大约五百年前，西方世界正处于封建制度和资本主义制度的交替时期。在文艺复兴人文主义的指导思想下，人们对人的价值观和人文精神的重视和提倡，是因为当时人们对人的价值观的高度重视和提倡。作为一个著名的作家和剧作家，英语论文网站，莎士比亚通过他的写作体现了这一思想，英语论文范文，例如，世界著名悲剧<<哈姆雷特>>。这本书揭示了皇室家族的奢侈现象，以及社会生活的动荡和黑暗的一面。 About five hundred years ago, the western world was undergoing an alternate period of feudal system and capitalist system. During which time people attached great importance to people’s value and promoted personality and human rights because of the guiding ideology of Renaissance—Humanism. As a famous writer and dramatist, Shakespeare reflected this kind of ideology through his work, for example, the world-known tragedy Hamlet. The work revealed extravagant phenomenon of royal family as well as the turbulent and dark side of social life. Particularly, by shaping the image of characters in Hamlet, we can see author’s humanistic ideas. Characters in literature did not need to present their elevated facets because of rigid rank or privilege they were entitled to. Nearly almost the same time, a masterwork appeared in China, Journey to the West. Since Song Dynasty, Cheng Zhu Neo-Confucianism had led the social mainstream values. People’s all kinds of desires were repressed and restrained for a long time due to the guideline of keeping the natural law and abolishing the selfishness. But in Journey to the West, the character Pigsy who had desires for much reflected awakening of human nature regardless of rank rigid and privilege. In this , I am going to pick up two characters who were shaped with humanity respectively from Hamlet and Journey to the West.
Western saying goes, There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Shakespeare was so good at portraying all aspects of personality incisively and vividly. Readers could only see one side or several sides of one feature among his rich and complex characteristics. Broadly speaking, good and evil coexisted in Hamlet. However, such a contradictory selfhood was a successful character for the true reflection of natural humanity. He was a living, breathing human being so even as a preeminent and extraordinary prince, he had personality weakness and fault behavior. In Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s view, “everyone is a whole,itself a world,everyone is a perfect person is alive,not some isolated character of the fable-style abstraction products”.(Hegel, 303) The reason why Hamlet so successful was the lively selfhood and humanity of the leading role.
As the prince of ancient Denmark, Hamlet was kind-hearted and simple, seeking for a world of the true, the good and the beautiful. He also won high reputation and status among Denmark subjects. he was virtuous and kind-hearted. It seemed that he was entitled to all good qualities, handsome, intelligent, brave and talented. Nevertheless, ideal and reality, nobility and ugliness reversed totally. Father’s death, mother’s remarriage and lover’s betrayal stimulated the evil sides of Hamlet’s inside world. Craziness and revenge occupied his later life. From his attitudes to his mother, we can see how complicated his characteristics were.In the first act of the second scene, through the conversation, Hamlet showed love to his mother. “Queen: Let not thy mother lose her prayer. Hamlet, I pray thee stay with us, go no to Wittenberg.Hamlet: I sall in alll my best obey you. Madam.” (Shakespeare, 14)
He could have just walked away but for the sake of his love to his mother he stayed. Even though he hated her remarriage deeply. He bore with uncomfortableness and pain because he was a filial son. But in the third act of the fourth scene we find Hamlet’s emotions to his mother were so complicated that love and hate were intertwined. As a son, he loved his mother deeply and shouldn’t scold her. But he couldn’t bear the fact that she remarried his uncle so soon. So he just broke out and shouted to his mother,“Hamlet: Such an act that blurs the grace and blush of modesty, calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love and sets a blister there, make marriage-vows as false as dicers’ oaths. O, such a deed as from the body of contraction plucks the very soul, and sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words: heaven’s face doth glow ; yea, this solidity and compound mass, with tristful visage, as against the doom, is thought-sick at the act. ”(Shakespeare, 36)
Similar situations took place quite often which he was not entitled to such kind of behavior whereas it was his true feelings and emotions. It made him a lively person just around us and we readers can feel the existence of him truly. Shakespeare created a character not playing god but an ordinary person with humanity. That’s why readers love the classic so much and never fade away with time going by.
|
