Who Has The Best Point-of-View?

How many are there?!

Every author has their own style of writing. This style can seriously affect a novel’s overall tone depending on how successful or unsuccessful the author’s style is towards the target audience. One factor which contributes to an author’s style of writing would be the point of view of the novel. There are standard points of views which we are all subjected to memorizing in high school and sometimes earlier grades, yet there are different variations of these traditions views which can emerge in more complex pieces of text.

The three most common point of views (that we study in school) include:

a)First Person

b)Second Person

c)Third Person (limited, subjective multiple view points, or omniscient)

Point of View can change everything……

Connection Time!

If you’ve been following my blog you should know that I’m currently reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. If anyone has previously read this novel, you will have surely noticed that the novel is in the third person with subjective multiple view points. Big words, I know. This basically means that the author changes the point of view (between characters in this case) in some repetitive or formal pattern through out the novel. This can be a risking move on the author’s side depending on how well he/she is able to integrate the switch into the novel while creating a sense of suspense but not completely interfering with the plot of the novel it’s self.  I personally believe that Khaled Hosseini does an excellent job with this point of view in this novel. The switch between the perspectives isn’t distracting to the actual story, and it is spread throughout the novel in an even way which does not make it confusing for the reader at all. Hosseini changes the point of view between two main characters Mariam and Laila when ever one part of the novel ends (ex: part 1, part 2, part 3). Additional to the fact that these changes does not negatively affect the plot, it still manages to create a sense of suspense and tension within the novel that keeps the reader wanting to continue reading to find out how and if the two will end up running into each other. Since the two point of views are telling the story at the same time, there are times where the reader wants to see what the thoughts of the other character are, but are limited to the thoughts and actions of only one.

The two points of views in this novel are shared between the characters Mariam and Laila. Part 1 of the novel is from Mariam’s point of view, part 2 from Laila’s, and part 3 goes back and forth between the two. There are times in the novel when the two characters cross each other yet the novel does not change perspectives.

For example:

a) (Part 2, page 100) Laila’s father, Babi, is taking her to school when she notices Rasheed’s, Mariam’s husband’s, blue Benz, and even refers to Mariam as “his reclusive wife”.

b) (Part 2, page 125) During Ahmad and Noor’s funeral, Laila notices Mariam. “Rasheed’s wife, Mariam, came in. She was wearing a black hijab. Strands of her hair strayed from it onto her brow. She took a seat along the wall across from Laila”.

Although we can not read the thoughts that Mariam is having during these events and points in the story, this all adds to the suspension in the novel of wanting to know how the two are connected and when the perspective is going to switch again.

I found this quite hilarious and relative.

As Promised…

Here are the rest of the translations up until chapter 22:

Chup Ko	Shut up	89
Hamwatans	Expression: Brothers	92
Sofrah	table cloth except put on the floor to eat on	93
Ghazals	a form of Hindu poetry that fits well with classical music	99
Inqilabi	Revolutionary	101
Moalim	teacher	102
Sahib	boss	102
Awal	first	103
Numra	number	103
Badmash	naughty	105
Aroos	Bride	115
Shokr e Khoda	Expression: Praying to God for your good fortune	115
Shorwa	Type of food	116
Mozahem	Expression: I don’t want to be intruding/imposing/getting in the way	116
Panjpar	Type of card game in the middle east. Panj means 5.	117
Giryanok	Cry baby	118
Aush	Type of food	120
Pakol	Type of wool hat for men	123
Fatiha	Type of wake	124
Shaheed	dead	128
Pajalusta	Means ‘you are welcome’ in Russian. Tariq was probably saying this sarcastically to the soviet’s driving by.	131
Badar	Brother	132
Kaka Jan	Respectful way of addressing someone (male) who is older than you but very close to you and your family, almost like an uncle.	135

What Language Is This?!

As a summative task in my ENG4U class, we were assigned different books and groups and have been reading them for close to a month now. The book that I am reading is called A Thousand Splendid Suns. This title might seen familiar because it is by the same author as the very famous The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini.

Click here for a short summary of the novel

If anyone has even picked up a copy of this book, you would right off the bat realize that a lot of the words are in Pashto, and there are no footnotes or glossaries to explain what the words mean. Being from Iran, Pashto and Farsi are two close enough languages that I am able to understand what all of the words me, further on in this post, I will write out all of the words up until where I have read and translate them into English. I’ll continue to do this if I find any new words as a read further into the novel.

