My individual artwork was named Ham's Labyrinth. The basic design of it is a labyrinth within the outline of a brain. To go further into description, the Labyrinth itself is color coded into three basic areas, which each lead to a basic outcome. These three outcomes are Life, Death, and Vengeance. The labyrinth itself is a representation of Hamlet's mind. To ensure that viewers realized this, the entire Labyrinth is within a mind so it is only a matter of understanding that aspect of the image. The reason there are these three outcomes is due to an idea that came out of both a classmate and the student that helped my group from Professor Werlin's class. The idea is that in Hamlet's mind there is a constant struggle of what to do next and what comes with making that choice. Because of this struggle, he is constantly stuck and confused on what the proper choice is. To get straight to the point " to be or not to be, that is the question" and "As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge". Put even more bluntly the questions are: Should I live?, Should I die? and should I take revenge?. He is never truly sure what he should do until the end and at that point he is already poisoned.
So anyone seeing the image can understand it a bit more clearly, Hamlets course of mind is represented in blue and everytime something crucial happened there is a purple spot. These purple spots are Key Events in the play. To name a few: the beginning which starts of with the Late King having passed, then it continues with different events such as the fight with Ophelia and the play enacted to trick the King. Each time there is an event, Hamlet usually makes a drastic change in action but keeps a similar perspective. By this, what I mean is that even if he is still acting differently, his mind and thoughts still revolve around the same subject. For example, when the King died Hamlet's question was "why can't I kill myself" or in his words "that this too too sullied flesh would melt". This is the basic outcome of death. Right before the fight with Ophelia, the question is should I live or should I die, or in his words "to be or not to be". That is where the choice life comes in. The reason that I have one more outcome is because the outcome itself shows somewhat of a halfway point between Life and Death: Vengeance.
If you notice certain aspects of Hamlet and the way he talks, Hamlet notes Vengeance as the key outcome unconcerned about whether he lives or dies. He addresses Vengeance as something he can use to solve his problems but doesn't show his will to live. It is the middle point because vengeance is the point where he can either die or live. In the story he implies as though he is putting up with life for the sole reason of enacting his vengeance. In other words, Vengeance is his reason to live so after he enacts his vengeance what happens to Hamlet? He is still left with the choice of being alive or taking his life.
To refer back to the actual art , in the play I saw Hamlet lean towards Death and Vengeance. He never really leans towards Life but instead struggles with the fear of death and the aftermath. So this can be seen, " Who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life if not for the dread of something after death". He does fear what comes after death but if that fear wasn't there, and if it was not something he thought would be a sin, he would have had a deeper inclination to the other two outcomes and chosen them. He plainly states that he doesn't like the world. " How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world". It shows he puts up with life for fear and along with that vengeance.
The Labyrinth itself ends in the outcome Vengeance. The reason being that he never chooses to die or to live. He just accepts his fate and in simple terms says "tell the truth about my story Horatio". He just accepts what's there but didn't say I want to live or save me or anything. He actually instead instantly tries to kill the King when he figures out he is about to die. He chose vengeance and with that accepted this outcome.
Also to point out extra things about my image itself, the Labyrinth was a way of showing that Hamlet was always stuck within his mind and as a result, he could never really could decide what to do. He didn't ever really decide whether or not he lived or died but nonetheless accepted it.
P.S
For anyone who got the reference, the name is a pun: Ham's Labyrinth and the pun is Pan's Labyrinth. I used this pun because Pan's Labyrinth it is a mythical maze that leads to the underworld. When applied to the story, the pun shows a kind of interesting twist to the story.
0 comments:
Post a Comment