These ceremonies are costly and performed with respect and fear of spirits. Okonkwo, though, begins to become skeptical of these ceremonies and traditions and does not understand why the innocent and accidents should be punished. He questions, “Why should a man suffer so grievously for an offense he had committed inadvertently?” (Achebe 125) Okonkwo had accidentally murdered a boy but was still exiled for seven years because of a rifle malfunction. Also, Okonkwo remembers when his wife had twins, and he had to take them to the mountains and murder them. He also questions why he had to murder his children and, “What crime had they committed?” (Achebe 125) Okonkwo is now starting to question the Earth Goddess but knows not to share his ideas and emotions for fear of rejection and failure.

        Okonkwo has also physically defied the gods by beating his wife during the Weak of Peace. His actions and mind are slowly forming their own sense of right and wrong, beliefs and ideas, and practices and routines. Okonkwo goes into deep thought, after being exiled from his village, about the rules of the Earth Goddess and her ceremonies and traditions. He is slowly breaking away from society and leaving his ideal, patriotic figure behind. Okonkwo has already began to break away from society mentally, in regards to his ideas and beliefs, and now physically, exiled from his village.

The Deep Unknown

The TED Talk “My Underwater Robot” by David Lang talks about deep-sea exploration with ROVs, remote operated vehicles. David Lang began his business in underwater robotics because of his curiosity of the unknown. He has created ROVs with inexpensive parts, but the ROVs can still produce live, clear video. He has not secluded the design for a profit but has freely posted all of his codes and parts online for others to give feedback on and improve his designs. David Lang is a prime example of someone who doesn’t care about money or fame, but wants to further the human understanding of the unknown. He is spreading the ideas of deep-sea exploration using ROVs and is gathering a following all around the world containing curious explorers who collectively want to improve the future and understanding of our world. He created a Kickstarter to raise money for shipping kits explaining how to make ROVs. David Lang has received many videos and photos from people sending images seen by the ROVs. ROVs are becoming more common in exploration to search and retrieve samples from extreme places in which humans could not survive. If people work together as a scientific community and not for personal profit, we could fully understand our world and all of its surfaces and minerals in a matter of years. ROVs act as an extension to the human eye by seeing and recording sights and phenomena we could not possibly see. Hopefully ROVs will soon be cheaply created to explore the outer reaches of our solar system and, eventually, our galaxy.

Hamlet's Renaissance Journey

Hamlet, a talented painter, lives in the heart of Venice during its prime, the Renaissance. Hamlet is a young artist whose apprentices, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, have betrayed him and have sided with Hamlet’s new patron, Claudius. But before Claudius had entered Hamlet’s life, his mother, Gertrude, was only a lowly potter years ago with a brave warrior husband. Then everything changed when Hamlet’s father was killed in combat and Claudius, who attends many of the fallen soldiers’ funerals, noticed a beautiful potter who was now a widow. At that moment, Claudius decided to ease her pain with wealth and love by marrying her and giving the poor young artist, Hamlet, a real career. At least, this is what Hamlet believed. He soon realized, due to his father’s ghost, that Claudius had killed Hamlet’s father and threw him into a battlefield to make it see as if Hamlet’s father died in combat. He murdered Hamlet’s father because a couple of days before the murder, Claudius had passed by the bread lines where free bread was handed out to the poor who could not afford food and saw the most beautiful and attractive women he had ever seen. Once Hamlet learns of his father’s murder, his life changes radically.

After Hamlet’s encounter with his father’s ghost, he decides to act insane so no one suspects him on any future actions and so people would leave him alone to plan the revenge and murder of his patron Claudius. To keep people away from him and to fool his patron into thinking he has gone crazy, Hamlet meets up with the daughter to the treasurer of Claudius, Ophelia. Ophelia’s father, the treasurer, Polonius, has recently forbidden her to speak to her love, Hamlet, in fear she might fall to deeply in love. Ophelia defies her father to meet with Hamlet, but he is not what she expects. Before she can say a word of how much she loves him, Hamlet whips out a paintbrush and begins to paint her on the wall. He doesn’t respond to any of her questions and has a crazed look in his eyes. As Hamlet paints, Ophelia notices his colors don’t match and his portrait looks amateurish, and she looks deformed. Hamlet, as she knew him, was a perfectionist and wanted everything to match. Ophelia knew something was wrong with him and fled as he breathed heavly and continued to scratch the wall with his dry, colorless paintbrush.

