Can someone grade my paper please

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<p>I don't think I deserved the grade I got for this paper over any controversial theme within "Hamlet." I felt that I deserved higher. What would you give it? What could I do better next time? Thanks in advance!</p>

<p>"Hamlet versus Hamlet: An Analysis of Hamlet’s Inner Battle" </p>

<p>Throughout the context of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” Shakespeare injects various literary devices to prove certain points and themes. One of the most divisive is the way in which Hamlet handles his dilemmas—thought or passion, logic or intuition. In setting himself up, Hamlet is his own worst enemy for the fact that he thinks too much with his head rather than his heart, which is an important Renaissance theme. Hamlet needs to find the intermediate balance of both. </p>

<p>One of the most overt methods in which Shakespeare highlights Hamlet’s inability to make decisions and to execute actions is through Shakespeare’s vulpine use of Fortinbras as a character foil. Like Hamlet, Fortinbras faces the same responsibilities: Fortinbras’ is “the son of a dear father murdered,” Fortinbras is soon to be king, and Fortinbras seeks revenge (II.ii.561). The exception to being Hamlet’s duplicate, however, is Fortinbras’ willingness to make a haste decision and follow through with what he plans; Fortinbras is “colleaguèd with the dream of advantage” (I.ii.21) as embodied by Hamlet’s later description of Fortinbras as a prince of “whose spirit with divine ambition […] To all that fortune, death and danger dare […] to be great” (IV.iv.48-52). Hamlet wages too much on mindful thought, and constructs his particular faults by not implementing passion of the heart into his political routines, or also his own personal life for that matter. Hamlet realizes this through his own capitulation of himself being “a man […] chief good and market of his time" (IV.iv.32-33). Hamlet does not realize that every action, no matter the duration of thought behind the action, has a consequence, evidenced when Hamlet critically thinks and assumes that Fortinbras’ outcome of “the imminent death of twenty thousand men,/That for a fantasy and trick of fame” from the siege attack against the Polacks is too poorly conceived (IV.iv.60-61). Having political obligations, Hamlet’s growth as a leader is stunted by his lack of rapid action. Hamlet’s over-analysis makes him an unstable leader. By utilizing Fortinbras as a foil of Hamlet, Shakespeare is able to showcase Hamlet’s true self. </p>

<p>Another instance in which Hamlet utilizes his head rather than his heart is through his unaffectionate relationship with Ophelia. This can be mostly seen from Shakespeare’s violent, yet influential usage of dialogue between a love-denying Hamlet and Ophelia. In the beginning of Act III, Ophelia confesses a deeper love towards Hamlet that she could not declare before when stating to him of “[having] remembrances of yours/That I have longèd long to redeliver” (III.i.95-96). Ophelia is not meek in expressing her once suppressed feelings anymore. In response to Ophelia’s heartfelt words, Hamlet irrationally shoots off diatribes that degrade an only-loving Ophelia: “Get thee to a nunnery” (III.i.123). Essentially, Hamlet starts to break the relationship. In a callous manner, Hamlet goes on to say “farewell” and if “thou wilt needs marry” that Ophelia should “marry a fool” (III.i.138-139). Hamlet is logically giving Ophelia a choice—be hurt or do not marry because marriage destroys and women are deceitful. He goes on to crudely suggest to Ophelia that “my head upon your lap” and “a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs” (III.ii,104-108). Misogynistic in manner now, lunar Hamlet yells of not only Ophelia, but women in general of “your paintings too, well enough” to abase what he once loved, what he can not have loved (III.i.143). In almost every madness that Hamlet utters, Ophelia can only return a polite “my lord.” Hamlet cares so much for Ophelia that he recognizes that he thinks that he can not love and be in a relationship with her; he can not appreciate her. It is from not being able to love Ophelia that he sacrifices his trying to find true love from another person. Hamlet neglects his heart; he neglects himself. He makes his own matters worse for himself. The brain, and the rest of the body for that matter, can not live without the blood and passion of the heart. Hamlet can not be the real person he wants to be, so in turn manifests this id that controls him to become crazy, not himself, but rather a subconscious enemy of himself. In using dialogue, Shakespeare has the capability of letting the audience become involved in the play and its players. Dialogue also lets the audience experience the downfall of certain players. </p>

