On a cold winter’s night, the changing of the guard takes place in the Danish palace. Following the switch of Bernardo and Francisco, we are introduced to Marcellus who is accompanied by Horatio, a slept if scholar. Prior to this moment Bernardo and Marcellus gossiped over how they have both seen something strange, in a form of a ghost, the ghost of whom they believe is the late King of Denmark , old Hamlet. On the third night they called upon Horatio to look into these ghost sightings, however, he denied the existence of ghost, all of a sudden the ghost appeared and the two guards pushed the scholar to confront it but he refused. The ghost then disappeared.

After the event Marcellus expresses his concerns about Danish forces and their sudden mobilizations only to be answered with that they are preparing for a possible attack by the Prince of Norway. Horatio then went onto explaining the background of the possible threat; how Old Hamlet killed the King of Norway and after his son has learnt of his passing he believes that the Danish are weakened by forces and morale. The group have been interrupted again by the ghost of Old Hamlet only this time Horatio confronts it. The ghost either cannot or refuses to speak and when Bernardo and Marcellus attempt to detain it they might as well strike the thin air itself. The group remained silent as it appears the ghost was about to say something but it was startled and vanished after the sound of a rooster was heard. Concerned about recent events, Horatio wished to confront Prince Hamlet about the recent events and the others agree.

I wake to the rays of warmth cracking through the open shutters illuminating my face. I explored the emptiness of my home as everyone else went to enjoy the serenity that the island offers. During the day I take a stroll down a silent path surrounded by endless woodland, through the trees the scent of fresh buttery goodness seeps through attracting people to buy the freshly made bread. I continue along the path with my mind entirely focused on the cast plain of aquatic tranquility the rest of my family make our way as soon as they’re ready hoping to get a good spot where we could get colored underneath the light of the world. It’s always a hustle and bustle as the entire coastline, even on the other side of the island gets filled with people very quickly. My uncle and I would take the boat and make out way across the sea to another nearby island, the beauty of the day , is that the sun is glistens off the water and giving everyone a perfect view of the aqua colored seafloor. I immerse myself in magical atmosphere and lose myself. Laughter scatters indicating everyone having fun, throwing balls around and jumping in the water.  A prolonged sigh of sensation is produced as the water refreshes me due to it being a perfect temperature. This place is a realm of tranquility where all stress and depression is relieved and you just let yourself go. All of these people are immersed in their own things, not interacting with other groups or families. That is one of this place’s cultures; a perfect environment to relax and forget any problems. When lunchtime comes I am always excited. Everyone does sort of the same thing which is throwing a family barbecue. the fresh scent of homemade barbecue contaminates the air of the town attracting all to a feast of the ages.  The fresh caught fish are cooked to a point when you can smell the nicely done crisp layer down to the soft meat center. The fire burning bullied my face with the heat and I heard the crackling of the wood and paper. We would then sit around the table and start picking out the fish we wanted to eat, passed around any extras and then dug in. Never did I eat a meal when the food is so freshly cooked and tastes perfectly crispy on the outside and soft and warm on the inside. The meal had been devoured and sat around having enjoyed dining like gods. Most people just stay at home and some people would go back down to the beach, although, the sun would not be as scorching as it was in the middle of the day. A day like this is rewarded with a time to sit and meditate on my thoughts as I rested on a rock on beach and witness the sky burn a fiery orange as the sun fades over the aquatic horizon also having leaving a trailed reflection on the water’s face. A true sight to behold.

The sky transforms as the fiery orange fades to a deep blue to match the sea. Lights burn in the sky clearly visible and illuminates the night sky. My family and I would head down into town and before we even get to the end of the street we would hear music, laughter and a lot of fun coming from the marina. Crowds gather along the water’s edge to enjoy the endless festivities every night, comrades reunite and new ones are formed as they rejoice over freshly caught and cooked sea food and beers. We go further into town where we would go to our favorite local restaurant. We always order either fried calamari with chips or the four cheese pizza which are both incredible. The smell and taste of the food is always fresh and never leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Music fill the streets only to be drowned out by the laughter and sing alongs to local bands or karaoke. As you sit there you notice everything around you. Everyone is communicating with everyone, as for the younglings, we immerse ourselves in the warm feeling of night swimming and show our enthusiasm in the form of competitiveness over a fair game of pool or street football. Sometimes the bar gets packed when there is a game on and they always tense. At this time there are parties all along the coast and if you are quiet you can hear the never-ending party going on the other side of the island. We bid farewell to the night by retreating to our home where we say goodnight to our neighbours and lay, sleep and wait for the next day as we get to enjoy it all over again. The point I am trying to make is that there is a second culture to the island, a culture that you have to experience yourself to understand the feeling. It is a time where I’d rather be nowhere else. Everyone is connected with a random person and has fun with each other. The night becomes a whole party that no one ever forgets and this is why the night is different from the day, it is because everyone comes together rather than just pass by each other without a second glance. It is places like this where my greatest memories are carved on my own road and I would stop to see them again any day.

