rishi
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Posts: 38
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Post by rishi on Mar 17, 2014 6:09:33 GMT
lol Natalie, I was wondering the same thing too! Anyways...
There are two obvious parallels between "Hamlet" and "The Destructors:" the upper-class backgrounds of Hamlet and T. and destruction. However a less obvious parallel between the two stories is the triumph of the young over the old.
Let's first analyze this idea in "Hamlet." The success of the youth may be a result of contrasting ideological perspectives between the young and the old. Claudius and Hamlet clearly do not think the same way. While Claudius is concerned about keeping his power, Hamlet is concerned about avenging his father's death by killing the king. Both characters think that what they are doing is right, yet their ideologies clash with one another. The question is: which ideology is better? Are corruption and power morally superior to murder sparked by righteous indignation? Of course, this all depends on perspective, but the common-sense answer is that Hamlet's ideology is the "good" ideology and Claudius's is the "bad" one. Why? Because Hamlet has a legitimate reason for his actions while Claudius is driven by selfishness and greed. "Hamlet," thus, is the classic example of good prevailing over evil. "Hamlet" illustrates a shift in acceptable motives from one marked by obsession over power to one marked by righteous revenge.
T. and the Destructors triumph over the older generation in "The Destructors" when the Wormsley Common Gang destroys Old Misery's house. Old Misery and the older generation in "The Destructors" represent beauty and creation. The author Graham Greene writes, "Old Misery - whose real name was Thomas - had once been a builder and decorator" (Greene). Furthermore, T.'s father was an architect. Meanwhile, T. and his gang comprised of children represent destruction. The older generation in the story believes that creation and beauty are "good;" we can imply from this that they must believe that destruction is "bad." However, the gang does not see any wrong in destruction. Like we discussed in class, the gang could find beauty and art in destruction. This "art" is all a matter of perspective. Like in "Hamlet," the two generations have contrasting ideologies, and ultimately, the younger generation prevails over the older generation. In "The Destructors," readers discover that destruction could be a form of art.
Essentially, the triumphs of the young over the old in both stories illustrate the changing ideological perspectives over time. What we think is "right" today might be "wrong" tomorrow.
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Post by yongkim on Mar 17, 2014 7:06:22 GMT
Grace, you and I think alike. For me, the connection between Hamlet and "The Destructors" was the paradoxical nature of both Hamlet and T.
In Act 3 Scene 4, Hamlet confronts his mother about sleeping in his uncle's bed:
I do repent; but heaven hath pleas'd it so To punish me with this, and this with me, That I must be their scourge and minister. I will bestow him, and will answer well The death I gave him. So again good night. I must be cruel only to be kind. Thus bad begins and worse remains behind (III.iv.173-179).
When Hamlet says he "must be cruel only to be kind," he is suggesting that he must berate his mother in order to prevent her from lapsing further into the betrayal of his dead father, the old King. Similarly, T's paradoxical nature is exposed when he destroys the house he says to be beautiful. These statements are used to shed more light on the characters as well as to ultimately prove a point. Hamlet is forced to act cruel the whole play in order to avenge his father's death in the end. For T, the destruction of Old Misery's house despite its beauty represents T's further separation from the upper class and his alignment with the boys' and their social class.
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Post by allegra on Mar 17, 2014 15:06:19 GMT
Both Hamlet and T see inevitability in life and in things. T, who comes from a wealthy family, is actually being demoted, essentially, in social class. He is angry at the things he used to love; angry at the mask that the world he used to love now shamelessly wears. He sees beauty and he feels emotions, but to him there are only things and that "things" are his only truths. His emotions, he feels, were the masks that the high status he loved wore. It used him. Like T, Hamlet also sees the inevitability in life. He is destroying the life he sees as a mask, but also recognizes that he, too, will succumb eventually. He loves his life and his friends, but in order to keep anyone else from facing the lies he's experiences, he has to destroy even the life (not the person but life itself) he finds beautiful. T also feels he must destroy the things he once enjoyed because he knows the facade must not reach anyone else.
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Post by jessicapollard on Mar 19, 2014 3:13:35 GMT
I agree with those before me that "Hamlet" and "The Destructors" share themes of revenge and troubled boy-men. What's more interesting to me is the different ways in which T. and Hamlet handle the degradation they face. Both suffer a fall sparked by the loss if their fathers, in some way or another. Hamlet takes the blinded by anger route, in which he vows revenge against the one who brought him down. In the process of planning this revenge, he wildly takes down everyone else with him. The whole thing is a crazy, emotional, and bloody mess. Hamlet takes his feelings of inner-most rage and paints them across Denmark angrily, only leaving room for a minimal amount of resolution in the end when he leaves Fortinbras in control of the throne.
T. on the other hand, handles his (assumed) despair with white gloves. He is nearly silent about his past, and seeks revenge against a more vague force. Rather than trying to damage whoever demoted his father, he challenges an entire faction of the higher class by choosing somewhat at random, a beautifully constructed house to neatly destroy. His work is cold and calculated, and although T. admits that he doesn't believe in love or hate, he still expresses sympathy towards Mr.Thomas, as he and the gang try and assure Thomas stays comfortable as his house is destroyed. Hamlet, though clearly more emotionally expressive than T., failed to express any empathy or sympathy throughout the play, only selfishness and determination.
