Hamlet Essay (incomplete)

Hamlet has always been looked at as a confused teenage boy who gradually goes insane by the prospect of killing his murderous uncle. It's fair to say that he is. "The Performative Utterance" provides some insight into how Hamlet may have become disillusioned with himself through the process of "self-overhearing," or listening to oneself speak and discovering knowledge about themselves. While Hamlet may have started out as a normal teenage boy, a part of him that the reader doesn't see much of as Hamlet is given his revenge assignment early on, by the end of the play he has changed drastically--more than he's told his friends he will.

The Performative Utterance

Honestly, I thought that "The Performative Utterance" was really boring. It had some interesting things in it but as a whole it was way too long and the guy who wrote it could put his time to better use. The analyzing of how Shakespeare wrote felt like it was overanalyzed and like they were trying to look for meaning where there maybe was none. It felt too complicated.

Today's Discussion

Today we talked about the conservativeness of American culture versus Europe and the first amendment. I thought it was interesting. We talked about how certain speech is not protected under the first amendment, like hate speech or speech that calls on people to do bad things. But what if someone says something that, when people hear it, they think, "They're getting arrested for sure" but no one physically reacts in anyway to what was said. Then they can't be arrested. So, technically, all speech is okay unless you're threatening someone with their life or unless someone is stupid enough to do whatever they were told. Also, on the topic of American conservativeness in the media, in particular, if you watch European commercials they are way more explicit than what is allowed here. I don't have any idea why that is, and I don't know if that has anything to do with Shakespeare having his characters make dirty jokes.