Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Hamlet Soliloquy Reflection Essays

Hamlet Soliloquy Reflection Essays Hamlet Soliloquy Reflection Paper Hamlet Soliloquy Reflection Paper Hamlet, is a classic play still read throughout the world to this day. Starring the character Hamlet, and the royal family of Denmark, the play includes everything from murder, betrayal, Incest, love and turmoil. Shakespeare Is renowned for his writing, in Hamlet specifically the seven soliloquies. Soliloquies are monologue type speeches spoken by Hamlet generally and give the sense of the situation and feelings of Hamlet at the time. After carefully annotating the seven soliloquies, one can see the different states of mind, situations and characterizations of Hamlet. The deader can relate to the feelings Hamlet experiences regardless of the fact most readers have never been In situations as extreme as Hamlet. In the first soliloquy titled, O that this too too sullied flesh would . 2), Hamlet speaks about his fathers death and how he is feeling about his mothers new relationship with his Uncle. Like Im sure anyone in his situation would feel Hamlet seems to be unsure. He loves his mother dearly and only wishes her happiness, but the fact she married her dead husbands brother less then two months following his fathers death worries Hamlet. : For myself personally, I have never experienced meeting like my parents divorcing or dying. However, to an extent I can relate because I can see from his point of view how awkward the situation is. I can relate in the aspect however of grief. Less than two months after his fathers untimely death, Hamlet still mourns his loss. However, Hamlet is crudely advised by his mother to Just get over it. She hopes that he can move on and I can relate to that. It Is hard to relate to a parent dying to breaking up with someone, but on a much smaller scale It seems very similar. Last year after I had a year relationship end, I was heartbroken, however he situation only became worse when after a few weeks; I felt a lot of pressure from my friends to just get over the situation. To put it like Shakespeare I am not a beast and I need time to mourn situations like these, time heals all wounds. The second soliloquy Is In Act 1, Scene 5 and Is again a monologue by Hamlet. The section Immediately follows the return of the newly dead king In the form of a split or ghost. This particular passage demonstrated the several emotions Hamlet was experiencing in this state of turmoil. The situation surrounding his fathers death has omen to light and Hamlet is faced with a decision of believing the ghost and avenging his fathers murder or forgetting the ghost ever spoke to him at all and sparing his uncle his life. Although I have never had to (seriously) debate killing someone I can certainly relate to the distress of having no Idea what to do In certain situations and contemplating a decision for hours before making one. Life Is full of compromises and I dont believe there is anyone out there who cant relate to having trouble making an important decision at least once in their lifetime that will have enormous mummifications for everyone around them. Whether it be, should I avenge my fathers murder and kill my uncle or something like should I stop being friends with someone or try and forgive them. These decisions could prove to haunt you In your future or your family as well as prove to be Instrumental In deciding your future character and The third soliloquy happens in Act 2 Scene 2. Hamlet at this point has decided he wants to avenge his fathers death and kill Claudia, but is having trouble and is getting frustrated at the fact that he cant plan and execute the killing as decisively as is father would have wanted. Hamlet is an interesting character because in no way is he either a hero or a villain. He has only the best intentions but regardless he still becomes determined to kill other. Regardless of what he does to convince himself to kill his uncle he cant and deep down I believe that shows that Hamlet truly is a moral person. Both Hamlet and myself are not perfect people. Neither of us are horrible people either, we strive to be the best and most responsible person we can possibly be and I think that is what makes his character so historically and emotionally appealing. In most literature you can see your protagonist as a clean-cut good guy. The fact that Hamlet breaks that stereotype and makes some decisions that many would see as immoral, makes the book that much more interesting. The Fourth of Shakespeare soliloquies begins with To be, or no to be: that is the question. As probably one of the most famous lines of the play, it truly is a great philosophical question about the decisions we make everyday. The quote itself found in act 3 