I have greatly enjoyed this class this semester. It has been one of the few things this semester that has not about driven me bonkers from stress, drama (not the good kind), and too much responsibility. I am going to try and keep this blog from getting too personal but please forgive me if I don't completely succeed because it is hard to talk about Shakespeare and his affects on the human soul without breaking the lock on your own. As one of the official note-takers, sometimes I do not have the time to absorb what is being said as I am trying to keep up with the next thought that someone is expressing. Yesterday, however, Sexson mentioned a few things that have resounded with the me since I left the classroom, as well as more than one of the wonderful presentations that I have been lucky enough to watch.
The first thing/idea that I want to address is that no one just gets their happy ending; they have to earn it. And that the fairy tale ending doesn't exist. I think this is so true. Just to give a little background, I have been in a off-and-on relationship for over 4 years and this is one of the things that has caused me to struggle this past semester. I have started to come to the realization that it isn't going to work no matter what we do because we haven't earned the right to our happy ending together and both of us probably won't earn this right for many years as we are only 21. Then yesterday it hit home that maybe I have found my happy ending, it just isn't the "fairy tale" happy ending that I thought I wanted. It is the hero's ending where I have let a part of myself die and then became reborn. The part of me that died is the part that refused to believe their is more than one way to end something happily. I think that this one of the things that WS wants to make everyone realize. Sometimes he does allow their to be a somewhat typical "fairy tale ending" but there is always some twist to it. No matter what we do life is not as perfect as the Disney fairy tales and by allowing ourselves to always strive for that ending, we stop ourselves from getting the true happy ending that we do deserve. Now I don't know if I deserve my happy ending yet, if I have earned it but I do know that I am closer to having it and to having the real one, not the one that only exists in fairy tales.
The next idea that was brought up yesterday (and will be on the Final Exam) was "The worst returns to laughter". I can't express how true I believe this to be. A recent example of this was my past weekend. It felt like everything that could go wrong did and I was to the point by Saturday evening that all I could do was laugh because otherwise I would have just cried. I am sure we have all had times where we have felt like that and as horrible as it feels as soon as the hysterical laughter starts to escape things seem to be better. Nothing has changed except our reaction to whatever is going on and it all depends on our reaction. Shakespeare shows us this through his characters. We can all look at something someone does and be like "What the heck?" and think a different reaction would make everything alright. But he does this on purpose! WS meant to manipulate us so it is like a mirror of our own lives, just as Fletcher said! This relates back to fairy tale endings. We can choose to react however we like but these reactions and actions will either bring closer to ending our happy ending or takes us farther away from it. There are so many examples of Shakespeare's characters who chose to go away from their happy ending because they reacted without thinking or because they didn't just laugh to make their story a comedy instead of a tragedy.
Here is a link to Joseph Campbell's A Hero with A Thousand Faces where I was able to get even more inspired in my realization that Disney fairy tales aren't reality. And that I am a hero with a 1000 faces, I just haven't figured out which face I want to wear so the world can see.
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_campbell_hero.html
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