Absurd theories and interpretations on books

[Matthew]

Petergiaquinta wrote: "You aren't really equating "Queen Elizabeth was a man" and "aliens built the pyramids" with 400 years of Shakespeare scholarship, are you? Really?

Throughout this discussion, it almost feels like ..."

Uh no, they are just fun and ridiculous theories that some people take very seriously. I find that amusing and frustrating all at once, hence why I bring it up. It's a guilty pleasure, like a bad movie or a cheesy TV show.

And I'm certainly not trying to reduce Hamlet to a simple interpretation or make it one-dimensional Peter. I am taking issue with the belief that Hamlet is an exercise in Oepidal desires, which is not the product of "400 years of scholarship", it's the product of one man's interpretation - a man who was in the habit of imposing his views on things - being accepted without question.

As I said before, A.C. Bradley's interpretation of Hamlet as a tragic figure because of inaction is a similar case of one man's views being accepted as canon. He says Hamlet's central fault is his inability to commit and act, when in fact, the play is filled with him acting too hastily and enduring tragic consequences as a result.

As for the nuances of Shakespeare, you are using that argument for all its worth, aren't you? If you think about it, I'm the one arguing for people to read the play and appreciate for what's actually there, rather than trusting in what one person said and accepting it as fact. That would seem to be the more appreciative stance, as opposed to pushing interpretations on it and assuming it was what the author intended.

And to answer your question, no I don't dismiss Bloom's argument at all. What I do know for a fact though is that Shakespeare was in the habit of having his characters play to their accepted roles - be they women in his plays, Shylock the Jew, or Caliban the Slave - but was in the habit of restoring dignity and complexity to them through their dialogue and actions. This way he was at once able to write what was expecting of him, but also explore human character and question the standards of his day. He did not, however, force his views on his characters and make them a mouthpiece for his beliefs. So really, it just seems like your making another longshot argument, claiming Shakespeare's reputation exonerates your theory.

Also, Shakespeare being in the habit of giving complexity to his female characters does not automatically apply in Gertrude's case. Not only did Gertrude remarry, a decision that was taken out of her hands by her brother-in-law taking the throne, she very quickly forgot her ex-husband and began consorting with him, and tells Hamlet to simply let go of his father as she has. This is not an act of craftiness or strength, it's dependency. She could have been married to Claudius but remained in mourning. The only reason she so quickly jumps from one man to the next is her apparent lack of independence. And she even admits to that when Hamlet is pushing it on her. She says that Hamlet's accusations are forcing her to examine her weakness and the immorality of her choices.

So from all indications, she is a weak character, the kind who allows herself to be dominated by strong men. That was also Ophelia's failing, she was dominated by her father, older brother, and Hamlet. And when they were all gone, away, or apparently insane, she loses her mind and commits suicide. And when you think about it, wasn't that Polonius' failing too? He did only what he was told by Claudius, and it led to his death. And he even speaks of the dangers of being too imposing and controlling to one's children when addressing Ophelia's shock at Hamlet's behavior.

So if there is a nuanced interpretation to be made here, it would be that - that trusting in authority and not using your own judgement is potentially fatal. You see how that works? Reading and appreciating the play leads to seeing the real depth in it, not accepting fringe theories as valid and interpreting the evidence to fit it, or using the author's reputation for complexity to make it seem plausible.

[Matthew]

Petergiaquinta wrote: "There's nothing simple about anything Hamlet says or does in the play, and he's already fallen into a miserable funk regarding his mother's hasty marriage to his uncle long before news of the ghost..."

Of course Hamlet voices his objections to his mother remarrying and treating his uncle with the same love she showed his father. As has been said over and over, he thought it weak and false of her to forget his dad so quickly and shows the same affection to his uncle. The speediness of her transition, coupled with the fact that they are technically family, has made him bitter.