scene 1 accurately describes Hamlets state of mind throughout the scene. Hamlet strongly debates the meaning of his existence at this point in time and whether it would be easier if he Just didnt exist, or if he were to commit suicide if that would simplify everything. Torn between making a decision, he decides he is a coward and that is why he cant kill himself. This whole concept is fairly relatable to the reader because, of course, sometimes its easier to Just want to disappear or die rather then face with the worlds challenges. However, like Hamlet discovers he must keep living because there is a purpose to his life we each resolve to plod on each day attempting to resolve or conflicts and struggles. The following two soliloquies come from the same section(3. 3). In this scene Hamlet definitively decides how he will handle the situation. First by addressing his mother in a cruel, not unnatural way about the situation and second by plotting the murder of his uncle Claudia. In the pursuit of vengeance Hamlet, postpones his killing until after he is done praying, so that rather than go to heaven his uncle can suffer as much as possible for what he has done. Vengeance is a strong emotion and everyone fantasize what it would be like to even the score once in a while, but as Hamlet will later learn, what goes around comes around. The last Hamlet soliloquy is the final act of vengeance for Hamlet. In an epic dual with his uncle, not only does he fatally wound Claudia, but also tragically himself. In the process his mother, the queen also becomes poisoned and essentially the entire royal family dies. At this point Hamlet sees the cost of vengeance. It is a moral we can all relate. For as it seems attractive to aggressively pursue an emotionally satisfying path to rectify a wrong, however, those paths often lead to repercussions one couldnt possibly imagine.

Monday, March 2, 2020

How I Got Noticed on Wattpad (and Won the Wattys)

How I Got Noticed on Wattpad (and Won the Wattys) Winning the World’s Largest Online Writing Contest – A Reedsy Success Story Author Rhà ³n is brand new to the writing world, but his Frontier Fantasy novel Oakwood Grange was recently selected out of 75,000 entries for a Wattys award - an annual international contest of authors held by Wattpad. The story also earned him a â€Å"Featured† spot on the website’s homepage for a monthly audience of 45 million, and later ranked in the top 40 of the Fantasy genre (top 40 of over 200 million stories). Here he shares some tidbits about how that success came to be, how other authors might do the same and get noticed on Wattpad.â€Å"Have you heard of Wattpad?†Three years ago I met a dude named Taran Matharu who asked me this while we were riding in a tour bus up the coast of northeastern Australia. Taran was in his early twenties at the time, traveling for adventure, as I was, and typing something on a laptop that - little did we know - within months would snowball several million online readers and earn him a top-tier agent, a six-figure adva nce from a major publisher, and a position on the New York Times Best Sellers list.â€Å"It’s this website where you post your stories and people read them and leave comments,† he explained.â€Å"Ah.†I had no idea what he was talking about, for back then it had not occurred to me to â€Å"post† my writing anywhere at all. To me, as far as writing was concerned, the well-trodden path was still the best to follow (albeit steeply uphill and exhausting): first, you finish the manuscript, then you query agents and get published. That’s what authors did if they wanted to go pro.Paths are not always as clear-cut as they first appear.In the years that followed I wrote my novel Oakwood Grange, my first, basically a stewpot of strange fantasy and Western grit - a Coraline meets Little House on the Prairie kind of tale, and when I finished it I recalled that old tour bus conversation and the website Wattpad.The latter seemed like a good place to start. I wan ted to get some eyeballs on my novel in order to find out what the global public thought of my ability to tell a story. It turns out they thought quite a bit. Within months I’d gone from absolute obscurity to winning a Wattys â€Å"Hidden Gems† award and attracting over 40,000 reads.Here’s how it was done, and how you might do the same†¦A Leaf in the Wattpad Forest: How to Get NoticedFor those using Wattpad for the first time, the initial steps are simple: sign up and create a profile, write some text (or, in my case, paste some text already written), click a button that says â€Å"Publish†, and presto - an audience of 45 million instantly have access to your story.The next steps are more daunting. As I write this, there are over 200 million independent story uploads on the site, every genre you can think of, with