Aspect of Human Experience
Aspect of Human Experience 1 William Blake’s poem A Poison Tree, