English Controlled Assessment- Shakespeare

How do the studied poets and Shakespeare use literary techniques to show how people respond to forces in the world over which they have no control?

Shakespeare uses literary techniques to show how people respond to forces in the world over which they have control over. The first literary technique I will use is the theme. The studied poems are ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ (By Dylan Thomas), ‘A song in a storm (By Rudyard Kipling)’ and ‘On my first son (By Ben Jonson).’ Each Poet uses different literary techniques in the respected poems and the theme Shakespeare uses in Hamlet is Betrayal and its relationship to our fate. In all three texts the authors explore how characters react to the death of a loved one.

In Act 1 Scene 5 (Page 31) the ghost (who claimed to Hamlet to be his father) told Hamlet that Claudius (Hamlets uncle and the new king) killed him and that Hamlet should get revenge for him by killing Claudius. Hamlet didn’t believe the ghost who claimed to be Hamlets father at first but what the ghost was saying gradually started to make sense so the more Hamlet saw the ghost the more he believed him. The way Shakespeare is showing Claudius, the ghost and Hamlet as three completely different people in Act 1 Scene 5. Shakespeare shows Claudius as a heartless person as he killed his own brother and then to marry his brother’s wife to become king. Shakespeare shows the ghost as an angry and a ghost that only wants revenge as all he wants done is for Hamlet to kill Claudius and get revenge for him. Shakespeare shows Hamlet as a confused boy as he doesn’t exactly if or how Claudius killed his father. Hamlet could also feel like he might have started to betray his mother as she most likely started to love Claudius but when Claudius ended up poisoning Hamlets mum then Hamlet decided to finally pull the plug and kill Claudius. In Hamlet soliloquy ‘To be or not to be’ Hamlet uses a metaphor ‘Or take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?’ what Hamlet is trying to say here is that he can either go into a lot of trouble or he can oppose them and dodge it all together, so he could throw arrows back or he could just stay put. It then goes on to say ‘To die, to sleep’ here Hamlet is asking another question but both a bit similar. Later on in the soliloquy it says ‘Devoutly to be wish’d. to die, to sleep. Devoutly means religious and in the time of Hamlet most people were religious and in most religions it is a sin to kill yourself and here Hamlet is almost asking what the point of life is.

In Dylan Thomas’ poem ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ line 3 quotes ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’ this is repeated in all three stanzas and in the third stanza it is repeated twice. So in the poem it is repeated three times which means that this line is very important and has a meaning to it that link in with the whole meaning of the poem. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’ this means raging and getting angry because something is dying out. The following line says ‘And you, my father, there on the sad height.’ The second line of the poem is ‘Old age should burn and rave at close of day’ they both link as we know he is talking about his father in both of these lines and it is trying to say that his dad died because of old age. It also talks about old men that are close to death should just resist death as much as they can. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ is a metaphor as you can not go gentle into a night. The meaning of this quote is that they are questioning the grief going through the old aged people and that young people are being selfish.

In Ben Jonson’s poem ‘On My First Son’ starts off with Ben Jonson talking about saying farewell to his son after only seven years of having him, then he starts to blame himself for his son’s death for the way he lost him. Then Ben Jonson starts to talk about how he is glad his son didn’t go on and see the real world as he would’ve been free from the pain from the real world.

All three poems use a regular Iambic pentameter. Iambic Pentameter is like a heartbeat and its regular beat expresses life in all three poems, as long as the iambic pentameter is there we get the feeling that the dead person is alive. In each of the three poems the iambic pentameter is disrupted and these are always moments when the reality of death kicks in. In Ben Jonson’s poem it starts with a regular iambic pentameter it then says ‘seven yeeres thou wert lent to me, an i thee pay, exacted by the fate, on the just day. O, could I lose all the father, now. For why…..’. ‘Seven years’ Jonson moves away from the iambic beats to emphasize the shortness of his son’s life only seven years. He rationalizes the death of his son as a debt he is paying back to fate, his son was ‘lent’ to him, fate is supposedly ‘just’. He implies that fate is fair but the sudden pause in the lines ‘now. For why…..’ opens up a silence in the poem, like a silent moment where he is questioning fate or the words themselves, or he is lost for words. ‘here doth lye/ Ben Jonson his best piece of poetries’ Here again the iambic pentameter is disrupted to emphasize the name and death of his son ‘Ben Jonson’. Ben Jonson is saying that his best piece of poetry was his son not his actual writing ironically. The last line in the poem says ‘As what he loves may never like too much’ here he is trying to say that you should never like what you love too much as you might lose them, this is a very sad ending to the poem given the resignation to fate that is implied at the start of the poem ‘Exacted by thy fate’.