<p>Similar to Shakespeare’s other literary devices, Shakespeare implements soliloquy in order to show Hamlet’s usage of his head rather than his heart. Instead of reckless action originating from passion of revenge, Hamlet systematically deduces that “[Claudius] is a-praying./And now I’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven” (III.iii.74-75). If Hamlet kills Claudius now, in time of grievance and forgiveness, Claudius will be absolved from his sins, and go to heaven. And if Claudius is killed in time when “[Claudius] is fit and seasoned for his passage,” Claudius is in a better status than Hamlet’s unpardoned father; Claudius is rewarded for his murderous deed, while Hamlet’s father is damned for his innocence (III.iii.87). This is the antithesis of Hamlet’s whole mission statement of his avowed revenge towards Claudius that he promised his father in Act I, which, again, was to “revenge his [father’s] foul and most unnatural murder” (I.v.25). As an alternative of acting upon this yearning to seek vengeance, Hamlet reverts back to a conscientious mood of notions “that would be scanned” (III.iii.176). Hamlet warily decides to wait for the perfect time to murder the King, apparent when Hamlet declares: “Swords, and know thou a more horrid hent” (III.iii.89). Hamlet thinks too much about actions that he ultimately will perform. Hamlet’s inner self does not realize that prayed Claudius or not-prayed Claudius is still the “villain [that] kills [his] father” (III.iii.77). Hamlet hurts himself by not seeing this distinction and by not acting upon it. By utilizing Hamlet’s soliloquy, Shakespeare is able to showcase to the audience the psychological and logical process of Hamlet’s thinking.</p>

<p>All in all, it is evident that it is from Hamlet’s arduous thinking that Hamlet sets himself up for failure. Hamlet does not see the short-term, which in turn causes him to sacrifice the long-term. Hamlet is constantly at war with the balance of his head’s input and his heart’s input. He is too one-sided, though, in picking his head’s input. He feels as if he can only select this feeling of stagnation than this feeling of emotions. Hamlet needs to discover the intermediate balance between acting on passion and acting on reason in order to stop being both the enemy and victim of his own actions.</p>

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<p>I think this is a really good essay. Maybe your thesis could outline the structure of your paper. Such as, Shakespeare uses characterization (or foil, or even parallelism), dialogue, and soliloquy to illustrate this internal conflict. But things like that are secondary in contrast to the points you make and how you back them up. I thought you made your points, and used evidence to back them up. What more is there to say?</p>

<p>Oh, I forgot your grade. Probably an A, but I can see if you got a B.</p>

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<p>At best, a B+. At worst, a C-.</p>

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<p>It doesn't matter if this is for high school or college, I think it deserves an A, at worst a B</p>

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<p>glucose, what were the requirements/expectations?
we can give you feedback as to how we thought it was as a "literary analysis," but I don't really think we can give you a decent "regrade" without some expectations and preferably a grading rubric! Otherwise... any "grade" we gave would be entirely arbitrary.</p>

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<p>hmm... here are some things I noticed while going through it...
-There are a few interesting sentence structure and word choices that may not be ideal (I am being very nit-picky here, but since you got a lower grade than you'd expected, these could be part of your professor's reasoning)
-What citation format were you using? It looks like it was supposed to be MLA, but if it was, then you did many of your citations incorrectly (this is cause for at least a reduction of a letter grade or more in some cases at the collegiate level -- especially in an English course)</p>

<p>Overall, though, it seems to be a strong, albeit very short, paper. This is why I believe we really need a rubric to be able to give a decent grade, because more than likely the problems were with meeting the expectations your professor set forth for you to complete.</p>

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<p>I acutally don't have the rubric because this paper was done in like winter of last year. It was pretty much your classical rubric though, nothing fancy. The guidelines in the very beginning were all that we were given, which is why I thought it was ambiguous. How were my MLA parenthetical citations incorrect? She told us to do what I did. I need to know the "right way" then. I got a B-, but I don't think I deserved such a low grade. I mean, I've made lower grades before, but I don't think I deserved a low grade here.</p>

<p>Thanks again, people!</p>

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<p>In highschool, i would probably give this a B+. For college, i would probably have given this between a B- and C-, especially because i am assuming this is an english class.
I think you need to work with your sentence structure and usage quite a bit. You need to learn to not make direct statements like "this is that" "He...this" "one thing he...is this" "often he does this".
You must change sentence structure to make it so that you do not allow terse sentences like the above. It is important that you be concise without destroying a flow of elegance. Your statements should be indirectly stated, but should also be obviously interpreted as what you are sugesting by even the least educated reader (but still keep to big words...the vocab was great in your essay.)</p>

