A comparison essay between A Man For All
Seasons and Hamlet
and I am having difficulty coming up
with a thesis statement and for that matter I'm not even too sure of
what to compare. I can't really find anything that seems to stick out
that is similar in both of these please help me.
- Similarities
- Both have a major dilemma to "solve":
- revenge his father's death | challenge the values of the
autocrat
- both fought unscrupulous autocrats
- neither chose the issue; it 'came' upon them
- issue tested the characters
- both died in the effort
- both centre on court and matters of state
- both dragged on
- both dragged the protagonists down in spirits
- both ended in a decisive event the trial the sword
fight
- both courageous
- both find motivation in supernatural agents: ghost and
God
- role of moderation no panic no extremism talk to the
players on
- extravagance, quiet and determined
-
- Dissimilarities
- determined vs vacillation
- More never in doubt out his stand
- Meg and Ophelia - advisers
- More no mother confused loyalties
- no madness (or feigned madness) in More or his family
- role of friends Horatio
- false friends Rosei and Gildie, conventional friend
Norfolk
- More did it alone; cold turkey
- Hamlet and immediate equal Laertes embroiled in other side
plot fight
- false father in Claudius (poisons his stepson)
- true father in King Hamlet point of reference
- Fool in Polonius; role of fool in Chapuys (foil for humour,
silly old
- man, conniving courtier)
- Cromwell and Laertes antagonists?
-
- Theses you might argue:
- "Every character's life is tested in the cauldron of
experience, but for some called to practise heroic virtues some
lives are tested against a sea of troubles."
-
- "Dealing with the contrived unpredictable forces of evil can
consume the lives of good people."
-
- "Elinsore and Hampton writhe with conniving forces to shape
the destiny of good men. Why can't good arrive easy?"
-
- Further comments
- 1. Jesus, Socrates, Hamlet, More all died for their cause.
Their deaths sealed their issues in history, mark their lives in
history.
- All write scripts for the moral imagination: what could be is
better than what is.
- Question: Does a clash of personalities makes a man a hero; it
is in dialectics that moral progress
is achieved
- see discussion at http://home.pacific.net.au/~greg.hub/thanks.html#monte
- http://www.abacci.com/books/book.asp?bookID=2265
-
-
- 2. "A man takes an oath only when he wants to commit himself
quite
- exceptionally to the statement, when he wants to make an
identity
- between the truth of it and his virtue, he offers himself as a
guarantee."
-
- More as guarantee of his message
- Hamlet as blood guarantee of his father's justice
-
- 3. Are they mavericks?
- prepared to break ranks
- not mediocre indecision vs relativism
- relative vs absolute
- personal agendas interfere with the agendas of court
- Why be an individual?
-
- 4. "Courage in reasserting a principal of justice requires
giving up
- comfortable social relationships. Crisis tests true friends
even to the
- extent of having none."
-
-
This is page 7 of the A Man for All Seasons website student
discusions: seasons
- Author and webmaster G
Smith Brusbane Australia
- Posted: 26 May 2003.