UNSOPHISICATED

“Now, suppose a mind of the latter of our two classes, whose imagination is pent in consequently, and who take its facts “hard;” suppose it, moreover, to feel strongly the craving for communion, and yet to realize how desperately difficult it is to construe the scientific order of nature either theologically or poetically—and what result can there be but inner discord and contradiction? Now, this inner discord (merely as discord) can be relieved in either of two ways: The longing to read the facts religiously may cease, and leave the bare facts by themselves; or supplementary facts may be discovered or believed in, which permit the religious reading to go on. William James, Varieties of Religious Experience

In English 1B at Cal, one of our first assignments was to write a paper on Hamlet answering the question, “Does he change in the course of the play?” My instructor, Mrs. Griffith, was impressed enough with my brief essay that she offered to suspend all my other assignments for the semester to give me the chance to develop it.

Maybe I became as engrossed in the project as I did because I identified with Hamlet’s struggle. Eventually it took over my imagination to such an extent I would leap out of bed with an inspiration after just having turned out the lights—and start pounding away on my typewriter—or stumble to my desk in the middle of the night. Sometimes I got so excited I found myself sitting, not in my chair but perched atop the back of it, hunching over the keys.

In my paper I described how Hamlet starts out by feeling “put upon, confounded by forces outside himself, by ‘fate,’” at the same time believing that the most courageous defy her. “’And blest are those whose blood and judgement are so well commedled that they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please.’”

But by the end of the play, I argue, he has come to believe in a Grand Design of which he is a part—he has, in fact, found faith. “On his return from England, Hamlet relates to Horatio how, driven by strange anxiety and foreboding, he sought out the commission of Guildenstern and Rosencrantz and found it to be his death warrant.”

“’Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well

When our deep plots do pall, and that should learn us

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.’ (V, ii)

“Because he was carrying his father’ s signet ring, Hamlet was then able to draw up another commission ordering them to be executed. ‘Even in that was heaven’s ordinant,’ he says. He is now convinced of a directing force, a supreme influence, which he chooses to call heaven, that guides the universe. He is not “subject to” natural law but its expression. His will cannot work in opposition to Divine Plan, because Divine Plan includes his will and all else. He has come to believe that there is ‘Providence in the fall of a sparrow.’”

As the semester drew to a close, Mrs. Griffith, apparently beginning to doubt that I was really working on my essay—since I didn’t have anything ready to show her—changed her mind and directed me to start doing the weekly assignments again.

I finished my paper a few days before the individual oral final each student had to take in her office. After my oral test, she opened her grade book and pointed out my grade. “I’m giving you the only A+ I’ve given in ten years of teaching,” she said quietly. “I know it won’t be reflected on your report card, but I wanted you to know.”  Then she called my essay “a beautiful, beautiful paper,” saying parts of it were brilliant, and told me she’d tried to enter it in the freshman writing contest—but the deadline had already passed. She suggested I give some thought to becoming a writer.

I sent my paper proudly off to my father, hoping that at last I’d done something worthy of his respect, but he dismissed it contemptuously in a telephone call, saying in so many words that I was too intellectually and emotionally unsophisticated to appreciate the complexities of Hamlet’s state of mind.