In Shakespeare and the studied poet’s writings, they use multiple language devices to demonstrate how a character changes over time due to different forces they have no control over. The forces are mainly death-related as in Hamlet the characters are confronted with many scenes of death, an important one being King Hamlets death. In Ben Johnson’s poem he is writing about the death of his son which has had a massive effect on him. Lastly, in Dylan Thomas’ ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ he is referring to his father that is in the late stages of his life, however Thomas urges him to continue fighting and not give up on life.
The poems all refer to a death which has been a turning point to which a character has become different. Shakespeare’s character ‘Hamlet’ is an example of this as the death of his father has a drastic effect on the young prince which gives him a different personality that others consider to be the same traits as a ‘mad man’.Ben Johnson also shows signs of being a ‘mad person’ as he refers to death as something that man should envy as it escapes the world’s “fleshes rage” and he went from a loving father to a broken man. However if this were true he would have committed suicide (which he would have had no problem doing so as he was not religious) as he would leave the world’s ‘fleshes rage’ where he suffers from depression due to the loss of his son and instead be resting peacefully. This could show that Johnson was in denial as although he says his son is in a better place, he himself is afraid to be in that state too and may deny that his son is not truly dead, but living peacefully in an unearthly place. This could show that Johnson is confused about the way he feels about life as he claims death to be better but chooses not to die. This could show signs of a ‘mad person’ full of confusion which Hamlet and Ben Johnson portray. Ben Johnson goes to such lengths to show his love for the son he has lost but he himself could also reflect Hamlet in the way they acts. Hamlet is portrayed as a person that was once ordinary but turns ‘mad’ due to the loss of someone close.
Explain how each author shows a response to forces beyond their characters’ control.
In Shakespeare’s famous ‘Hamlet’ the first characters we are introduced to are guards that are speaking about the death of King Hamlet. This death is very important to the play as this is one of the reasons why Hamlet has a change of character that we see throughout the whole play. Prince Hamlet reacts to the death of his father by becoming a very anti-social character that behaves in a way that the others don’t understand. This makes Hamlet seem like a mad man but in fact he is instead full of anger. I know this as the way he reacts to the marriage of his uncle Claudius and his mother, in a very negative way. Hamlet is shown to be a fragile character in the way he reacts to other deaths in the play. For example, when he accidentally stabs Polonius, his word’s were “A bloody deed? Almost as bad, good mother. As kill a king and marry with his mother”. This shows that Hamlet was not very touched by Polonius’ death but is still more occupied with the death of the his father.
In Ben Johnson’s poem we are able to see through his poem how he feels about the loss of his son. He says ‘farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy’. He is referring to his son as if he were going on a trip by the use of ‘farewell’. He refers to his son as his best piece of poetry which is significant as poetry is what Ben Johnson focus’ his life on but he still bids his son a farewell. This shows how Johnson is hurt by the death of his son, but he saw it as the best thing and as fate.
In Dylan Thomas’ poem ‘Do not go into that gentle night’ the poem is written in the voice of the poet as he is directly speaking to someone. The poem shows no evidence that death has occurred but I am able to see that it might. Thomas seems as if he does not want someone to die which means he could fear death. There is evidence of this as the poem is written in the form of a villanelle. This means the poem repeats a stanza throughout the poem to show a sign of ‘obession’. I interpret this as Dylan Thomas’ being obsessed with persuading the person he is talking to, to ‘not go into that gentle night’.
The effect of death having an impact on the way someone behaves is also reflected onto the actual writer of the play Hamlet. Shakespeare’s famous play which stars the famous character ‘Hamlet’ was created as a remembrance of his son that he named the character after. Shakespeare’s son Hamlet died from a disease as a young boy which brought a lot of grief to the play writer’s life.In Ben Johnson’s “On My First Sonne” there is a lot of language devices that show that someone is grieving and in pain. The poem is dedicated to his son that passed away at the age of 7 and broke Ben Johnson’s heart. There is evidence of this through the poem as he says things such as “O, could I loose all father, now. ” which shows that the event has hurt him so bad that he wishes to no longer have the feeling of being a father as it is too much to bear due to the loss of his son. However he is also contradicting his own words which could show the state of confusion due to the unfortunate death. The lines “Will man lament the state he should envie? To have so soon scap’d worlds, and fleshes rage,” shows that his son is lucky to be ‘free’ from the living world as it brings pain and rage. This stanza also shows that he thinks of death as peaceful and a good state which man should envy, therefore he should not be grieving over the loss of his son who is in a much more peaceful state. In Shakespeare’s writing death is shown as something that can happen at any moment, especially when we least expect it. An example of this is when Hamlet stabs the tapestry to accidentally kill Polonius. This refers to the question as in the play death occurs randomly and effects people. An example of this is when Hamlets father dies causing him to become more secluded from others and is branded a ‘mad man’
Identify how these responses are reinforced by each author through the use of metaphor
The poets use multiple language devices to emphasize their pain. In ‘On My First Sonne’ Ben Johnson uses metaphors when talking about the world’s misery by describing it as ‘the fleshes rage’. Ben Johnson could be implying that every creature with flesh has to face a rage from the misery of the world. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the famous soliloquy ‘to be or not to be’ (Page 66, Act 3 Scene 1, 56-90) Shakespeare uses the sentence “For who would bear the whips and scorns of time”. This tells us that as time passes, some misfortunes are too bad to forget and remain as a scar which still brings grief and pain. This is an example of how people respond to forces around them in which they cannot control such as death because the main source of the pain is time. The authors believe that the more amount of time they spend living after they have lost someone, the more of the pain they’d get.
In Dylan Thomas’ ‘Do not go into that good night’ he uses different language devices to show how someone should fight against a ‘good night’ which hints death is close and they should not give in. This is an example of how different people react that to. Dylan Thomas also writes ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’ which shows that whoever he is talking to, he does not want them to die as suggested by the metaphor of life which is described as the light that is dying out. This suggests that Dylan Thomas is afraid of death and has a different feeling about it compared to Ben Johnson that believes the dead are in a better place.
How the authors use metre to represent the inevitability of fate
The studied poets use a very powerful language device that is not mentioned but is still there if you look for it carefully enough. The use of an iambic pentameter is effective when you understand the context of the writing and how the iambic metre supports it. The poems which I have mentioned contain the element of death which are the main cause of distress in the poems. The iambic pentameter has a ten syllable rhythmic style of writing that could reflect the beat of a heartbeat. The use of a heartbeat in a poem such as Dylan Thomas’ is effective as the poem is talking about about someone that is urging another one not to go into the dying light. The use of the iambic pentameter shows the heart beat of a person that is being urged to not go into the dying light (to do). The poem also uses different sudden ‘breaks’ such as “Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” The part “rage, rage” is a caesura used in the stanza. The use of the caesura could show that throughout the whole poem the narrator urges someone else to fight, this could be the way Dylan Thomas represents that through the sudden break in a stanza.
The poem is very descriptive and the reader would most likely assume the poem is based on a war, however after extensive research I found out that Dylan Thomas had never enrolled for the army, however he lived in England and Wales during the time of the Blitz by the German Luftwaffe (German Air force). The poem does not have a name as Dylan Thomas never titled it. Instead, people refer to the poem by the first stanza of the poem “Do not go gentle into that goodnight. To who Dylan Thomas is referring to in the poem is unknown and the real setting is also unknown but from research, people speculate it could be about his father that died just before Christmas 1952. However this has been ruled out as untrue as he wrote the poem in 1947 when his family was in Florence, Italy.
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