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Post by rubyking on Mar 19, 2014 4:39:28 GMT
I'd like to think of the house in the Destructors as a character like Ophelia. T, or Hamlet, comes up with a plan. T's plan being taking down the house, and Hamlet's plan being to isolate Ophelia from what he's doing. Yet as things progress, T and Hamlet become less enthusiastic about what they're doing, yet also fail to see the effects. No one can see the damage being done inside the house, as no one can see much of the internal damage that is being done to Ophelia, because no one wants to listen to her until it's too late--her crash to the ground is her fall into madness.
It's interesting to think that internal damage is often more deadly than external. Dying from the inside out causes more problems because no one, not even the "house," really knows what's falling down inside until their beams can no longer support the structure.I wonder if this a default of being an emotional and vulnerable person? Hamlet and T are both individuals expected to uphold whatever status they have, often having to repress their emotions inside--and the aftermath of that internal decay is tragic.
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Post by mitralebuhn on Mar 21, 2014 17:56:33 GMT
Both pieces begin with some dramatic loss, as Mr. Parris mentioned in the prompt. Hamlet loses his father, and Trevor loses his family's class level. Accompanying these physical losses were mental/emotional ones. Both characters undergo a dynamic change and harden as Hamlet presents in his greatness of man speech, his inability to believe in the glory of human kind, and T no longer believes in truth, viewing the beauty of Wren's buildings as a metaphor for false presentation. Hamlet admits to this mentality in his letter to Ophelia, read by Polonius, "Doubt truth to be a liar, / But never doubt I love." (Act 2, Scene 2). What's interesting to me is that even though these boys lose faith, they still hang on to their appreciation and maintain an intense admiration for beauty and art. This complicates their stories, adding an interesting contrast as they juggle their conflicted feelings.
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Post by chrisb on Jun 4, 2014 7:29:02 GMT
mitralebuhn makes a top-shelf argument right here. The reader's initial perception of Trevor is predicated upon the notion that he acts independent of external factors, but it becomes clear that swag clouds his judgement. As a woodcock to my own springe, he leaves an eternal mark on literature.
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Post by billfeng on Jun 4, 2014 7:50:38 GMT
I'm going to do a little comparing of the two stories with my fourth favorite critical lens: Marxist! While T. physically loses his spot on the class hierarchy of England, Hamlet maintains his position as the Prince of Denmark. On the other hand, Hamlet is psychologically induced to no longer feel like he belongs on the Danish social hierarchy once he becomes isolated from the royal court by his own doing. He later remarks that his isolation makes him feel like "Denmark's a prison" (II, 2). The two different plots, T.'s scheme to take down the house and Hamlet's ploy of madness are interesting to look at comparatively from a Marxist view. From this, we can see a gradual loss of social capital investment over the span of the plot in "The Destructors" and in Hamlet the play as emotionally-charged motives begin to die down and realistic aspirations emerge. chrisb needs to pipe down with the enthusiasm because he's steaming!
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Post by shannonfender on Jun 4, 2014 7:57:20 GMT
The strongest parallel between the two works exists between T and Hamlet. Both have obvious familial struggles that are internalized and expressed through destructive means. For T, that means tearing apart a house to strip it of its facade, and reduce it to its foundational basis. For Hamlet, his struggles manifest into an existentialist crisis that results in death. Both characters are faced with an internal crisis that is then expressed through the dis-assemblement of the structures and paradigms of their own respective world.
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Post by keelycorrigan on Jun 4, 2014 11:59:49 GMT
Both pieces reference, in one way or another, creation from destruction, quite obviously. The group of boys who systematically take down the old man's home seek the same kind of grand retribution that Hamlet seeks-- which is really disgusting idea, to be honest. Hamlet seeks to destroy the people who ruined his family in order to create a fresh moment for Denmark, a rid the royalty of low-integrity powerful leaders. The boy's seek to destroy because it is a kind of perverse control in their lives determined by forces outside of them. Destruction is creation for those who have been destroyed.
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Post by hannahboe on Jun 4, 2014 12:16:45 GMT
For me, the striking connection between these two works is the sense of inevitability of the final outcome, but also the very convoluted journey taken/made to get there. From the beginning, it is clear that Hamlet seeks revenge on his uncle and I think it is equally clear that he will get it because his drive is strong enough. It is his indecisiveness that slows him down, but this is a result of his conscience which, ultimately, is not as strong as his desire for revenge. In The Destructors, the inevitable outcome is the total destruction of the house, but the breakdown of the house is extremely meticulous and is an intentionally careful process. The other characters in The Destructors question T's need to take down the house one piece at a time, but no one questions the ultimate destruction that comes at the end of the story.
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Post by kevinle on Jun 4, 2014 15:51:27 GMT
Hamlet and T have a similar goal: destroy something.
What differs is the journey, the art of the procedure.
Taking a rather existentialist point of view, we will all share similar goals and outcomes: success and death. The difference and the meaning is the meat of the time between birth and death. The beauty is in what we do with life. Instead of doing the normal vandalism or whatever that gangs do, T decides to artistically dismantle a house. Instead of spending time artfully constructing forum posts, I artfully constructed a show...
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Post by travistoal on Jun 4, 2014 19:55:47 GMT
Both Hamlet and T have fallen from fortune, being the man who lost his inheritance to the throne and the boy whose family lost their inheritance. What they both really *want* is unclear; they want to upset the balance of those who remind them of their misfortune, but in the end neither actually profits. In the same way that Hamlet advocates to end all marriage, bringing everyone down to his level of sadness, T just wants to destroy the "things," to force people to see his view that all "things" will one day break, in an effort to make them suffer as he has. While Hamlet's silly antics may have made him seem like a brooding kid, his misanthropic hatred shows his true desire: to destroy.
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