This Soliloquy Is About You

After continuing our discussion on Hamlet’s first soliloquy, and after a long day of school, I promptly went home, plugged my headphones into my computer and began singing along to many songs by Olly Murs.  However, after I listened to his song “This Song Is About You,” I had to play it again because it seemed almost as if it were a modern adaptation of Hamlet’s soliloquy.  The song begins with, “This is my confessional/On pen and paper I’m going to write this down/Saying things you never thought,” which essentially covers the main idea of the soliloquy.  Hamlet does not say his true feelings to anyone but himself and speaking of the wrongs that his mother has committed and never believed was wrong.  Olly Murs then goes on to say, “I won’t lie, no I’m not okay.”  At this point both Murs and Hamlet are speaking or singing only to themselves and admitting to only themselves that they are not okay.  They are feeling broken and worn down, yet they cannot express their feelings to the person whom they need to the most, so they hold their tongue and only admit to themselves what their true feelings are.  In the chorus, the line “I hope you know this song is about you” is repeated many times, emphasizing the anger toward the person it is aimed at and the frustration that they do not understand their wrong doings.  This, of course, is much like Hamlet.  He is angry at his mother and makes the entire soliloquy about her wrong doings and shouting obscene generalizations, such as “frailty thy name is woman!” yet he is aiming all of these insults at his mother.  The soliloquy is about Gertrude, yet there is a part of Hamlet that does not want his mother to know about it and a part of him that wants his mother to know the soliloquy is about her.  The bridge of the song links back to the soliloquy, too, since one of the lines is “I hope you feel the same way that I felt that day/That you let me, yeah you left me.”  This part of the song reminds me of the movie version that we watched where everyone left and Hamlet was left in a giant room by himself, where he goes on to state his soliloquy.  He feels lonely, abandoned and full of grief in this scene yet his mother feels only pure happiness for the fact that she is marrying Hamlet’s uncle; he is filled with anger and feels as though Gertrude should be feeling the same way as him rather than moving on to “incestuous sheets.”  Hamlet’s wish is for Gertrude to one day grieve for the great king, his father, as he has been doing by himself.  This song and this soliloquy are both filled with many emotions such as anger, grief, rage, and sadness.  Both Hamlet and Murs are suffering through different situations, however they are dealing with them in much the same way.

Yay Poetry!

Upon researching many poems, I have found that I do have a soft spot in my heart for most poetry.  For many years I have been obsessed with writing poetry that I never thought of looking up published poetry for any inspiration.  I recently found a poem by e.e. cummings entitled “my father moved through dooms of love,” which is my latest target to understand and annotate.  When I first read the beginning stanza, I believed the poem to be something of a pleasant story about the speaker’s father, but after reading through the rest of the poem I became confused.  Each stanza seems to create its own story and emotion, yet the stanza’s all connect to create one confusing poem.  When I annotate this, I will make sure to pay special attention to the shifts in tone from one stanza to the next and will try to find what the speaker is trying to say about his father.  One key point that I have been thinking about is that maybe the poem is meant to be this cataclysmic mess of emotions because that is how a typical family is; there are hugs, punches, smiles, and tears yet in the end the family still remains together.  Each of the stanzas could represent a different emotion that the father has brought upon the speaker, yet when all of the stanzas are combined, they make a typical father and child relationship.  This may be completely wrong since in the end I do not actually know what e.e. cummings actually wanted to say, but I can guess that the relationship between the speaker and the son is one with many ups and downs.  The contradicting characterization the father of happy yet sad and praised yet feared seems to be summed up into one stanza, when the poem explains that he is “giving to steal and cruel kind,/a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,/to differ a disease of same,/conform the pinnacle of am.”  The description of the father explains that he is one huge contradiction.  He is “giving to steal” and “cruel kind,” meaning that he is good yet evil.  This description of the father leads me to believe that the speaker is unreliable or a child, since a child goes through a roller coaster of emotions towards their parents.  At this point the child is not sure whether the father is looking out for him or purposely being evil, so the child’s brain is not sure what to think.  When a child gets older, however, he or she realizes that whatever the father is doing is most likely in the best interest of the child, and accepts that the father is only looking out for him or her.  At a young age, children cannot comprehend that what they want may not be what is best for them, and therefore feel as if the father is cruel.  The speaker may not in fact be a child, but I perceive the poem to be spoken by an irrational person, also known as a child.

My View on "in Just--"

After reading “in Just--” by e.e. cummings, I realize how complex yet how simple poetry can truly be.  When I read this poem by myself I became extremely confused at what the poem was trying to say, however, after discussing with the class I now understand the meaning.  This poem is about a devil-like creature stealing children’s childhoods and forcing them into maturity.  The sudden change in the poem from describing the lead character as “balloonman” to “balloonMan” shows a quick shift into maturity where he is becoming an actual man rather than a boy, just like the four children he changes turns from children to adults.  This transition is foreshadowed earlier on in the poem when the formatting of “far and wee” changes three times.  First, the “far” is separated from “and wee,” then “far and wee” are all separated, and finally the words in “far/and/wee” are each given their own lines, which shows the further separation of childhood and adulthood; they soon become completely independent from each other.  The balloonMan is also described as “goat-footed,” which is a quite obvious representation of the devil in its true form.  The formatting around this stanza is interesting since the lines create an image of steps.  These steps represent the changing of “levels.”  Steps are a transition from one floor to another in literal terms, but in the context of the poem they represent the transition from a level of childhood to a level of adulthood.  The transition is brought on by the balloonman, meaning that the balloonman is represented as the steps of life; forcing these children into adulthood.

The setting of April is interesting since April is rainy and “puddle-wonderful,” which represents a transformation.  The word “mud-/luscious” is meant to show the transformation after the rain or storm; the dirt becomes mud, meaning that there is a full transition, a rebirth.  This could also represent the rebirth of the children since they start April as children and end as adults.  When “bettyandisbel come dancing/from hop-scotch and jump-rope,” they are abandoning their childhood games to follow the man who will transform them; the same idea stands for “eddieandbill” too since they “come/running from marbles and/piracies.”  The abandonment on the childhood toys and games and the choice to follow the balloonman shows that they are willing to make the change and become adults.  Due to the fact that the balloonman is thought of as such an evil, negative figure, the poet could possibly be a parent speaking of his or her child that has now fully bloomed into an adult; to the parent, their child’s childhood has been ripped away from not only the children, but also the parents.  This “balloonman” could be a figure made up by the parent’s subconscious in order to figure out a way to explain why the children would want to grow into adults rather than dealing with the fact that the children are making their own choice to grow up and move further from the childhood that parents wish would last forever.