Silver Screen Insanity

So since I had to find some other artistic depiction of insanity I decided to do to the silver screen to see if Hollywood had any say on the subject of insanity and low and behold I found something. Granted I have seen this movie before and thought it would come in handy but it shows the struggles that young teens deal with when their parents think they are not well. Also the friendships and relationships that are formed and destroyed in the movie can give an echo to what teens go through all the time when they are faced with the betrayal of someone they care about.

Girl, Interrupted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIZoUvDrHw0

Bringing it all Together

The time has come to look back on all three novels and see what brings them together in this little blog. How they all use inanity for one reason or another so lets take a look for a quick recap of what has already happened.


Hamlet
The use of your own insanity to get what you want from other people is what we see in this play. The lies told soon are reveled but the damage is already done and the lives that are affected by it are the ones who truly suffer the consequences. The insanity that started off as only a ploy to get the truth turns into a serious problem for all those involved.

Lord of the Flies
The lack of the social structure that the boys are so used to is the reason for their eventually decent into madness. While it is not the madness that can be seen in the other works it is more of a group trying to coup with the situation that they are left in by resorting to the basic imprint that is in all human beings and it is this instinct that keeps us going, either kill or be killed.

Heart of Darkness
This is a more drawn out view of insanity and it shows how the mind goes from the state of being perfectly ok to raving mad. Being faced with certain horrors the only solution could be to become the thing that you are fighting, whether it is a savage native or the cold hearted trader we do what we must to survive.


One of the links that I see tying these novels together would have to be the use of insanity to come to terms to the world around you. It seems that all these characters did was try to solve a problem they are faced with by bringing their minds to such a level that their opponent wouldn’t know how to handle them.

Selling Down the River

The last of the works that I read for this project was Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, this book might not really deal with the insanity as people normally see it, more along the lines as how civilized people view other cultures and the way they live their lives as different, sometimes that view can lead to dangerous actions. The story of the dark and treacherous sail up the Congo River and how these five men face the obstacles that both the natives and Africa have to offer can be seen as a heroic effort, but of course that isn’t how the story leads itself to be told.
Paying close attention to the narrator of the story Marlow and how he changes going through the Congo, and the mysterious man named Kurtz who for most of the book is a faceless titan that Marlow becomes obsessed with. Kurtz is really just a man who lives in one of the villages along the river but the stories that are told about him are both incredible and horrific, certain things one must do to survive in the jungle can be seen as beastly to those on the other side. Also the relationship between the men and the natives is stressed, while Marlow and his crew are faced with blatant hostility from the Africans, Kurtz is seem as a friend and family member and when he leaves the group he is met with cries of sorrow and wails of anger.
Once they leave the village the true madness sets over Kurtz, the things he saw while in the jungle and the things he himself did cause him to loss what he had left of his mind and to them pass away. His last words spoken can only add to the mystery as to what he saw and did on that river, “The horror. The horror.” The journey through the river is where the story really lies, why continue if all signs are pointing for you to leave, to turn your boat around and not go any further, for what lies at the end of the river, that is where the true madness lies.

Mass Hysteria

The next book on the list doesn’t come out and say that they are dealing with the issue of insanity is Lord of the Flies by William Golding. This book instead looks into the world where there are no more adults and a group of children are allowed to roam free on an island. As the book continues, issues of trust and power struggles lead to the original group being split into two groups. Slowly the one group devours the other and the boy’s loss a sense of order and become nothing more than animals. So maybe they don’t actually go insane but they adopt a way of life that would be considered beastly back on the mainland, and really isn’t that what insanity can really be defined as.
It is easy to track the deterioration of the idea of civilization and how the animal inside comes out. By following certain recurring symbols it is easy to see how the old world disappears and the new one is left behind. Such things as how the conch which in the beginning is used as a device to bring order losses its importance to the point where is shattered when one of the characters is murdered. Also the way the hunters start to act more animalistic, by walking on all fours and then using things like masks to disguise themselves from their prey. All signs point to a big climax that is going to happen when those who still believe in order and discipline are faced with those who don’t.
So it is interesting to see how it doesn’t always have to be someone to be talking in tongues to signal a crazy person, sometimes all it takes is a group of people to loss some sense of ruling and that can cause people to act in a way that would not be considered the norm for them.

Act 3 Scene 1

There is no way I could do a post on Hamlet and not post a link to the famous soliloquy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JD6gOrARk4

The Method to Hamlet's Madness

Tracking madness as a motif isn’t necessarily a difficult thing to do in most books; you just need to know the right ones to use. The first on my list will be Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Quite possibly could be considered one of the best known tragedies the play write produced in his lifetime. The way this certain play uses madness is deceiving at first, once the reader begins they are not certain if Hamlet is playing the role of the insane prince or if in fact he does lose his mind once the ghost of his father pushes him to far.
Firstly the thing to consider is that Hamlet in the beginning is very lucid in his ideas and speech even when he is visited by the supposed ghost of his father his response in reasonable. Then when does this cool collected person go once he finds out his uncle is responsible for the death of his father. The visit by the ghost of king hamlet can be confusing to the reader, not knowing whether to believe that a ghost of a father who is trying to communicate with his son or just the projection of a very unstable young man trying to coup with the loss of a father and the apparent betrayal of a mother.
Hamlet is not the only one who deals with the apparent loss of sanity, but due to Hamlet’s ravings another innocent is lost, Ophelia. After dealing with the abuse brought onto her by her supposed crazed love Ophelia herself loses the battle against insanity and her story ends in the most tragic of ways, she ends up taking her own life to escape the pain. This incident then causes a chain of events that leads to the death of most of the characters and the taking over of the kingdom by an invading king. So it is easy to make the leap of faith that due to Hamlet either being crazy or pretending to be crazy he ruins the lives of those that he held most dear to him, that is what the price of insanity was for Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

Abondon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Please don’t let the title scare you away, come close and hear the tale, a tale as old as time. Everyone knows that there is a fine line between genius and insanity and that most of the population from time to time treads the line to a point where it becomes dangerous. What makes a crazy person behave in such a way and how does their behavior affect the people around them. I am sure that most readings of this blog have said things along the lines of “wow that teacher is crazy, how can you assign all this work, we are seniors”, or “Oh don’t mind my uncle, he is just a little crazy”. Sure when said in that text the idea of someone being crazy doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but when you get to the realness of the problem, when you are able to look a clinically insane person in the eyes and see……nothing, that is what this blog is going to look for. The kind of insanity that causes someone to commit murder, or to set a house on fire or not even think that the world they are in is even real.

In this realm of the blogging world the topic of discussion in insanity, with this word in my mind I will read two novels and one play and see how insanity plays a role in the works of literature. While I closely read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Lord of the Flies by William Golding and Hamlet by William Shakespeare I will take into account how insanity affects the characters and the story as a whole.

Once that initial task is complete I will take a stab at being a creative person and try to incorporate insanity as a theme in a creative work. Whether I write a story, take a picture of paint s masterpiece I will try to delve into the psyche of the insane and hopefully come out in one piece.