The key question of 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 is quite an interesting question to ask seeing how it allows the reader (Myself) and others to think deeply about not just what the characters says, but also the way in which they say it as well. Whether it is in Iambic pentameter or in the metaphorical sense. The key source materials for this essay include: Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas, A song in a storm by Rudyard Kipling and last but definitely not least On My first Sonne by Ben Jonnson, all the above pieces of writing allow for this question to be looked into at great detail. When I think about forces beyond my control, one that spring into mind is the despised fate that is death. Death is by far one of the most tragic parts of life that anyone can come into and all the sources materials I am going to look at in-depth, whether the look on death is positive like On my first sonne or viewed negatively like in Hamlet.
One literary device that comes up quite often in all the texts is the use of metaphor which can be one of the strongest literary device to look at in-depth. A metaphor in itself shows a lot about how people respond to forces beyond their control because to me a metaphor is like you’re trying to stray from what you are really meaning to say, for example the term its raining cats and dogs really just means that it is raining heavily, therefore saying that its raining cats and dogs, means that you are trying not to say what you have in mind like when many people try to ignore death and never mention it until, the day they tragically die.
An example in Hamlet is the use of the metaphor in the famous to be or not to be soliloquy “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled of this mortal coil” These two lines are full of metaphor that look into how Hamlet reacts to the notion of a loved one dying and the events that come from that circumstance. Firstly Hamlet mentions the human act of sleeping which is a state of unconsciousness, a bit like being dead, but it goes further by saying that for him to die at this point in time where he has just found out that his uncle (King Claudius) killed his father, became king and married his mother, this wouldn’t be such a bad thing at all and to him he has become so enraged into his own madness that he has broken the barrier between a simple act that like sleeping with a fear like death that haunts many people even in today’s society, this quote is a direct contrast to Ben Jonnson poem because instead of mourning his son’s death, he instead sees it as a good thing and he is pleased that his son has escaped the world’s and flesh’s rage which is seen in the quote from the poem “To have sonne scap’d worlds and fleshes rage” this line from Ben Jonnson’s poem pretty much sums up the poem entirely. Dylan Thomas gives an entirely new way of looking into death as he uses the quote “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” first of the use of word gay is used in the traditional sense of being happy which is a positive emotion that somebody could have towards death. It also goes deeper by saying blind eyes could blaze like meteors which means that people who are oblivious to death can live on with their lives until that point in their life when they die and become happy and not live in fear of death. Rudyard Kipling who is another poet that this essay is focused on views death as honour and you should die an honourable death so that your life has a nice ending to it, this is seen in the quote “The abiding oceans fight” which could also represent unity and fighting as a whole to go down in an honourable manner. All these poem seem to say that death is a respectable part of life, if it remembering a loved one like in On my first soone or to go out with honour like in A song in the storm. Then we have Hamlet who is younger than most of the other poet and we see that his attitude isn’t quite matured and that he feels the best way to end his life is to kill himself, which doesn’t seem to be the best way out of this situation, at least to me anyway.
Personification is another interesting way of showing characters responding to forces beyond their control because when you use personification, it is giving an inhumane object human traits or emotions. I think that you could put the same idea that a metaphor represents somebody trying not to say what they really mean, personification in a way is a type of metaphor because it has many similar traits of a metaphor like, overstating things like in the above “its raining cats and dogs” and it also symbolises a person trying to not say what they really mean.
Hamlet uses a lot of different examples of personification but my particular example comes from Act 2, Scene 2 and comes from the character Rosencrantz “None, my lord,but the world’s grown honest” this is a direct contrast to what we believe has just happened because the world grown honest sounds like a positive thing but in fact, in my mind I don’t see how the world grown honest when Hamlet’s uncle killed his brother and married Hamlet’s mother for his own greed, However Rosencrantz at this moment is still in the dark about what has happened and this is an example of dramatic irony because only the audience, Hamlet, Claudius and of course Hamlet’s father knows about Claudius killing him. Dylan Thomas uses a clear-cut use of personification in the form of ” Rage, rage against the dying of the light” This means that you should keep fighting against death and the process of dying, the light represents a person and the dying of light represent a person dying, another example of personification is from Ben Jonnson’s poem in the line ” My Sinne was too much hope of thee” which symbolises Ben Jonnson being way to high in his expectations of his son and how you can never love somebody enough until it’s too late to realise that you had too much planned for his son life that he was expecting too much from him as a person, and therefore full of grief because he didn’t he never loved his “sonne” enough which represents a negative way of dealing with a forces beyond his control being the death of his son but he is having to give into death. Rudyard Kipling who is talking about acceptance of death in his poem uses the line “the abiding oceans fight” this represents a contradictory thought to the idea of acceptance as he is using the word ocean to represent a person and the word fight represents fighting against death. I think the way it is intended to mean is that you should fight against death but not when it is your time to go and there go accept death and die an honourable death instead of fighting for a lost cause.
Metre is yet another interesting way of the characters responding to forces beyond their control, especially the use iambic pentameter which is used in many of the text featured in this essay, Iambic pentameter symbolises the uncontrollable force which is time and to an extent a human heartbeat due to the (Dah dum, dah dum, dah dum, dah dum, dah dum) which sounds like a human heartbeat and the passing of time. The passing of time is a particular fate in which we have no control off, leading onto another fate in which we don’t have control over being death and as time goes on a person comes nearer to being dead.
