Shipmates, Shipless, Shipmateless?

I liked the comment that Rosencranz and Gildenstern had no destination. It seems so fitting for characters who have no purpose to die without getting anywhere.

They have no destination.

They are given a purpose, but they die without ever fulfilling it.

Their existence is meaningless. They accomplished nothing.

They got nowhere, they did nothing, they were nobody.

Another thing: Rosencranz/Gildenstern said "we went wrong by getting on a boat", but they had no choice - they were suddenly on the boat, put there without any say in the matter. It's like their existence; they didn't get to choose when or why they existed, they were just put into existence. Then, they die without reaching their destination.

The movie is called Rosencranz and Gildenstern are Dead. However, it's only true at the end of the movie (that they are physically dead). So why not call it "Rosencranz and Gildenstern Die", as in it's something that the rest of the movie leads up to?

Does that mean they were dead throughout the entire movie? They never lived at all? Life without purpose is no life at all?

Rosencranz and Gildenstern are Dead.

~Scribbles

De-antified

You know those times when you're walking around in the store and you see someone you know, but instead of greeting them you pretend like you don't see them? And it's not necessarily because you don't like that person or anything, you're just not used to seeing them outside of the normal context you've always known them in. It's almost like you are afraid to let them see you in a different light, like you're a completely different person.

I never greet people that I happen across unless I am particular friends with them. It probably has to do with my shyness, but also just a fear of the unexpected and foreign. If by chance they notice me and call out to me, I'll of course stop and go through the pleasantries before we part ways again, but it always seems so unreal plastic, trapped inside of a little box labeled formality.

I ventured out yesterday. I went the store to buy a few groceries, and on my way in I noticed that one of the employees was someone I knew from youth group. At fist I did was I normally did: pretend I didn't see him and kept on walking. But then, perhaps merely prompted by this very assignment, I took the next opportunity I had to greet him.

It wasn't awkward like I thought it would be. We asked each other the same sort of questions you would anytime you ran into someone randomly, but this time it wasn't just for the sake of being polite. It was a genuine conversation, not one that ran just skin-deep.

We still aren't that great of friends and we don't see each other often, but now I feel like there's more of a potential friendship than there was before. Perhaps this will encourage me to do the same with anyone else I come across in the future.

~Scribbles

Counter-repoductiveness

Questions want answers.
Questions require thinking.
Questions grow intelligence.

But all Rosencranz and Gildenstern do is answer a question with another question.

There is no answer.
There is no thinking?
There is no intelligence??

They are simply sponges?

The only existed because they have a purpose.
Is their purpose now lost?
Do they still exist?

Does this even make any sense???


~Scribbles

Subject to the Will of the Service

I can certainly say Hamlet is not sorry to see Rosencranz and Gildenstern sent to their deaths. Horatio, on the other hand, does seem a bit surprised at Hamlet's dismissal of their significance, leading me to believe that Horatio is in fact sad to see Rosencranz and Gildenstern killed by their idiocy and sponge-ness. Perhaps he feels sorry for them, or maybe he's simply a genuinely caring person. But I do believe he is sad about their fate. Hamlet's need to excuse himself from his cruelty proves Horatio's disapproval. But Hamlet is in charge, so what he says goes. Horatio can't do anything about it.

~Scribbles

Fear

I'm going out on a whim here, but this is how I interpreted The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

It's about the gossips, the unoriginal, the box, the drab, the same ole same ole. He sees this society where we worry about day to day things that don't matter. He sees the uniformity. The lack of adventure.

He wants to break free.

He wants to speak out.


But he's afraid.


Slowly, a random line sticks out. More and more: it becomes more frequent. It loses structure. He experiments.


He's afraid.


He returns to structure. He pokes at breaking it here and there. He goes back.


He's afraid.


A journey through life, afraid. He grows old. He follows the structure.



He dies.


It's the end.



~Scribbles

Identity Crisis

First off, Ophelia is mad. Anything she says could just be insane ravings. That said, I'm not quite sure what she means. It's kind of like Hamlet's "I loved you once; I loved you not" thing. It's just a contradiction of a madman (madwoman).

Then again, she could be saying a sort of "We know we are human, but we know not what human is" kind of thing. It could be a jab at immorality, lies, murder, etc.

Or she could just be mad.

I'm biased, I know =P

~Scribbles

Screen or Paper?

I personally perfer the book, but that's only because my attention span for the movie is severely limited. The movie, however, puts an image to the book, so it helps in understanding the book better. Yet, I can't stand it when movies deviate from the book they are based off of, and the movie is starting to do that. That aside, the movie does a pretty good job at displaying emotion, but I'm wondering if it's only the way the director sees it. If that is the case, it might not be the way Shakespeare intended it. So overall, I generally perfer the book over the movie because then while I am reading I am fully aware the way I interpret it could be completely wrong.

As far as comparing how the movie captures the characters to how I see them, the movie is pretty different. But then both views could be VERY different from how Shakespeare wanted it to be. So I guess the only way to know which way is right is to go back in time and see the play for myself. Now THAT would be cool.

If only we could. Oh well.

~Scribbles