Preparing to Write Your Essay

There will be study sessions after school Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday this week. If you are struggling with this assignment at all, please find time to attend. I can address overall structural issues, quote flow, thesis construction and defense, or anything else that students tend to struggle with.

For your next class, please be sure you have completed the following:

Finished reading Hamlet
Read "Hamlet: A Modern Perspective" by Michael Neill (307-326)
Decided on a prompt or focus issue you will address in your essay
Have ready to use three quotes from the text that directly relate to the essay you will write

The essay attempts to clarify meaning and examine how it is generated.
The text itself is where meaning begins.
Thus, your essay must use the text extensively to make the particular point your essay focuses on. That is, you must close read and quote a whole bunch. Your thesis should arise from the text; your point should be supported by the text; your essay should document through paraphrase and many quotations that the text suggests what you claim it does.

You are going to need a thesis.

Hamlet (present tense verb) ____________ by/through _______________.

Consider:

Shakespeare used Saxo's story of Hamlet's pretended madness and delayed revenge to explore the brutal facts about survival in an authoritarian state. 

This is Neill's thesis for the section of his essay dealing with surveillance.

Paraphrased to fit the format I offer above:

Hamlet explores the tragic consequences of spying through Hamlet's inability to navigate the web of surveillance that dominates Claudius's regime.

This is the sort of statement you should be looking to define as you respond to any of the prompts you pursue an issue of personal interest.

A final offering on an issue we have discussed little:

Hamlet uses humorous, clever wordplay in an attempt to deal with the overwhelming emotions he feels.