Backtracking

In my own posts, I often see that I analyze the relationships between two characters. Whether it is between Hotspur and Glyndwr, Antonio and Shylock, or John of Gaunt and just about everyone else in the play or God. The relationships between people affect how I see and read the play so they are very important for me to analyze. I had not noticed that I had focused on that before this, and it is interesting to see how much I focus on the partnerships between two people when I am reading through the scenes of the plays that we have read in class.

In reading through my first post that deals with the beginning of Act four in The Merchant of Venice and the relationship between Antonio and Shylock. It focuses mainly on how Shylock is painted out to be the villain, and Antonio is the hero. I was glad of the examples that I painted out of Shylock’s wickedness, and the quotation used to further along the portrayal of Shylock as the villain. However, reading through it I do wish that I had gotten further into Antonio as the hero to better compare the two and make the portrayal of Shylock as the villain and Antonio as the hero. If Antonio’s portrayal had been stronger it would have made the comparison stronger.

As I went on, to my next post, I noticed that I did get stronger in my analysis of the relationships between characters, even if the second deals mainly with John of Gaunt against more than just one person. It was nice to see my use of outside research, such as what I used to delve into the number seven and the tale of Cain and Abel which I didn’t know before writing the post. I believe I paid more attention to details in this post and felt more passionate about what I had written in this post. More than in the post before, this one also delves into the inner conflict of the character. Conflicts between characters and within them appears to be the theme of many of my posts this semester and I believe this post was my best moment at that theme. The two quotations within this post further along the argument and aren’t just there to fill up space, which is nice.

While the third post is not the strongest of my three, I believe that it delved nicely into the relationship between Hotspur and Glyndwr. I also believed that it used this relationship to relate to the entire play, with Hotspur’s temper and the way that the rebellion would not succeed. I do wish that I had delved more into this because I believe it would have been a more in depth and successful post had I done that. While it was a successful post within itself, I believe that there was a deeper analysis that I just barely touched on a few times.

I value these weekly blogs because in these blogs, I have to really dig deeply into the play and find the deeper meanings and themes within it. It allows for analysis and for me to be able to really find what it is that I have a tendency to notice when I read the plays. It allows for reading on Shakespeare, which can be difficult to do at times, in shorter bursts than huge essays, though it does help in finding what would make good topics for said huge essays, and makes it a more enjoyable task.