Scenario

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a study in human nature with many themes: including revenge v. indecision, chaos v. order, and sanity v. insanity. These themes recur in many works of literature and the story of Hamlet has been retold and updated many times over the years. One of the most recent is The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski which parallels the Hamlet story. Watch this video, CSI Denmark from TeacherTube for an example of a modern spin on Hamlet. There is a thirty-second commercial at the beginning. [Added to TeacherTube by Sjrmurph, Dec 2009]

When writing analysis of works of literature, critics use one of several approaches to examine individual works. Applying one of the literary criticism approaches to research on a theme allows a critic to compile a focused study of the work.

Task and Product

After reading Shakespeare's play, Hamlet and studying the various literary approaches to criticism, you will research and write a paper on one of these themes using the psychological approach.

• Revenge v. Indecision
• Chaos v. Order
• Insanity v. Sanity
• Oedipus complex
• Other teacher approved theme

As part of this process, you will:

• Take notes using index cards
  • Franklin High School Guide
  • Hunter College guide with examples of each type of card
• Develop a thesis statement
• Create an outline of your paper
• Write a rough draft
• Cite Your sources properly using your bibliography cards
  • MLA format document
  • BibMe an online source which will create your work cited page from entries you make using your bibliography index cards. It does require registration, but you do not need to access your email to use it.
• Revise and write your final draft
• Don't forget to avoid plagiarism!
  • Avoiding Plagiarism Tutorial - from McGraw-Hill
  • How to Avoid Plagiarism - University of MD University College

Assessments

Your work and product and process will be assessed using these scoring tools:

• Research Process (student self assessment)
• Research Process (teacher assessment)
• Assessments as indicated by your teacher

Question

Essential Question:

Subsidiary questions

• How does the desire for revenge drive Hamlet's behavior?
• How does the orderly political structure of the kingdom disintegrate into chaos?
• Is Hamlet truly insane or just pretending?
• How do the behaviors of the characters contribute to the decline into chaos?

Compose some questions of your own using the psychological approach and one of the themes. Check out these questions by theme to help start your thinking process - (Shmoop)

Gather and Sort

Gather information about from a variety of sources.

Sort your research findings using note cards. Be sure to avoid plagiarism and keep track of your resources for a bibliography.

Organize

Guide to the Research Process

Analyze your notes. Can you refine your focus? Have you collected enough notes to answer the questions you developed earlier and sufficiently cover your analysis of the theme you chose? Is there an area where you need more? Can you discard some notes which don't relate to your focus? Do you see relationships between notes from different sources?

Organize your notes. Place cards on the same general topic or category together. Based on your notes begin to compose your thesis. Check out the IPL Writing Help for more ways to organize your research.

Evaluate the effectiveness of your research for the task.

• Check your notes once again to make sure you have gathered enough to sufficiently cover the questions you generated and analyze the theme you chose?
• Have you recorded all of your sources?

Synthesize your findings by

• Suggestions for Synthesizing your research
• Composing a thesis statement
• Prepare your outline
• Create your rough draft. Don't forget to cite your sources as you write.
• Proof-read and revise your rough draft
• Write your final draft and proof-read one more time. Don't forget to include your Works Cited page!

Conclusion

Reflection and/or Extension Activities:

Your teacher will provide direction on the due-date, formatting and scoring of your research paper.

As an extension, your teacher might suggest one of these projects:

• Create an alternate ending to the play amd/or create a FlipCam video.
• Create a Glogster poster depicting the main points from your paper - include images, sounds, and/or video.