But it was only after his father's ghost came to him and told him Claudius murdered him that he became so enraged by it. It's then that he accuses her of "sleeping with the enemy". What began as frailty and incest changes to become a mortal sin and hellish behavior. To simply say his angst and objections predate the murder plot hardly shows that his feelings are unhealthy or irrational.

Call that being "consumed" or "fixated" - I really don't care what the term is - but that's all based on your personal feeling that this is somehow wrong. You do not share Hamlet's values, and saying Shakespeare didn't based on how he treated his female characters is another big long shot.

[Matthew]

Geoffrey wrote: "Hamlet is simply angered by Gertrude´s betrayal of his father´s memory in marrying his murderer. Certainly there is nothing Oedipal in that.
Certainly if my uncle assessinated my Dad, I would speak..."

I sure as shit would! If my mother remarried to my uncle less than a month after my dad died and was hanging all over him, I would be disgusted and bothered too. But I certainly wouldn't confront her about it unless I too knew that my uncle killed my dad. Then it would be "repent, vile sinner!" to her, and "Asta la vista" to him!

[Gary]

Well, as I noted before, I don't have a problem with the Freudian interpretation of Hamlet. It makes for an interesting reading of the text. However, there's a simple and obvious refutation to the interpretation that can be summed up thusly:

Shakespeare pre-dates Freud.

Therefore, a Freudian interpretation of Hamlet is a post-Shakespearean reading by definition. It's like recasting The Merchant of Venice into Venice, California with the jewish merchants being Korean-Americans and the nobles being African-Americans. (That was an actual staging of that play, BTW.)

Interpreting and re-interpreting Shakespeare is one of those aspects of his work that keeps it alive, so it's not a problem to do that kind of thing, but one should be careful about reading too much into reading things into a text....

[Silverpiper]

I once read a review of Leaves of Grass that said you could plainly tell from the writing that Whitman was a lifelong virgin. ???? What?!!!

[Petergiaquinta]

That's not exactly the word that comes to my mind for our good gray poet who not only sings and celebrates the "manly love of comrades," but also the "Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice."

"Virgin"? I suppose anything is possible, but how you'd tell that from his writing, I dunno...I would think very much the opposite!

[Petergiaquinta]

Matthew wrote: "Call that being 'consumed' or 'fixated' - I really don't care what the term is - but that's all based on your personal feeling that this is somehow wrong."

No, it's not wrong at all; at least I don't have the feeling it's wrong. You maybe, but not me...that's what Hamlet is, and that's what makes Hamlet one of the greatest literary characters in the English language, that fine-tuned mind of his that has fascinated critics and theatre goers over the centuries. But it's also true (as it is of all Shakespeare's tragic figures) that the quality making Hamlet such a brilliant and attractive figure is the very thing that destroys him. And his being fixated/consumed by the thoughts in his head arrests him and does not allow him to move forward when he needs to. Being fixated on his mom is just one of the things he's fixated on. He's fixated on a number of things in the play, and once the ghost enters the story he becomes fixated on other issues as well. If you don't see that Hamlet is fixated, I'm not sure what you see in Hamlet...if you want to ignore the fixation with his mom, fine with me. I'm fixated on the word fixated. There's plenty else in the play that makes Hamlet's mind spin and spin.

It doesn't matter if you buy into his fixation with his mother or not, or what you choose to call it; it's there, and Freud gave it a name 300 years after the fact and that seems to trouble you terribly here in the present. There's so much material to pick and choose from in this play that critics and directors alike can make all sorts of choices for what they want to address or play up and what they want to ignore. But it's facile to insist these things don't exist in the text or Twentieth Century critics are merely making them up.

And how interesting that you dismiss the ideas of A.C. Bradley on one hand, and yet buy into his view that Gertrude is a weak, passive figure...taking issue with Bradley? The nerve of you!

[Ted]

A work like Hamlet will live through the ages because of its depth and verisimilitude. What each person takes from it is up to them. Can there really be a correct interpretation of everything about this play, that, once "found", must then be accepted forever after? Of course not.

