The start

Things are starting to happen that the characters themselves simply cannot explain. Things that they do instinctively and when they finally realize that they have don it, there is no room for explanation. This is something like Robert finding himself running after Edna in chapter ten when she is walking back home. He has no explanation of why he ran except for the fact that he wanted to make sure that she was not afraid of getting home safely or if she would rather go with company. But why running? He has not yet described any emotions that are even close to love. He may have denied it in his talk with Adéle but this is good enough evidence that there is something happening in his head that will develop into love even if he does not know it yet. And this could be one of the most dangerous aspect of love: he has a suspicion that it's there but knows not when it will suddenly come up and bite him.

Edna is at a different stage of love in chapter ten. We know that Robert took Adéle's advice in distancing himself from Edna. She may not know this, but feels that distance happen and goes on into simply having a bad time at the shore. That is when Robert finds regret and proving the idea that his love is starting to develop. But Edna does not really take it easy. This is a part of the book where a love can and will give out another set of feelings. Edna simply felt excluded but at the same time with a developing love over Robert and when he came to accompany her home, she tried to reject it. But she did so in a more soft manner than expected. Most people would have simply walked faster to get away. But she stayed behind which means she still has hopes of getting something out of the possible love.

Envy

Envy tends to be the strongest element that comes up in a marriage. In The Awakening it is the base of most conflicts including that of Robert and Adéle Ratignolle in the beginning of chapter 8 when she asks him to stay away from Edna. From here on in, an argument comes concerning why he should stay away from Edna and whether Adéle is jealous or not. Taking into consideration the fact that she and Edan are good friends, there is little room for a valid excuse on why she is not jealous. Very few times will envy come in front of true friendship in this form. In other worlds, Adéle has taken out of consideration the idea of friendship for the sake of her own convenience. She wants the same relationship that Robert and Edan will develop in the future and that by definition is envy.

With envy, comes a set of mistakes that typically break out into the continuation of the same heated argument. "You are not thinking of what you are saying (P46)" is a sign of desperation on Adéle's part and is perhaps one of the most ironic quotes in the book. She is the one speaking without correct processing and the one that is simply not being herself taking into consideration that she is kicking out her best friend to keep the man she wants. She is becoming mad with the power that she does not have. She is becoming the villain of the story that will end with the words of "envy is wrong."

Stuck

There often comes a time in a marriage where a series of feelings of regret comes into play. Taking Edan, she is looking back in the days where she did love her husband as support to try to recreate those feeling that are no longer there. Guilt will begin to come in and the dissatisfaction that she was simply not able to keep going with her marriage. those feeling turn into anger later on when she reacts to the music played by Mademoiselle Reisz. The most likely possibility is leans to that old feeling of love no longer being there and then being replaced by something darker. In this particular situation, there is little room to blame someone other than herself since she is sharing these emotions only with herself.

This is pure evidence that in a truly stable marriage, the feeling to the other person on the long run certainly counts even if there is still a constant supply of physical objects to enforce the love. This is also proof that after a certain time, a person's love for another may wear off and produce a strong mix of feeling that will typically end in the wrong place. At this point, Edan remembers loving and tries to apply that feeling to the present and see if it's there. Since it's not, she can only think of how things were and image how they would be if it were still in the same condition. She is stuck in the life that she feared most of having and lost what she feared most of loosing. From here on in, she will be either forced to live the life, or find an alternative that may cause further conflict within the story.

Starting Conflicts

Every time that there's a conflict between two people, it can either expand, or be resolved in a series of regretful and apologetic events. This is not the case of Edan and Léonce. Very few times will a starting conflict cool off in a novel and turn out to only be a little bump on the road. A novel must have a predictable side where a conflict will have to develop. Otherwise, the plot will only develop under a certain number of ideas that will soon be repeated. A conflict creates a stream of though where the writer can argue and the reader can think upon and therefore make the book much more productive and attractive to read. And in a starting conflict like this, there can't be a change in heart now that the reader has foreshadowed the future increasing conflict. This is of the few things in the novel that if changed, will make it far less intuitive to read and loose the magic of sitting back down and reading once more.

With little room for alternative to such a predictable move, authors will try to tweak whatever will come afterwards in the novel. They will bring something original and completely unexpected in order to stimulate that new generation of thought that makes the novel worth reading. But even if things do happen as the reader predicted, it continues to be a book worth reading. But the best authors are able to present an original idea or set of ideas, and be able to present them so that the reader can understand them and use them. So far into The Awakening, it has been relatively predictable but there is still some hope for a turnaround.

Jail

People tend to do things better when they can relate to that something in a personal way. A tennis player can write, and make a good essay about tennis, while an inmate serving 120 years for assault, can easily write an essay about it even if he never finished high school. Hamlet is the story about death, and a mixed series of revengeful actions. This practically defines the lives of a lot of the inmates making it, not easier, but more realistic when the time comes to act.