Hawk Roosting is a poem written by Ted Hughs and what makes this poem unique is that there are multiple views on what the poem is trying to express. Some people think that it is just a description of the lifestyle of a hawk. Other people believe that the poem is using the hawk as one big metaphorical concept to describe polities and governments who have complete power over everything and believe that their ways are the only right and all there actions are justified and none can oppose them.

I for one see this poem as a way to help us gain insight of the extreme mindset of a human driven by insanity to the point of tyranny, egotistical, aggressive, psychopathic and a complete evil mindset. I want to begin that the character sees itself as a God as it sees itself as creation and everyone fears him and if he does not see something he permits then he takes action, this is shown when the character says ‘now i hold creation in my foot/the earth face turned upwards for my inspection/my eye has permitted no change I am going to keep things like this’. References to the character seeing himself as God-like goes throughout the entire poem. The character goes on to say ‘I kill where I please/my manners are tearing off heads’ this indicates that the character is merciless, fearful and psychotic and all of this seems to be obsessive to him when he says ‘the one path of my flight is direct’ and ‘through the bones of the living’.

Imagery is used extensively throughout the poem as the entire setting (‘high trees/air’s buoyancy and sun’s rays’) and the hawk’s actions are described in great detail, if you have this poem read to you with your eyes closed you can picture everything. In addition, the result of the imagery means you also get the feeling of fear throughout the body as you gain an understanding of a person’s true capabilities. The idea of comparing the frightening mindset of a person to a hawk is a good use of personification as a hawk, a creature of nature, is an apex predator and will go to any extremes to survive.

Out of the Blue is a dramatic extract by Steven Armitage, it is from the perspective of a victim of 9/11 in the the Tower as the events unravel. The effect this poem represented, combined with my own knowledge of the tragic event, leaves me with the feeling of pit of depression. The feeling knowing that the event was so sudden that no one was prepared or had any idea what to do along with the knowledge of hundreds of innocent lives lost. The way this person describes the experience helps make you feel the devastations such as the ‘the heat behind me is bullying, driving’ and you get an understanding of the fear the person had being trapped between the ‘bullying’ heat and the several thousand foot drop which he describe the depth as ‘appalling, appalling’. the amount of repetition presented is used to emphasise the situation to project the amount of fear and emotion coming from the person.

When the poem comes to the iconic ‘white cotton shirt is twirling, turning, in fact i am waving, waving/does anyone else see a soul worth saving’ you get the concept that the person was waving for help in way that is similar to the person surrendering to the chaos. However, no one was capable of reaching anyone so they began to loss hope and wonder if they could be saved. This is what drove the person to the events of the 5th stanza ‘A bird goes by, the depth is appalling that others like me should be wind-milling, wheeling, spiralling, falling, are your eyes believing, believing that here in the gill i am still breathing’. As many people know that a majority of people in the tower chose to take their own lives than have them taken from them, the person is one of them. The person described a person already falling as like a bird, he then goes on to describing his flailing actions and it finishes with the person asking if the whole world eyes are open to see the people losing their lives one way or another. The whole poem is the description of a nightmare and sets a setting that no one wants to imagine or inhabit for that day was truly one of the world’s darkest days.

A normal day for me would be getting up, go to work, have dinner and go home. It was not one of those days. It starts with an e-mail talking about a promotion that I am perfect for comes through, it is then followed by saying the promotion was given to a co worker I can consider as a nemesis. From that point everything went downhill, work at my boring job, eat dinner alone for the first time and come home miserably to an empty home because the rest of the family went to go live with the grandparents for 2 weeks. However, all was not lost as I received a message from a friend asking me to meet with him and the guys at a new bar. I meet the guys at the bar and we have. Blast as it really liven up my worst day. I went to the bar to grab a drink and asked the bartender what he would recommend. Without saying a word he pours me a drink when he then says ‘behold my friend, the drink of life’ with a smile across my face a downed the so called ‘drink of life’. Next thing I knew I started chocking but nothing that a few taps on the back won’t handle. The conversation is as follows

‘The drink of life does have a bit of a kick’ remarked the bartender

i responded with ‘your drink of life had a dead bug at the bottom’

the vartender apologized saying he will get me another drink on the house. After everything that happened today I wouldn’t be surprised if a wrecking ball came through the wall right now.