And if I or anyone else wants to talk about the insights that we personally take from the play, it's not a matter of "proving" that what we see there is "correct". If someone else doesn't see the same things, hang loose. None of us here on GR are taking final exams in this.

Listen, I don't believe anyone is trying to argue that Shakespeare himself had Freudian theories in mind when he wrote the play, that would be absurd. But that doesn't mean that an aspect of human psychology which Freud proposed does not have enough going for it that it can be used to make valid points about either real people, or fictional people, created by authors who themselves had profound insights into the human psyche and the human condition.

[Cosmic]

I have enjoyed reading this debate on Shakespeare. Both of you have done an excellent job refining your points. I can tell that you both are passionate about Shakespeare. Thank you for being diverse in your interpretation otherwise we would have nothing to ponder... And isn't this what keeps art alive?

Perhaps Freud was inspired by Shakespeare.

I wonder if anyone had an opinion on whether Francis Bacon was Shakespeare? I had a friend that was passionate about this being so.

[BookHeroin]

I laughed while reading some of the comments XD
And yeah i totally agree sometimes those interpretations/theories are plain stupid. I'm an English Literature major in Uni; so you could imagine what my professors have to say about novels and poems for example. It can be just ridiculous, but since i'm just a junior and some of them are 30 years my senior i just keep my mouth shut.

[Gary]

I just remembered this one:

When I was in school I had a conversation with a fellow Eng. Lit. student (a year ahead of me) who was convinced that John Grisham's work was an inspired homage to 19th century epistolary. I'm still trying to work my head around that one.

[Geoffrey]

We have the Oedipal story from Greek mythology so even though we didn´t have Freud´s theory at hand in 15 whatever, it could be a subliminal reworking of that same syndrom. It´s not that male offspring never thought of their mothers in that way throughout history.

But it is a stretch to think that Hamlet subconsciously or consciously wante to bed Gertrude. He is angry that she is such a willing sexual partner to the man who murdered her husband, and if surely we can conjecture a priori that she did, then we can conjecture that the ghost is but the unconscious knowledge of the truth of the murderous deed terminating in conscious thought. And if we can conjecture that, it would make sense that he abjures his mother from having sex with the f..... bastard before he sees his father´s ghost.

[Lara]

Gary wrote: "I just remembered this one:

When I was in school I had a conversation with a fellow Eng. Lit. student (a year ahead of me) who was convinced that John Grisham's work was an inspired homage to 19th..."

OK, wow. I...um...

[Petergiaquinta]

I've been hoping that someone would pick up on that Jean Valjean/Javert post and comment on it. I've given up on Les Mis the two or three times I've tried to read it long before Javert makes an appearance. Does the reader ever get Javert's internal perspective or is everything externalized from Jean Valjean in regard to what the reader learns about Javert? Does Javert interact with other major characters in the storyline?

As absurd as that theory sounds on the surface, I'm curious to hear more about it...it sounds a bit like that idea that the ghost in Hamlet is not real either, merely a manifestation of Hamlet's subconscious/psychosis. And I guess that brings us back to Freud again, lolololo...

[Gary]

Lara wrote: "OK, wow. I...um..."

Yeah.

I actually made a very weird sound when she was explaining her thoughts on it. I think I meant to say, "Grisham? Huh?!" but it turned into "What the fuck?" and came out "Gurrunk?!" So, in the end *I* was the one who sounded like an idiot. (Quite an accomplishment, considering.)

[Gary]

Oooh.... I just stumbled onto a good one:

Have you guys heard that Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper? He didn't just take those pictures of little girls, he got all knifey with a pal of his and decided to rid the world of a few ladies of the night.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

A summary:

http://www.casebook.org/dissertations...

