Friday, September 3, 2010

Conclusions-- for literary analysis

I'm having fun coming up with conclusions for non-existent literary analysis papers (to show students how to write a conclusion). For ex:
For a Hamlet paper:
The plot of Hamlet is initiated when the ghost tasks Hamlet to take vengeance, but it is individualized by his unusual reaction to the command. He could have reacted like his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and just obeyed orders. Or like Laertes, and like the typical hero in a Renaissance revenge drama, he could have steeled himself to kill with pleasure. Yet Hamlet is too much the thinker to give in to emotion, and too skeptical to surrender to someone else's will. In Hamlet, Shakespeare has again created a man we moderns would recognize, a cynic, a skeptic, an intellectual. But Hamlet's own time rewards action, not thought, and his ultimate tragedy is that his refusal to act causes the deaths of those he loves and the loss of his father's kingdom.

This really makes me want to go back to school and write more literary papers. I know, I know, what a sick desire.
Alicia

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