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Close reading and analysis
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Model
Analyze Hamlet's garden metaphor in terms of microcosm I macrocosm. Your comments should be "text rooted" and sensitive to literary techniques, syntax, and diction.
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How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't, ah fie! "Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely.
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1.2.137
41
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Hamlet compares the world to a garden in line 139. A garden is a plot of earth that needs tending and constant care, but this garden has been neglected. It is "unweeded" (139), suggesting that the gardener is either absent or unable to complete his duties. Due to his neglect or incapacity, "things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely" (140-141). The adjectives "rank" and "gross" connote both vivid, dramatic size and decadent, offensive corruption. This world to Hamlet is spectacular but tacky, ponderous yet shallow, attractive but deadly. This is Hamlet's assessment of the whole world, but this garden is also a metaphor for Denmark, whose dead gardener-king- brave, beloved, and revered- has been replaced with "stale" rhetoric, "flat" promises, and the tacky pomp of Claudius's court. Ironically, the gardencould also be a metaphor of Hamlet himself, without a father to tend his soul, threatened daily with being engulfed by the rank grossness of Claudius's decadent court.
- Note how the paragraph is text rooted. The analysis is based on the connotations and metaphorical values of the words on the page.
- Note how the paragraph answers the prompt. The analysis focuses on how Hamlet's words can be read in terms of microcosm (Hamlet himself) and macrocosm (Denmark, the world).
- Note how the paragraph concludes with a discussion of irony. The clincher of the argument is always expressed in the language of literary criticism.
Assignment
Analyze the murder of Hamlet's father in terms of microcosm I macrocosm. Your comments should be "text rooted" and sensitive to literary techniques, syntax, and diction.
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But, soft! methinks I scent the morning air; 1.5.65
Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard,
My custom always of the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of my ears did pour 70
The leperous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man
That swift as quicksilver it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body,
And with a sudden vigour doth posset 75
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine;
And a most instant tetter bark'd about,
Most lazar-like*, with vile and loathsome crust,
All my smooth body. 80
Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand**
Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd:
Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
No reckoning made, but sent to my account 85
With all my imperfections on my head:
O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!
If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not;
Let not the royal bed** of Denmark be
A couch for luxury and damned incest. 90
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* Allusion: a reference to literature, art, mythology, or scriptures (Luke 16.19-31)
** Synecdoche: figure of speech in which a part represents the whole
Helpful hints
- Synecdoches are parts (microcosms) of wholes (macrocosms). Focus on a synecdoche and analyze what it represents.
- Synecdoche is a focusing technique. The speaker wants to zoom in on the connotations and metaphorical values of a specific image.
- While synecdoches narrow focus, allusions widen them. An allusion invites the reader to connect something universal (macrcosm) to a particular situation (microcosm). Analyzing that connection will reveal wide avenues of interpretive possibility.
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Slide show on synecdoche:
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