There is a cultural understanding between the characters, that these omens or messages from the spiritual realm have significant value. When Caesar states "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves", it is as if the author, William Shakespeare, is looking down at the world of the play, and creating commentary, by brining up another fundamental question, that of free will versus destiny. By highlighting this question, he is essentially asking, " what if if we have personal responsibility?” What if this entire concept of the "stars" or placing value in omens, messages or our spiritual destiny, isn't accurate? What if really, as "underlings", every choice we make and all "fault", is "in ourselves", or by our own cognition or free will? Displaying his idealist nature, Cassius blamed his, Brutus’s, and the other conspirators submissive stance not on a predestined plan, but on their failure to proclaim themselves.
He is a man who tries to discover a deeper philosophical understanding of human behaviour. However, as Hamlet is thrust into a role which forces him to act he begins to question his sense of identity. His stifling and consuming insecurities restrict him from pursuing his ‘purpose’ of seeking vengeance, and cause him to become morally conflicted. Hamlet’s failure to navigate his changing world ultimately results in inner turmoil and moral corruption by the end the play. Despite Hamlet being a sixteenth century text, the concerns of truth and deception remain relevant to any context, thus enhancing the value of Shakespeare’s work as it has the capacity to stand the test of time.
The principal characters of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and Shakespeare’s The Tempest are defined by their relationships to magic and their pursuit of power. Both Faustus and Prospero are men of wisdom, yet they willingly subjugate their reason to desire. Ironically, Dr. Faustus’ slavish desire for further knowledge and understanding leads to his damnation. The former Duke of Milan rejects his political authority in favour of a life of contemplation. Their relative places in human community directly influence the resolution of the plays and their own redemption.
According to it, the Id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends; the Ego is the organized, realistic part; and the Super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role. Hamlet is torn between his Super-Ego and his Id. His delay in taking revenge is the effect of being pulled by his own Super-Ego as a good angel and his own Id as a bad angel at the same time. The Oedipus complex that holds a person “is inhibited by unconscious guilt over his patricidal and incestuous wishes, which in part also explains his melancholia”, is an ideal tool of literary analysis for Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. (Bennett Simon, 2001) Shakespeare confirms that Hamlet is influenced by the inner pro-oedipal ambivalences about his fickle mother throughout his play.
In the play there is a huge contrast between the God like figure of the Duke and the ‘fallen Angel’ or ‘Satan’ character of Angelo, again as mentioned above on a simple level as ‘good and evil’. Throughout the start of the play Angelo is shown to be ‘saintly’ like an Angel. Near the beginning we see Angelo talking about how he would never be tempted to do bad things as he says ‘Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus, another to fall’. The use of punctuation here seems to direct this phrase of speech at Escalus and is effective because its suggest to us that the character of Angelo would never do anything bad, it also gives a sense of Angelo being patronising toward Escalus. Also the word ‘fall’ in this case could be here to symbolise sin, how to Angelo if he was to fall it would be like he was sinning.
Aristotle in his poetics singled him out as being the right kind of protagonist because he inspires the right combination of pity and fear. “This is the sort of man who is not pre-eminentus virtuous and just and yet it is through no badness or villainy of his own that he falls into the misfortune but rather through some flaw in him. This paper seeks to comment and discuss the character of Oedipus by what he say about himself and by the words of other characters which reveal him in the play. Oedipus has many
Fundamentally, the contrapasso resolves punishment uniquely to each sinner. Accordingly, God designs the punishment and tailors it in a manner that would be appropriate for each sin committed. This is contrary to the universal misapprehension; that all sinners burn similarly, regardless of the sin committed. There is an ever-growing debate regarding how contrapasso operates, its function, as well as the reasons why Dante uses it in his works. While many assert that there is a principle or blueprint of contrapasso, some also argue that any attempts to place a solid understanding or classification of the model severely restrict its proposition and application.
The narrator comes off as disturbed and as if he feels hopeless. Within the first few lines, he quotes Dante's “Inferno”, this is a bit of foreshadowing for the reader. Depicting a hell-like atmosphere for the rest of the poem. This seems to request that the reader understand that what they are fixing to read was not intended to be shown to the living world, just as Dante is exposed to the abhorrences of the Inferno that also were not intended for world of the living. This analogy is both intriguing and frightening, and breathes an eeriness into the narrator and the poem before it has even begun.
The lines that follow will clarify the poem and the violent imagery, so as to help the reader understand Donne’s motivations. Batter my heart, addressed towards God, portrays the writers confused and conflicted state of mind. He appears guilty for his sins he has committed in his life but has come to realise that he has no chance of redemption without the help of God’s love, “imprison me…never shall be free”. He also strongly considers he has been wrongly taken by “your enemy”, Satan through his use of metaphors “imprison me”. Satan has captured him “take me to you” through temptation and sin “unto your enemy”.
Edgar Allen Poe has written the story, Tell Tale Heart, in such a way that we experience the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings as the plot progresses. The story is written to instill fear in the reader, and is narrated by the main character- a madman. The main characters thoughts are psychologically horrifying to the reader, which is why the story is classified as horror. At the outset, the man presents himself as a calm, collected normal man, but as the story progresses, we see he is in fact psychopathic (although he denies it). The way he expresses himself is unusual, and bizarre.