[Matthew]

Gary wrote: "Oooh.... I just stumbled onto a good one:

Have you guys heard that Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper? He didn't just take those pictures of little girls, he got all knifey with a pal of his and d..."

Yep, the man assembles anagrams from the children's books he wrote, and then sees this as a hidden confession or manifesto. And apparently, the movie right have already been sold. God, Hollywood will endorse any crappy conspiracy theory, won't they?

[Petergiaquinta]

Thank you, Mimi. That was quite thorough!

[Geoffrey]

It´s not necessarily an endorsement. Remember, flics are fiction.

[Janet]

✿Lilac✿ wrote: "I pictured Gatsby as blond, too. Not sure if that's how he's described in the book, but does it really matter? This was the 1920s. It's highly unlikely that Gatsby was black.

As for the people wh..."
No. Because itvwas the 20's it is highly possible that he was black.

[Sarah]

Matthew wrote: "Definitely the theory that Nick Carraway of the Great Gatsby is secretly gay. There, the theory has it that the way he escorts Mr. McKee home after the party is an indication that the two had sex. ..."

I have to admit that I've played around with this theory before. I think that there are some things that he says that come off as homoerotic, but I never interpreted it to be a major part of the story since Nick's mainy role is to convey the story. I've always thought that he could possibly be gay, though, but I don't think it adds too much to the story if he is.

[Connor Brown]

Matthew wrote: "Definitely the theory that Nick Carraway of the Great Gatsby is secretly gay. There, the theory has it that the way he escorts Mr. McKee home after the party is an indication that the two had sex."

Not only does he escort him home, he comes to, after and "..." in his underwear talking with McKee in his bed, looking at Mckee's photography together. This may not have have been mean't to say he was gay, though. The author could have just been trying to show the wild nature of the 1920's that Nick was first being exposed to.

[Lobstergirl]

1. That Rhett Butler was black. Apparently there are places in the text where this is insinuated by Margaret Mitchell. But she had to disguise it pretty well because that would not have gone over with the publishers, and she knew she had a bestseller on her hands. I'm not totally convinced.

2. That Emma Woodhouse and Harriet Smith had a thing. (A romantic thing.)

[Matthew]

Connor wrote: "Matthew wrote: "Definitely the theory that Nick Carraway of the Great Gatsby is secretly gay. There, the theory has it that the way he escorts Mr. McKee home after the party is an indication that t..."

Yes, McKee is in his underwear and in bed showing him his portfolio of photographs. Each photograph is symbolic and reconstructs the events of the day and evening. Not sure if mentioned what they were already, but the photos were: “Beauty and the Beast . . . Loneliness . . . Old Grocery Horse . . . Brook’n Bridge. . . . ”

The first alludes to Tom and Myrtle, the second to Jones the cuckold, the third to his grocery store (where he works like a horse) and the last to the broken bridge of Myrtle's nose. The time skips are also something Fitz liked to play with, showing the nature of memory and the effects of intoxication.

The fact that McKee is in bed and in his underwear becomes the focus of a new interpretation based on the idea that is somehow sexual. The time skips are seen as indicative that something must have happened in between. While interesting, it does detracts from this other, richly symbolic description of events. What was a commentary on infidelity, abuse and betrayal becomes entirely focused on the possibility of a secret, homoerotic tryst.

The detraction goes on, because the theory requires additional proof to see the story in the context of Nick being secretly gay. It does this by stressing that Nick's admiration for Gatsby was not the result of common ground between an "honest man" and a man with a ignoble profession but noble pursuit - i.e. love - but the result of attraction that leaves him "unreliable" as a narrator.

This changes the entire focus of the story, where it becomes a tale of hidden desire and not the extensive commentary on the American Dream and the nature of class distinction in America. Fitz knew about this extensively from his own life and this was the book where he expressed his true feeling. This too is changed by the theory to claim that Fitz himself was secretly gay, that he and Hemmingway were lovers, and the Zelda knew and hated him for it.