The Struggle

In Oliver’s Hamlet film (1948), the “To be or not to be” soliloquy portrays Hamlet contemplating his own fate at the ocean’s edge. Hamlet speaks slowly, carefully to show how he is making one of the greatest decisions of his life and to make sure every word is with purpose and strong meaning. His voice makes every word thump in your mind like a heart, beating. Hamlet’s distant glare expresses himself deep in thought, deciding whether to sin, commit suicide, or to continue living his miserable life. Oliver mainly focused on the auditory portrayal of the speech while Kenneth Branagh focuses on the visual portrayal of the speech.

Kenneth Branagh portrays Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy in King Claudius’ home. Hamlet, like Oliver’s Hamlet, speaks slowly to emphasize the importance of each word but also uses visual means to depict the soliloquy. The mirror Hamlet stares into during the speech shows his indecisiveness in deciding his own fate because he uses his reflection to watch himself and judge if he deserves to live or die. He later pulls out his dagger and taps the mirror as if wanting to strike himself down yet knowing he cannot. While Hamlet emphasizes his words with a slow, carefull tone, he still uses visuals to get his main interpretation across.

In my opinion, Branagh’s display of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy truly encapsulated Hamlet’s struggle to either kill himself or continue living his tortuous life. Branagh’s Hamlet not only convinced me Hamlet was making one of the biggest decisions of his life but also showed me the reasonability of Hamlet and his powerful words.

The Ironic End of "Harrison Bergeron" Revised Intro

“Harrison Bergeron”, written by Kurt Vonnegut, is a short story that tells of the ironic shortcomings of a seemingly perfect man who dies in the hands of his suppressive American government in 2081. Harrison Bergeron, born in a nation that makes equality the main focus of life, defies his oppressive government on live television by tearing off his handicaps that weigh him down and cloud his handsome figure. The suppresive government fights back by shooting him. Using Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut toys with our expectations of the story’s end by adding irony to Harrison Bergeron’s actions to comment to those who believe that all civilizations should primarily focus on equality. Vonnegut uses Harrison Bergeron to show his audience how irony can change one’s perception of the future, and how irony can be used to show the hidden truth behind the clouded expectations.

“Harrison Bergeron”, a short story written by Kurt Vonnegut, tells of a seemingly perfect man who ironically dies at the hands of his oppressive American government in 2081. Harrison Bergeron, born in a nation that makes equality the main focus of life, defies his oppressive government by tearing off his handicaps to show the world that a government created around equality hinders progress and the drive to shine above rest. The oppressive American government fights back by shooting him on live television to show everyone that death is the result of inequality. Vonnegut toys with our expectations throughout the story by portraying Harrison Bergeron as an incredible, indestructable hero who can defy a nation and its rules but is killed in an instant by a handicapped woman with a shotgun. Using Harrison Bergeron, Vonnegut shows his audience that if equality became the main focus of government, progress stalls, and we lose our greatest advantage above all other creatures, our imagination.

Fear and Love of a Familiar Face

In Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Act 1 Scene 5, Hamlet realizes he must murder his uncle to redeem his father’s his fathers good name and bring to light the evils of the recently crowned, King Claudius. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father speaks to Hamlet, the ghost explains that he was murdered by Claudius, and that Hamlet should, “let not the royal bed of Denmark be/A couch for luxury and damnéd incest” (1.5.89-90). The ghost is setting up Hamlet’s mission and motivation to commit treason to save his father from his firey. Branagh tries to portray Hamlet as a Prince and son who is afraid, moved, and appauled by the sight of his dead father and by the image of his uncle killing his father. Branagh is trying to set up Hamlet’s motivation for killing the King by giving Hamlet a warm, touching sight (his father) while still keeping the tone serious so Hamlet completes his mission (the ghost’s armor and facial expression). Also, Old Hamlet tells of his time in purgatory and the flames and pains that are washing away his sins. This painful description of Hamlet’s father’s pain urges Hamlet to act more quickly to save his father from suffering by setting the truth free about the murder of the old king. Though difficult, Branagh portrays Hamlet as speaking to a ghost, whom he loves, and bad omen of chaos to come. This portrayal is difficult to act because no one really knows how they would act in front of a ghost who represents love and turmoil. This scene is setting up the main climax of the story when, hopefully, Hamlet kills his uncle and sets his father’s soul free from the pains and sufferings of purgatory. Hamlet makes sure no one else hears of the ghost and the presence of Old Hamlet to make sure Claudius is vulnerable to attack and set the State of Denmark right.