Having criminals playing as criminals allows us to understand them better as well as the play. For one, by interviewing a man who took someone's life, it is easier to figure out what has happening in the mind of someone like Cornelius. These inmates show what it is like to take another man's life and then having to live with the aftermath of those actions until their life is over. By interviewing them, it's the same as if talking to the real Hamlet who was at one point dying for revenge.

The best thing about having inmates to meet is their variety. This means that every inmate has at least one available idea to every part of Hamlet's speeches. Hamlet questions if he is truly the one that has to kill his uncle and live with the idea of taking the life of another man. There is an inmate for that. If Hamlet is just raging in love for Ophelia, there is an inmate for that. And even when Hamlet has killed and is suffering for the remainder of his life in agony, there is an inmate for that.

There was one inmate that caught my attention that decided to relate himself to Cornelius. He had taken a man's life, and he described it as "the ghost of Hamlet's father was speaking to me through the pages." This meant that he had killed him before his time had come, and he was therefore forced to live in another world, and look at the things happening not being able to do a thing about it. That is what made him a criminal: having stopped someone's life before he was done living, and therefore altering the natural course of the actions that could have made the dead man far more useful in the world.

The last thing that caught my attention was the idea that the inmates have to show their light side if they want to act in the play. The first reason is that this play relates to them so much, that even though they can act it out as a tough person, they will have to lighten up if they want to actually understand it and reflect upon it in order to get themselves thinking about themselves as part of the play. Second, this is a play that they are acting in. They're not stealing, or killing anything, and they will have to lighten up once again (which is not necessarily hard since most of them actually have a family and are used to it).

Having people acting as themselves makes the play more realistic than if any other actor did it. It means that they can grow as they do this, and experience something that will help them come out a little more "sober". That is, if they ever come out.

Straight to the Point

Many people, when reading Hamlet, come across the idea that he is either insane, or just faking his actions to get people fooled. But very few people will think that he is irrational as George Santayana describes it. This means that Hamlet simply overreacted with the idea of revenge. But, it is well known that the first instinct of a person is to to think of avenging the death of a loved one. So instead of calling it irrational, I would call it sudden.

Now, Santayana's essay points out every one of Hamlet's mistakes that eventually sent him to his death. The big one that caught my attention was "he acts without reflection, as he reflects without acting." Now, applying this to the situation in the play where he invites everyone to his self made play, it is pretty obvious that he did not think the whole way through before going in to demonstrate that Cornelius was actually a murderer. The exact opposite applies to when he meets the ghost of his father for the first time. Whether he was actually insane, or faking, it took him a good while to finally deliver the strike to send the king out of power.

Taking a similar character like Laertes, there is a strong opposition seen. Laertes makes no hesitation in going for Hamlet for revenge. The only thing that stops him is the soothing hand of the king that reminds him that the time to strike will come. And Laertes is proof that Hamlet is not exactly sane: The first reflex for most people when they find that a loved one is gone, is simply revenge. Hamlet does feel this, but does not go like crazy to strike at Cornelius. This could either mean that he has gone completely mad, or that he is being clever about what move he wants to make in his game. This explains his constant talk with the excuse that he is just waiting for the right time and Shakespeare can't have him do nothing until that time comes.

Trying to explain a lack of action, or a very sudden action of a character is like explaining to the teacher why you didn't do your blogs in time...... But the best excuse (which is still pretty fake) is to say that he was waiting for the right time.

What we See and Don't See

It is true that Shakespeare has a unique form of seeing things in order to get the audience to wonder. Samuel Coleridge chooses to try to figure out what Shakespeare tries to do as he writes the plays. In his passage, he directs his attention to the difference between the real world, and the world that is being done in the play. He chooses to think that Shakespeare not only tries to put his audience into the world, but to put them in the shoes of one of the characters.

Now, Coleridge argues that Hamlet is an exception to this due to the continual talk. Hamlet has several talks to himself in front of the audience where he will talk about his position, and will allow the audience to make their own judgements on how he should think. The most famous of them all is "To be or not to be" (III.i.) where he question whether he should live or die in this situation. It is particularly strong since most of the audience have experienced this sort of feeling where they have considered the idea to say goodbye to life and just die. Now, since this play is easily misinterpreted, Shakespeare could very well be calling the audience a crowd of crazy people. Since there is a very high chance that Hamlet may be crazy, and having this talk that is so similar to one that most of the audience has experienced, he begins to actually question the meaning of being crazy.

That is where Coleridge's theory of balance between the real world and the world of the play comes in. Shakespeare drags in the audience to the shoes of one of the characters by giving them something they can apply to their own lives and experience a little of that "crazy" Hamlet already has flowing in his veins. Though people will argue that this sort of thing has been done before, the fact remains that never has any sort of writer come in to give real life experiences so vividly as William Shakespeare.