Monday, January 14, 2013

Revenge

Anyone and everyone, at one point in their lives, has had thoughts or even carried out plans of revenge. Don't deny it, you have too. Revenge is everywhere, even if it only exists in your head. When i hear revenge, I think payback, or karma or anything along the lines of getting back at someone for something they have done to you. As far as I believe, it's just human nature to have that feeling of wanting to get back at someone who has upset you or caused problems for you in your life. So even if you'd like to say that you've never wanted revenge on someone, I'm sure that you have at least seen it occur from an outside point of view either in books, T.V shows, or watching others carry out their revenge. One example that is very popular especially most teenage girls is the television show Pretty Little Liars, and another is the famous playwright of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

http://www.hollywood.com/news/Pretty_Little_Liars_Puzzle_Hunt_Get_Your_Next_Clue_Here/28583923

In Pretty Little Liars, five high school girls were all best friends until one night one of them, Alison, went missing and and was later found dead. For the next few years, the other four girls continue to seek the killer and find new things and details about the murder every day. They discover a team of people who were against Alison, and do the best that they can to get more information and plan a revenge on making their lives miserable and stressful. Someone, or multiple people, that go by "A" have constantly been antagonizing the girls and everyone else in the town, and trying to place the blame of the murder on other people. The girls want nothing more than to get revenge on this person/people and will do whatever they can to try and achieve that, even if it means making sacrifices and losing friendships or relationships in their lives. However, before Alison's death, she constantly took advantage of others, manipulated people, and bullied anyone who she thought had a lower social status than she did. The "A Team" is still trying to get revenge on Alison, but doing it by torturing her friends and putting them in dangerous and mysterious situations. This T.V show has a  twisted plot line, with a ton of revenge included and displayed throughout the episodes as the series goes on. In multiple of the episodes, Alison's ghost makes appearances in her friends lives at random times and tries to communicate and tell them things such as to hints or clues of information that could be useful.

Creepy, but still interestingly, Pretty Little Liars isn't the only media that has a ghost return and make interactions with the characters. In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the ghost of Hamlet's father appears, and reveals that it was Hamlet's own uncle, Claudius, who has killed him and he must seek revenge.Claudius, soon after his brother's death, marries Hamlet's mother and makes Hamlet go mad with his planning of revenge. During his struggles to get back at his uncle, he accidentally kills the father of Laertes, Polonius, causing more problems to come his way. Now not only King Claudius wants to also get revenge on Hamlet, but Laertes does also. This play is filled with revenge around every corner of every page, and that is what helps us readers to find the reading to be enjoyable and exciting, because revenge creates an interesting story, making it easier for people like me to actually get into the story and feel more involved and curious to what is going to happen next.
                 
http://www.examiner.com/article/shakespeare-fest-presents-hamlet-st-louis
http://publicvigil.blogspot.com/2010/10/hidden-catholic-meaning-of-hamlet.html

4 comments:

  1. I also wrote my revenge essay on Pretty Little Liars and I had completely forgotten about the girls thinking they have seen Alison's ghost. That was a good connection to Hamlet and there are many other connections in this show to Hamlet. I used the fact that mona went crazy over revenge just like Hamlet did. There are a lot of other revenge scenes in this show but both of us choose one of the best scenes to connect to Hamlet.

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  2. I love love love pretty little liars! By the way did you just watch it, my mind is blown! Anyway that is the perfect way to represent revenge! But otherwise you're blog was really good and kept me intrigued.

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  3. I love the show Pretty Little Liars! Although it is being drug out for a long time without figuring who A is, it is a very interesting, and suspenseful show. There is a lot of revenge that takes place in this show, you are definitely right about that. We have not read Hamlet in class, but one of your other classmates mentioned that and it sounds like there is revenge involved. We read Macbeth last year and there was also revenge in that play.

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  4. Revenge is hard for some people because sometimes it's your friends who do something to you. You want to get back at them but you don't want it to be too bad because they are your friends. The episode of Pretty Little Liars sounds pretty interesting because you don't usually see ghosts in those kinds in those kinds of shows. I think I would like to read Hamlet.

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