<p>Overall i think you just need more flow, and less terse, direct statements.</p>

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<p>I'm going insane because I feel like there isn't anything I could've done better. Maybe because I wrote it, I feel like there is flow and direction to the paper.</p>

<p>What makes an "A" paper then that I don't possess?</p>

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<p>glucose, have you read it aloud?
that will often show you very quickly where the problems are -- or, better yet, have a friend read it to you.</p>

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<p>Ok. This is a decent attempt. You certainly have some good ideas and good textural support: it's clear that you've though about the text a lot. However, I can definitely see why you got that grade—it's probably what I would have given you. I won't claim to be an expert, but I do have some experience as a writing tutor, and I get good grades in lit classes. So anyway, here are the two main problems and what I suggest you try to do in the future:</p>

<ol>
<li> Thesis. I put this in word and double spaced it. It's a four page paper—WAY to short for such a broad thesis. You have too many ideas going on at once, and this is the root of your problem.</li>
</ol>

<p>Look at the last sentence of your three body paragraphs: 1. "By utilizing Fortinbras as a foil of Hamlet, Shakespeare is able to showcase Hamlet’s true self." 2. " In using dialogue, Shakespeare has the capability of letting the audience become involved in the play and its players. Dialogue also lets the audience experience the downfall of certain players." 3. "By utilizing Hamlet’s soliloquy, Shakespeare is able to showcase to the audience the psychological and logical process of Hamlet’s thinking."</p>

<p>Each of those could be the thesis for a single four page (at the least!) paper. This is a common problem, but a really deadly one. By trying to fit so much into so little space leads to all kinds of problems. You don't do any single idea justice, instead, you try to fit each of these ideas into one body paragraph apiece, leading to huge, unwieldy paragraphs that are hard to follow and don't lead one to the next. </p>

<p>Also, it winds up being unclear what the focus of this paper is — is it Shakespeare's use of certain technical devices to showcase themes, or is it the theme of Hamlet-as-at-war-with-himself? It comes off like you're doing both at once, but those are actually two very different papers.</p>

<p>Here's my advice: focus, focus, focus! Figure out what your broad point is, and then find a VERY specific way to talk about it in your paper. For example, this semester I wrote a paper on "Rabbit Run." The prompt was (basically) "why does Updike use a selfish narrator?" My argument was that he wanted to show the problem with Rabbit's self absorption (and by extension the kind of self absorption shown in books like "On the Road."). But there were way too many points to fit into one five page paper, so instead I focused on Rabbit's relationship with one character, showed how his self absorption evolved over the novel and eventually destroyed their relationship, and then extrapolated that out to the rest of the novel in my intro and conclusion. That's the kind of focus I mean. You can have a broad point, but your thesis needs to be smaller, especially in short papers.</p>

<ol>
<li> Phrasing. A smaller thing, but still important. As people said, some of your phrasing is awkward, to the point that it was distracting and made it hard to stay focused on your ideas. Even the first sentence: "Throughout the context of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” Shakespeare injects various literary devices to prove certain points and themes." What does that even mean? I don't think the word context there is what you want. Some other examples:</li>
</ol>

<p>"Hamlet is his own worst enemy for the fact that…"—For the fact? That's not quite right…</p>

<p>" One of the most overt methods in which Shakespeare highlights Hamlet’s inability to make decisions and to execute actions is through Shakespeare’s vulpine use of Fortinbras as a character foil "—You want "with which," not "in which." You don't want to use Shakespeare twice in the sentence, it sounds awkward. And although the word vulpine technically works in this sentence, I think it detracts from the meaning--no reason to use a more obscure word when a more common one will do, especially because, IMO, vulpine doesn't even capture precisely what you're getting at here. </p>

<p>" Like Hamlet, Fortinbras faces the same responsibilities." Repetitive. How about, "Fortinbras faces similar responsibilities as Hamlet, or something like that? </p>

<p>Etc, etc. I could imagine a teacher taking your grade down a notch (B to B- or whatever) just for the wording problems. In the future, be sure to read the paper over…if possible, finish a day ahead of time so you can come back to it the next day with fresh eyes. If that's not possible, try to let it sit for at LEAST an hour before coming back and reading it out loud.</p>

<p>Anyway, that's my advice. Sorry it's so long (I like to talk about paper-writing!), hopefully it's helpful. I f you have any questions feel free to ask here or PM me.</p>

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<p>anymore advice to get an A on an English paper</p>

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<p>it was assigned....lol</p>