I turned Hamlet into an M.C. Escher painting.
Basically the task I set for myself while reading this was to figure out who the heck it is that I'm supposed to be rooting for (joke's on me and it's probably going to turn out that everyone's terrible and anyone who I actually like will die anyway, as per Shakespeare). My current consensus is thus: The king and duke are assholes, the slave kid started out pretty cool but then turned out to be a creepy rapey weirdo, the daughter and the prince are the arbitrary hormonal teenagers that decide they're in love because they are opposite gender and happened to make eye-contact, Ariel is just a perfect wonderful innocent little spirit who can do no wrong, and the wizard guy doesn't seem too bad, except I feel like his grudge about being out-duked is going to go bad places AND HE'D BETTER KEEP HIS PROMISE TO FREE ARIEL OR I SWEAR TO GOD. What I'm saying is, screw the mortals, Ariel is my protagonist.
There's no doubt a lot of details that I missed, since I don't understand half the things these people say and the stuff on the left pages IS NOT VERY HELPFUL. Seriously though, half the time there's a phrase I don't understand and the book refuses to help me, half the time it decides to help me with something that I'm honestly insulted it thought I couldn't figure out on my own ("incharitable: i.e. uncharitable" Really? REALLY!?), and some of the time it actually aids me in figuring out the story. (I may have rounded these values.) Basically all I picked up from the whole first scene was that the ship was sinking, and in retrospect I guess the prince guy was on it? So if anyone picked up on any details that would probably affect my character opinions, please tell me I feel so helpless.
haha. I'm on the same boat with you with the whole Shakespeare language (pun/boat like in the story). Anyways I would say you are on to something. I read ahead a little and I feel that Ariel isn't so innocent. I mean there is one line in particular that makes me think he would do anything for his freedom. Ill stop the spoilers but I think there is always a choice, and Ariel chooses to follow these terrible orders and mess with the lives of the people stranded on the island. And dont get me started with the other characters. I feel like everyone is falling apart and reverting to their prime instincts and desires. You have lust, with the two teenagers, pride, greed (for wanting to be king). I think that every character is battling some kind of internal daemons.
ReplyDeleteI share your opinion of most of the characters; they're not very likable. But I don't think the goal here is for us to like any of the characters. Actually I have a hard time thinking of any Shakespeare characters that I've liked. Though admittedly, I haven't thoroughly read much of his work.
ReplyDeleteI'm getting bad vibes from most of these people. They all seem to have some kind of plan or some hidden (or not so hidden) hatred that will result in disaster for someone else. Without knowing what happens next, I can only guess that a lot of people are going to meet an unfortunate end of some kind. And since almost all of the characters are unlikable, I don't really have a problem with that.