Skip to main content

Discuss how idealism is portrayed in Shakespeare's Hamlet and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein without including quotations.

Hamlet is an idealistic character, as he believes that people should act in a moral way and is crushed when they don't. He is disappointed that his mother, Gertrude, has married Claudius shortly after her husband, Hamlet's father, dies. In addition, he considers Claudius's murder of his brother (Hamlet's father) to be so amoral as to be sickening. Hamlet also expects constancy and dedication from his former beloved, Ophelia, and is distraught when he finds that she is wavering between allegiance to him and allegiance to her father, Polonius. Hamlet is destined to be upset because he expects constancy and morality and finds only evil motivations and corruption in the real world.


Victor Frankenstein is also idealistic because he believes that science and scientific creations will only lead to perfection and good outcomes. When Victor creates a monster from dead bodies, he expects the being to be perfect. When the being is far from perfect, Victor despairs of his creation. The monster is also idealistic, as he dreams of finding happiness with another beloved creature, but Victor, crushed by the reality of what he has created and the discrepancy between the reality of the monster and his dream, abandons his commitment to the creature and never creates a companion for him. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more