In Hamlet’s soliloquy the line ” To be or not to be that is the question” is in iambic pentameter which could symbolise many different idea include iambic pentameter representing the passing of time in the play and the beating of a heart representing life and as time goes on your life start fading away as time goes on coupled with the fact he is saying whether on not it would be better to keep on living or kill himself to get out of his sling and arrows of outrageous fortune, As Hamlet is dealing with the loss of his father and his uncle committing what could be seen by many as an act of betrayal as he killed his brother and then married his wife to become king for his selfish acts. Another poet who uses iambic pentameter to represent a character facing forces beyond their control is Ben Johnson in his poem with one notable quote being “Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;” an exception is the line “Seven yeeres thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay” This use of iambic pentameter like Shakespeare is used to conveyor the idea of lifetime and the passing of time in his very short seven years with his son until the day he died, another way top interpret the use of iambic pentameter is a heartbeat with symbolise the father-son bond with their two hearts beating at the same time so when either the father or the son dies great pain is caused to the family figure in this case the father (Ben Jonnson) and in another example of iambic pentameter it’s the opposite where Dylan Thomas lost his father and instead of accepting his father’s death like Ben Jonnson accepts his son’s death, he says to use that you shouldn’t except death and instead fight until the day you can’t any more, one example of where this found is in the line “Do not go into that good night” which means do not go into the night of death or in literal terms the light when your death is upon you. The metre for the last piece of writing by Rudyard Kipling is quite hard to make out but the way I interpret that is the fact that this is written by somebody who had fought in the navy and is saying that you should accept death and take it and own as your own because it is your final curtain speaking figuratively, it feels more like he is speaking right to you then he is writing a poem on a blank page, and because of his background of somebody who has probably nearly faced death a couple of time whether being nearly himself or others around him, it feels genuine even without a clear-cut metre.
Symbolism is the last literary device technique I want to talk about and I found it to be the most helpful when writing this essay because, when Shakespeare and the selected poets use symbolism it always make you think about the play or poem in more detail to the point when even a single word could represent death, like for example the colour red which represent blood and to an extent death due to blood being a universal sign for someone dying because sometimes when somebody dies they bleed red so red could symbolise somebody dying which people have no control over.
One use of symbolism directly from Hamlet in Act 5 Scene 1 centres around the skull of the former kings jester (Yorick) which is revealed in the line “This same skull, sir, was Yorick’s skull, the king’s jester” added to the fact that this piece of information came about when one of the gravediggers threw his skull out of the ground this symbolises how people are sort of disrespectful around the notion of death when it’s not them or somebody near to somebody and how even great men like the referenced Julius Caesar can live a great life and be thrown about without a second thought when the person is dead, this shows that people are sometimes to quick forget when somebody dies because they don’t want to think about something as sad as death. Dylan Thomas takes quite a different approach to the notion of death with the line ” Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight” This represent an idea of how death is something that can come up and attack so easily to the point that people are sometime blind to death that they are practically all-ready dead without fully being aware that it will conquer them one day and they will tragically die, like Shakespeare this represent the idea that people tend to try to overlook death because of how damaging death can be to a person emotionally and physically even if they are not the person who was affected by it the death, in this case being his father. going back to Ben Jonnson quote of “My Sinne was too much hope of thee” this as I previously mentioned was in a way use of personification to represent his “Sinne” being linked to the human act of hope, but it also represents the fact that you can sometimes never love somebody too much until its to late, and you only realise how much you love something until it’s too late intern creating a different outlook at death into a realisation of love as sometimes you take things for granted until its to late to realise and shows more of a positive outlook on death and how Ben Jonnson see death and more of a good thing and a realisation than a tragedy and something to contemplate death over like Hamlet does in his soliloquy. The last piece of symbolism to look at is Rudyard Kipling’s use of “etc.” at the end of the 2nd ,3rd and 4th stanza. The world “etc” is often used to explain how a list keeps on going and allows the writer to not have to keep on writing every single point on the page, for me this represent how death can be a constant stream of upsets and depression even well after the death has occurred and another way of looking at the use of “etc” is as a way of skipping over death as many people know what death is and have experienced it themselves so going over it would be unnecessary and depressive as death is a force in this world which we can’t control which is one the saddest that anyone can come into and by him using “etc” it links with both Hamlet and Dylan Thomas idea on how death is overlooked by many people and choose to overlook death in away to respond to the force in which they have no physical control over.
My very last point to end with is the fact that Hamlet is a tragedy and by direct result is expected to have at least one death even if Hamlet has several different characters dying by the end including Hamlet himself, who you could say did what he wanted throughout the play but with bitter-sweet consequences. this isn’t the most important piece of information to add but it is certainly worth noting as it shows how what people want and what people get end up getting are two very different things.
In conclusion if anything is taken away from my finding it is that death can be viewed in many different ways and people can respond in a mass-array of different emotion and acts like seeing death as a hugely negative force like Hamlet who goes as far as contemplating suicide. Even the way Ben Jonnson views death as a way out of the pain and suffering and acceptance of his son’s death because he went to what he considered to be a better place. As well as the way Dylan Thomas says to cherish life and hang onto it until you can and lastly Rudyard Kipling who says you should accept death because you only have one way and you should end it in a dignified way instead of trying to fight death.
React!