So I have a lot of theories swimming around in my head, and
I’m just going to voice them here. My friend, Ken, helped me see that while
Henry is genuine and is actually trying to do the right thing, he does make
some mistakes. Before Ken, talked to me I was just convinced that Henry was a
good person emphasizing genuine feelings in different ways. However, a lot of
other people have mentioned Henry’s less than noble actions at times, and I
found myself struggling with this because I still believed him to be a good
person.
Then I was talking with Paul and he mentioned how the
English Symposium talked a lot about heroes and villains, and Paul thought that
most of Shakespeare’s characters don’t really fit the hero/villain archetype.
That made me think more about the hero/villain idea in context of Henry V and
what I was already thinking about him, and I think I finally found the “so
what?” factor of my paper:
Henry is a good
person that makes a lot of mistakes, but the mistakes that he makes do not
define him as a villain, and there is a danger in only seeing his character as
purely good or purely evil. If we put him into these cookie cutter categories,
we lose the complexity of his character and miss crucial things about him.
So . . . what do you think?
I was having a conversation in my American Lit. class about looking at specific characters through "cookie cuter" lenses, and we basically said the same thing: You need to analyze characters/people, in this case it was Anne Bradstreet, through many different lenses. For her it was through the perception of her as being devout to her religion, the perception of her as a feminist, and then the hybrid of her as both. For Henry, you could look at him as being sincere, insincere, and then maybe a mixture of both. Humans are a lot more complexe than we like to think sometimes.
ReplyDeleteI guess what I'm saying is that I really like your "so what" :)
Thanks, Bailey!! I really appreciate the support! You given me some more things to think about!
DeleteI agree that if you you were put him into a mold, it would defeat his complexity. I mean I guess f you want to argue he is more one than the other than that is still doable. What I love about Henry is that he is a very human character---he has flaws. And not little ones, either.
ReplyDeleteI agree it all matters in what lens you're looking through. In the eyes of England: awesome. In the eyes of Bardolph: tyrant. In the eyes of France: Enemy. In the eyes of Falstaff(despite their falling out): friend.
Thanks for the backup, Kara! It's good to have some feedback! Is there anything that I can help you with?
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