thousands more uploading every day. It’s a virtual avalanche of fiction, and most who venture there are buried from the start.So, to get noticed, my early strategy was to look for stories that were already immensely popular. This was easy. Wattpad categorizes all works by their respective genre, and each genre has its own â€Å"Hot† list ranking all that genre’s stories by their current level of readership. Leaving an insightful comment on a top-ranking author’s story encourages them to read your own story, and hopefully vote for it as well - reads and votes which automatically re-post as notifications to that author’s followers on a public feed.Another thing I did was socialize with Wattpad’s community at large. The website has a high-traffic forums section with various discussion â€Å"Clubs† (e.g. Romance, Fantasy, Teen Fiction, Horror, Classics, etc.), places where you can post questions or responses to the other users, occasionally mentioning what you’ve written. To me, the forums proved the best place to raise awareness of my story. I created threads that I could easily tie to some aspect of  Oakwood Grange, responded considerately to what others posted in reply, and also provided useful feedback to younger authors still cutting their teeth on concepts like â€Å"inciting incident† and â€Å"theme† and â€Å"active voice.†Write masterfully. Aim for Tolkien or Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Austen, Rowling, or Dickens - not the soon-to-be-forgotten E. L. what’s-her-face or others of her ilk. People notice quality and pass it on to other people.Edit. Nobody likes typos. Revise and then revise again. If you can afford an editor, on Reedsy, for example, all the better.Make sure that your book cover is fantastic . . . or at least make sure it doesn’t suck. I did the cover to Oakwood Grange myself. It’s okay, functional by Wattpad standards, but not what I would call amazing, and admittedly not good enough for the larger publishing industry.Post your full completed manuscript. Wattpad’s system a llows stories to be serialized, but common sense will tell you that most readers don’t want to begin reading something that’s half-finished.Add tags. Tags help people find your work by searching for relevant keywords. The more specific to the story, the better.Communicate with the community. At its core, Wattpad is a social site. So socialize. If you read someone else’s work, or comment or vote on it, they’re much more likely to reciprocate. Likewise, if you make an effort to engage new readers, or keep in contact with the readers you already have, more readers will be interested.Don’t get discouraged. A common complaint among new Wattpad authors is that no one reads their work. The good news is that wattpad readers are voracious. They want something fresh and good to feed their endless cravings, and they’re always prowling for that next delicious meal. If your story is enticing, trust me - they will sniff it out.Send Wattpad a request to m ake your story 'Featured'. Obviously, a website with 200 million stories cannot put all of them on its homepage, so there is an application and review process, and of course many disappointed authors. Nevertheless, the 'Featured' list is free, and highly visible, and it can bring your story thousands of new readers every week.The Sunlight in the CanopyAt this point, you might be wondering what value an author can get from Wattpad, or what makes it worth the cost of time and effort. Indeed, the sad truth is that the website offers no direct means for its authors to make money on their work, no Amazon-esque payment system, and that means that despite the legions who have read my story I still have not yet made a penny on it. Does that bother me? Nah. Awareness is my intention here - helping people realize that my work exists and it is work worth reading. In due course I expect that all of this awareness will pay off in the form of a publishing contract, as it did for Taran, as it has for many others. And even if that doesn’t happen, my author platform is steadily rising to a good place from which to dive into self-publishing.Meanwhile, Reedsy has been exceptionally useful in connecting me with an editor, Aja Pollock, who helped refine my story’s prose to prepare it for the greater wilderness beyond Wattpad. I came here for a level of professional expertise, wordsmithing, and attention to detail not easily found in other spheres, and I was not disappointed. After all, contests are admirable, but polishing a story until every facet shines and sparkles perfectly- that’s the real gem.You can read Rhà ³n's stories on Wattpad here!  Have you tried putting your stories up on Wattpad? Have you had any success from it? Let us know your thoughts and experiences, or any question for Rhà ³n, in the comments below!