Before I get into translating the words, I just want to explain a bit what kind of an effect the use of Pashto words has on the novel and on the readers. By using Pashto, it gives the novel certain advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages would be that anyone who did not have a basic understanding of Farsi, Pashto, or even Arabic, would find it a bit irritating. I’ve talked to some of my peers and teachers about this book and after their questions of asking whether or not there is anywhere that the author explains the words, they all assume that the words in Pashto are probably not that important and that you would be able to get the gist of the sentence either way. I would have to disagree with this. For some reason, the majority of the words which are written in Pashto seem to be the most important words and, if you weren’t able to understand them, would cause the reader to loose the complete feel of the text. One of my teachers suggested that this was done in an attempt by the author to try and keep the novel’s audience individuals from that region; however, I don’t see why that would be the case because the author, and his novels are globally known.

Click here for a short biography of Khaled Hosseini, the author of A Thousand Splendid Suns

There are two big advantages that would come with having certain words written in Pashto. The more minor one would be that, as anyone who speaks a second language would know, it can be very difficult, and frustrating, at times to try and translate certain words and/or expressions between two languages where the expression/word doesn’t actually have an exact translation. For example, the word Sabzi is a type of plant/herb/vegetable (see, even I can’t describe it) that is eaten/put into different dishes in the the Iran/Afghanistan region but there is no exact translation for it in English. Because of this, it would be easier for Hosseini to leave some of the words in Pashto because it would be easier than having to change certain sentences around completely in order for them to make sense just because of one word. The major advantage which I found with having certain words in Pashto is that, it shows how authentic this story is and how much of a reality it is for people (mainly women) living in that region and how much they have to struggle in their daily lives.

Here is a list of only some of the Pashto words translated into English

Pashto	English	Page #
Noor	Light	Dedication
Harami	Bastard Child	3
Kolba	Hut	3
Jinn	Demon	3
Dil	Gut	6
Didi	Expression: You see?	6
Kinchini	whore	8
Shahnai	Indian Oboe	9
Dohol	Type of drum played in the Middle East	9
Jo	Dear	11
Shalqam	Type of Stew	15
Sabzi	plant/vegetable/herb that can be eaten	15
Arbab	Leader	15
Kichiri	Rice	15
Dishlemeh	Type of sweet	15
Akhund	A Muslim Cleric	15
Namaz	Prayer	15
Alef	Letter of the alphabet : A	15
Beh	Letter of the Alphabet: B	15
Seh	Letter of the Alphabet: C	15
Mashallah	Expression: oh my god	21
Aneh	yes	25
Nay	no	25
Gari	Kind of carriage	29
Dokhtar	Girl	30
Bia	Come	32
Fahmidi	Expression: Do you understand?	41
Surrah		40
Ayat	Miracle	40
Khastegar	Expression (there isn’t really a word for it in English): Someone who asks a woman for her hand in marriage	43
Moochi	Shoe Repairman	43
Nikka	Swearing ceremony of a wedding	45
Agha	Respectful way of saying man	48
Meem	Letter of the alphabet :M	49
Reh	Letter of the alphabet :R	49
Ya	Letter of the alphabet :Y	49
Tabreek	Congratulations	49
Tashakor	Expression: Thank you	55
Salaam	Hello	60
Daal	Kind of food	62
Aftawa		62
Logari	Kind of music	65
Hamshira	Sister	66
Chapans	Traditional coat for men	67
Poostin	Type of coat	67
Qurma	kind of food	71

There are probably 100 more words, so I will continue to post the rest in my other blog posts.

Thief!

Many of you may not know this, ( I personally didn’t either until now) but Shakespeare is just a plagiarist! Today in my English class, we received a piece of text to read which was named Amleth’s Revenge. Sound familiar? Maybe that’s because it seems to sound EXACTLY like Hamlet! Amleth’s Revenge was written by Saxo Grammaticus, about four hundred years before Shakespeare’s Hamlet. There’s more: the title of the play isn’t the only thing that is similar between these two pieces of work, the story line and character connections might as well be the exact same thing.

 

 

Click here for a copy of Amleth’s Revenge by Saxo Grammaticus to see just how similar the two are.

If you still don’t believe me, let me just list a few things which – if you’ve read Hamlet – you’ll be able to see that the “great mind” of Shakespeare really can be accused of taking his ideas from other pieces of work…

Here is the first paragraph from Amleth’s Revenge:

“Feng has murdered his brother, the King of Denmark and the father of Amleth, and has married the queen. Amleth, the heir to the throne, feels that his life is threatened.”

Right off the bat we can easily see that the plot line is exactly the same from Hamlet. Let’s see what happens when we take the same paragraph but replace it with the appropriate character from Hamlet: Claudius has murdered his brother, the King of Denmark and the father of Hamlet, and has married the queen. Hamlet, the heir to the throne, feels that his life is threatened. As you can easily see, it`s pretty much the exact same concept.

There are several other connections between the two plays, but I don’t think that you would want me to bore you will all of the details. If you do however wish to look into this further, here is a link to another source which explains more in depth the connection between the two plays.

