Mandell, Zachary

Mrs. Davis
English 10 H Red
May 23, 2016
1. Not surprisingly, I found William Shakespeares The Tragedy of Hamlet, The Prince of
Denmark dark and a little depressing. Shakespeare filled his work with death and madness to
express his strong purpose. As the audience, I respected Shakespeares genius, although at times
I found it difficult to understand. In reading the play, I often needed to go over passages a second
time or read through the footnotes for clarity on words not used in modern times. The title
character stood out as an especially great part of the play for what he made the audience
question. Hamlets complex plans and conflicted feelings surrounded him with ambiguity. The
point when Hamlet actually loses his sanity remains unclear as his revenge takes control in his
plot to fake madness.
2. Multiple themes appealed to me in researching my paper. Justice and revenge, sanity and
madness, and death all stood out to me as connected key themes to the play. The play, in focusing
on revenge, made me question if Hamlets actions involved justice. When Hamlet allows his
emotions to take control, he transitions from seeking just punishment of a criminal to an
obsessive need for revenge. As Hamlets emotions blind him and he becomes indecisive, he loses
his sanity. His madness then drives others around him to death. In the end, with all he loves gone,
Hamlet realizes that his actions caused his tragic situation. The concept of justice remains
relevant in modern society in that the guilty deserve to receive unbiased punishment. Unlike
Hamlet, anyone involved in the process of upholding the law must prevent emotion from
corrupting the mind.
3. I believe that this year taught me a great deal about writing more purposeful and powerful
papers. I learned to incorporate literary devices to better my analyses and removing being verbs

provides a more clear message. I gained a better grip on the use of the semicolon and other
advanced writing techniques, such as the colon and the dash. The entire process gradually
became faster, easier, and more effective for me. Certain areas of my writing, however, still
require improvement. I find plot summary difficult to avoid and being verbs remain arduous to
replace with stronger action verbs. I sometimes fall into simple and repetitive word structure and
use far too many prepositional phrases as well. I find the introduction and conclusion the most
labor-intensive and demanding part of writing a paper.
4. Even from the first step of developing a thesis with significance, one needs to understand that
good writing takes time. Each thesis that I wrote this year required revision at least three times. I
learned that following certain techniques improves each step and encourages thoughtful
reflection, rather than just putting words on a paper. Reluctantly, I reviewed the chart for creating
a thesis and eventually got mine approved. For me, the most difficult portions of the brainstorm
and outline remain the topic sentences and analyses. When writing these, I always needed to
remind myself to incorporate Shakespeares purpose and avoid plot summary. For introductions
and conclusions, I needed to slow down and remember to stay broad, not ambiguous. I utilized
the funnels to start broad and become concise in introduction and reverse the process in the
conclusion. The formats and instructions become paramount in writing each individual piece of
the paper and the paper as a whole.