During the time ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ was set there was a lot of speculation about class and what position each person stood in society. Harper Lee shows this situation in chapter 23 when Scout and Jem ask if Walter Cunningham could come and live with them. They said they would like to invite him into their home at which point Aunt Alexandra replied ‘the fact that he is not kin to us, but if he were, my answer would be the same’ this implies that she would say no because he is not actually family and even if he was treated like family she would still say no. Jem confronts her about this by saying it is ok to accept people in your life like family at which Aunt Alexandra stating ‘Jean Louise will not invite Walter Cunningham to this house. If he were her double first cousin once removed he would still not be received in this house unless he comes to see Atticus on business’.

The reason for why Aunt Alexandra says this is because she sees Walter as ‘trash’, a lower class member, as well as the rest of the Cunninghams. After this scene it is clear that the Finchs are positioned as a high class family mainly because of Atticus being a well-known lawyer throughout Maycomb. In this time, it was unethical for two different class members to interact in such a way (in this case inviting them to dinner) let alone consider them as family.

It is easy to see that the theme for this chapter is about class and where some people in Maycomb stand in society.

Where Aunt Alexandra calls Walter Cunningham ‘because-he-is-thrash’. She is referring to how Walter is a lower class citizen compared to them. To get a better understanding of this concept, Aunt Alexandra said ‘you can scrub Walter Cunningham till he shines, you can put him in a shoes and a new suit but he’ll never be like Jem’. Where she says ‘scrub’ she means even if you clean up Walter to the point where he ‘shines’ (have him act like a higher class person) he would never truly be part of their class because of his family.

Harper Lee uses the technique of allusion in her text to make historical references. What some people don’t realize is that she wrote the novel during the 1950/60s during the civil rights movement. She was born in the south where during the time there was a lot of racial trension. Harper Lee wrote this novel alluding to her current events by setting the story in the South and there is a lot of racial tension l, especially the Maycomb county where the community is split into black and white and very few people are on both sides. She probably made reference to how the conditions by including the conditions of a situation in the novel like the trial aftermath. Some people are trying to be equal but are overcome by everyone else who preferred not to, at least there are some ‘baby-steps’.

After Tom Robinson’s trail, there have been many reactions by both the white and black community and Harper Lee portrays key characters reactions in different ways. Miss Sephanie for example, the town’s biggest gossip girl, was ‘quivered with curiosity’. This means she was shaking with curiosity and she had a lot of thing she wanted to say and when she does speak she does not finish her sentences. Miss Rachel was shown not to care for how Atticus is feeling by saying ‘if a man like Atticus Finch wants to butt he head against a stone wall it’s his head’. Miss Maudie in a way was calm because as Harper Lee stated ‘as far as she was concerned, nothing had changed’. What she means buy this is that it has become normal for trails like this to turn out the way it did, as the black person being convicted.

Harper Lee has also shown the reactions of Jem and Dill. She wanted to show how Atticus was feeling by describing that Jem and Dill were concerned for Atticus because they are not use to him being like this, like a broken man. In addition, Atticus wonders that he probably shouldn’t have let the kids listen to the trial. However, not everything was so bad as many people of the black community wanted to thank the Finchs for standing by them by sending them food.

In the novel ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, Harper Lee refers some people to the mockingbird (indirectly). Earlier on in the book Atticus stated ‘kill all the blue jays you want but remember it is a sin to kill a mockingbird’ which was then followed by Miss Maudie saying ‘mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy’. This implies that people who are mockingbirds are people who did nothing wrong and everyone should respect them. We also discussed in class that referring to someone as a mockingbird is similar to testing his/her innocence for wether or not they should be respected. A particular character that stands out to me is Atticus. before the Tom Robinson case Atticus was highly respected, everyone in Maycomb knew him and he had a good reputation. It was later when everyone found out about Atticus’ kindness and fairness towards black people and it was when he chose to defend Tom Robinson that people began to question his innocense. Atticus did not do anything wrong he was doing what is was meant to do by being fair and show that he does not care what other people think but cares about changing people’s mind and opinions about black people. This is similar to a mockingbird being born to sing its heart out. However, people still challenge Atticus’ innocence as they believe is is favouring black people other white people but they do not have the knowledge that Atticus’ is also doing this to teach Jem and Scout a lesson about equality and standing for what you believe is right.