 

Rather than going into detail about how similar these two pieces are, I would rather discuss what kind of an impact this has on the play Hamlet and Shakespeare as a writer. I used to have some sort of an idea that a few things from Shakespeare’s plays were from other places, but I never knew how similar they really were. These connections between Hamlet and Amleth’s Revenge came as a complete shock for me and I’m sure a few of you would feel the same. The fact that I now know that Shakespeare barely even wrote anything from his own ideas, kind of makes me think of him in a different way. Many individuals always refer to Shakespeare as a “brilliant literate mind” or someone who helped shape the way we study literature, but frankly, now it just seems that he was a plagiarist who was smart enough to make someone else’s work even more famous under his own name. I don’t doubt it that Shakespeare had certain plays which were (majority of) original, but the fact that one of his most famous and most well known plays was “copied” from someone else’s work, just seems to ruin the entire effect and help show what type of a person Shakespeare was while he was alive.

 

Side note: If you want to see something just for kicks, go into Google, type in the search bar “Amleth’s Revenge”, click Images, and just look at how many images for Hamlet pop up. 

Poor, Poor Ophelia

If you’ve been following my blog recently then you should already know that in my ENG4U class, we’ve been comparing and studying 4 main different versions of Hamlet (if you didn’t know this, here’s your update!). While in my last post I was comparing the different Hamlet characters and their “To be or not to be” soliloquies, I want to just shift the focus over to Ophelia for a moment here. I find it quite interesting that no matter what I look up about this play, the majority (not all) of the topics are about Hamlet the character; however, I find Ophelia to be a just as vital role in this play because no only does her character add something to the theme of insanity, but she also creates a side love story mixed with confusing and anxiety.

There are two major scenes which I want to discuss with Ophelia’s character. One is her little moment in the spot light after Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech when she is put into role by Claudius and her father, and the second (which isn’t as major as the first) when the dumb show is playing and the reactions and tensions between her and Hamlet.

As many directors may know, Ophelia’s character is portrayed to be very weak, shy, and isn’t quite able to stand up for herself. The different movie versions that we (my ENG4U class) watched, each show Ophelia in a different way, yet she still manages to fit with these original character traits.  Here is a list of the actresses who played Ophelia and which actor of Hamlet they are linked with:

Helena Bonham Carter —> Mel Gibson

Kate Winslet —> Kenneth Branagh

Lindagay Hamilton —> Campbell Scott

Mariah Gale —> David Tennant

During Mariah Gale’s scene of giving back Hamlet’s things after his speech, she seems to be quite genuine. When she first speaks to him, she does look as if she pity’s his insanity and really does care for him. As shes giving back the letters, her expression changes to wanting to get the task over with as if she remembered that her father and Claudius are watching them. When Hamlet all of a sudden reacts to her giving the letters back, she seems to be quite frightened by how ‘insane’ he is acting. After he looks up towards the security camera, she looks towards where her father and Claudius are hiding with an expression of concern because he found out and she doesn’t know what to do or how to react to what’s going on.  When she says “Help him you sweet heavens” myself, or the rest of my class, couldn’t help but laugh just because of how fake her acting seems every time she prays to God to heal him. I can see where the concept of this action came from, however, by constantly doing it over and over again, and how dull and unenthusiastic she looks through out it all just ruins the effect.  To see this scene between Hamlet and Ophelia click here but skip ahead to 2:57.

This version of Hamlet seems to be the best representation of Hamlet and Ophelia’s love for each other. Throughout all of the Act 2 scene 2 when Hamlet is acting crazy around her, Ophelia seems to be genuinely concerned for him due to her love for Hamlet. Also, during the dumb show, we can see how much they do care for each other because, although in different versions Hamlet seems to be making witty and rude remarks towards Ophelia, here is seems not as intense and you can still see her caring for him by the way she’s wrapping her arms around him. Here is a link to the dumb show scene, skip to 1:33:15 to see how connected Ophelia and Hamlet seem: even while he’s dancing around acting insane she smiles at him.

In the Helena Bonham Carter version, some of the most popular comments consist of how young Ophelia seems compared to Hamlet. I do agree with these comments; however, I feel that this only adds to the idea of how weak and shy Ophelia is portrayed compared to Hamlet. During the dumb show scene, when Hamlet is making his remarks towards Ophelia, she looks to be completely terrified by him and his insanity. Even when he looks at her, Ophelia seems to be always expecting the worse and thinking that at any moment, something bad is going to happen.

My personal favorite version of this scene would have to be the Lindagay Hamilton version. From the start, when Ophelia is being ‘caked’ up with makeup, to the end when Hamlet becomes paranoid, everything fits in with my original idea of how this scene would actually happen. The fact that the director decided to show Ophelia being dressed up shows how her father and Claudius are just putting her into roles to prove their points while ignoring what she thinks. This all adds to the idea that they’re playing Ophelia like a pawn in a chess game which could be one of the factors that lead her to her own mental insanity. At the very start of this scene, Ophelia looks like her emotions are being played with and she looks too afraid to actually go through with the plan. This version seems to show the most physical attraction between Ophelia and Hamlet, and because of this, also adds more physically suspension when Hamlet asks  where Ophelia’s father is.