In Dylan Thomas’ poem he uses iambic pentameter throughout the poem but again there are disruptions. The big disruption is ‘rage, rage’ repeated throughout the poem in order to massively emphasize the poets feeling towards death. Dylan Thomas talks about ‘wise men’, ‘good men’, ‘wild men’ and ‘grave men’. This then builds up to him talking about his father, ‘And you, my father, there on the sad height, cure, bless, me now with your fierce tears, i pray’. In this quote he says ‘curse, bless’ here he is trying to say that his father was like a god and that he could curse and bless. The last two lines in Dylan Thomas’ poem are ‘Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, Rage against the dying of the light.’ These two lines were separated throughout the whole poem but at the end these two lines are joined together. These two lines are straight after him talking about his father so he probably didn’t have anything else to say so he is talking about his rage against death.

In Hamlets soliloquy ‘To be, or not to be’,  iambic pentameter is also used but throughout the soliloquy there are pauses in the middle of the lines. ‘And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep’, That flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation’, Must give us pause. There’s the respect’, With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear’. Here there are pauses in the middle of the sentences. Each of these pauses is a sudden silence in the middle of the verse where Hamlet is contemplating what happens after death.

I will now explore the different uses of rhyme in these texts.In Dylan Thomas’ and Ben Jonson’s poems they both use very simple rhyming words of 1 syllable. Joy and boy go together as Jonson is talking about the joy he had with his ‘boy’ his young son. The next rhyme is pay and day here he could be talking about the day his son died was ‘pay day’. The last rhyme is rage and age. Here he could slyly be talking about the rage at what age his son died at. Rage also links into Dylan Thomas’ poem as he links rage with ‘old age’ all through the poem. In Thomas’ poem night and light are contrasted throughout the poem expressing life and death and the suddenness of life and death as one moment you can be alive the next you can be dead. There is a constant ‘a,a,b’ rhyme scheme, and that the ‘b’ rhymes such as they. bay, way, gay and pray are weak almost suggesting that however much you pray you can’t escape death. At the end of the poem the chorus compresses night and light together suggesting that his life is over.

There is no rhyme in Hamlets soliloquy ‘To be or not to be’ but there are repetitions and contrasts of life and death. At the start it says ‘To be, or not to be’ which is similar to night and light as Hamlet is talking about whether or not he should kill himself or not. He is like a teenager having anxiety or what the point of life is.

I will now look at metaphors in these texts.As i wrote about before Ben Jonson sees life being lent to him and something he needs to pay back like a loan from a bank. He also sees death as ‘soft peace’ which links into Hamlets soliloquy as Hamlet sees death as the ‘sleep of death’ but he doesn’t see it as sleep in the end. In Hamlets soliloquy he says ‘death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bare those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of’. Hamlet is confused and is not sure what death actually is. Hamlet and Ben Jonson both don’t see life as a good thing. Hamlet talks about the ‘whips and scorns of time’ this means that he sees living as a punishment and Ben Jonson talks about how his son scap’d worlds, and flashes rage, and, if no other miseries, yet age’. Hamlet is contemplating suicide while Ben Jonson is a bit older and more mature so can handle death a bit better than Hamlet, but then goes on to say ‘As what he loves may never like too much’ here he is trying to say that instead of thinking of killing himself like Hamlet he is talking about never loving the ones he likes too much again. In my opinion Ben Jonson is off worse from the death of his son compare to Hamlet and his father’s death as he is saying he will never love again. He is also quite brave in saying this as he has other family members.

In Dylan Thomas’ poem he talks about wise men and how their ‘words had forked no lightning’. This metaphor shows that even wise men die in the end and that there words will not be powerful unlike lightning. This links with Ben Jonson as he says ‘Ben Jonson his best piece of poetrie’. Here he is saying that even his words and poetry aren’t as good as his son.He also rhymes ‘lye’ and ‘poetrie’ emphasizing that words are lies, so he is saying that his pieces of poetry were lies compare to his son who is lying now as he is dead.

In Hamlet similarly ‘Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of thought’. Here he is talking about thought in his soliloquy, this thought stops Hamlet killing himself and getting revenge for his dad. Although all three authors have written sad poems and soliloquies mourning the death of their family members ultimately words can’t bring them back.