In Kate Winslet`s version, Ophelia looks like she`s being forced to say what is coming out of her mouth. The fact that Ophelia keeps kissing Hamlet does raise his suspicious which makes her character seem even worse at lying to him. When Hamlet turns violent Ophelia just looks terrified which shows to us that she really didn`t want to confront him and adds to the idea of Claudius and Polonius playing Ophelia like a pawn in their game in order to prove their own points.

One thing that I noticed from all of the different verison`s of Hamlet was that, when the dumb show was playing, and the affection scene between Gertrude and King Hamlet was being played, the majority of the characters (Gertrude, Claudius, Horatio, Polonius, and Hamlet) realized that this was to be a connection of Gertrude and King Hamlet`s marriage; however, if you were to actually study Ophelia`s facial expressions, you can see that when these scenes come on, she stares at Hamlet as to think that this is somehow supposed to be a connection to their own little love story that`s going on.

Which Hamlet Is The Best?

As everyone knows, Hamlet by William Shakespeare has been one of the most famous plays written throughout our time. There have been countless stage productions and several film productions of Hamlet. In my ENG4U ( Grade 12 Academic English) class we have watched and compared four different film versions of Hamlet. The main scenes (up until this point) that we have analyzed and discussed are; Hamlet’s ” To be or not to be” speech; and Act III scene i when Ophelia and Hamlet “bump in” to each other in the lobby.

The different actors from these films which play Hamlet’s character are, Campbell Scott, David Tennant, Mel Gibson, and Kenneth Branagh. By watching all of these actor’s “To be or not to be” soliloquies, I fount Scott’s to be one of my favorites. Gibson’s entire scene has such good setting, location, and had a lot of potential, but I personally feel that the constant moving around, laying on the different graves, and laying on the ground was just too much and made the entire scene seem fake. The scene had a great set up and could have been one of the greatest versions of Hamlet‘s ” To be or not to be” scenes if Gibson was to maybe stay in only one or two spots and have more of the camera focus on him and his facial expressions rather  than his movements. With this version, I found it difficult to even debate whether Hamlet as a character has really gone insane or if he is just faking it. To me, this version only really emphasizes the degree of exhaustion that Hamlet is feeling at this point.

Click on the image of the movie poster to go the video of Mel Gibson’s Hamlet “To be or not to be” scene

 

One of the major flaws (that I personally found) in Gibson’s soliloquy was the amount of unnecessary movement that was included.  David Tennant’s version is the complete opposite because  for the entire speech, he is standing at a corner, half behind half beside, and it is a constant close up on his face which shows all of his emotion and expressions as a character. Now, I understand that I said I wish that in Gibson’s version there would be more close-ups, but I feel like the CONSTANT close up and not even a few instants of long shots didn’t quite help the scene either. This version of Hamlet does do a good job of showing the tension in Hamlet`s character of acting insane and actually going insane. The fact that he is leaning behind and in front of the corner can represent his own mental struggle between faking and turning insane.  I do feel that Tennant’s version was better than Gibson’s; however, I believe that if a few different shots and/or camera angles were to be added then it could have easily been one of the best versions of Hamlet‘s soliloquies.

Click on the movie poster to see David Tennant’s version of Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” scene

 

One of my personal favorite versions of Hamlet`s “To be or not to be” soliloquies would have to be Kenneth Branagh’s version. I feel that in this version, Hamlet is shown to be more conniving than actually insane. This version supports the idea that Hamlet is only faking insanity around others because if you were to actually slow down the film, you can see that as Hamlet is opening the door, the sound and movement from Polonius’s and Claudius’s two-way mirror is still going, which would make Hamlet suspect that someone is watching him. Also, it seems to be too much of a coincidence that he would just randomly choose to give his speech in front of the mirror that Polonius and Claudius are hiding behind.  In addition to all of this, when Hamlet first walks into the hall, he looks around with an expression on his face that gives off the sense that he’s realized there are people watching him and that he’s planning out how to just add to their ‘entertainment’.

click on the movie poster to see Kenneth Branagh’s version of Hamlet’s “Too be or not to be” scene

 

Last but not least, one of the best film performances of Hamlet (in my opinion), is Campbell Scott’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy. This version really shows how Hamlet has truly gone insane from all of the events in the past two months in his life. From a technical point of view, this scene has a large variety of angles and lighting techniques that enhance the scene. Also, the way that Scott uses the painting of Claudius shows his true hatred towards his uncle/step-father, and how angry he is about his father’s death.

I wasn’t able to find a link to Campbell Scott’s version of Hamlet because I think only purchased versions have been sold and there are no online versions.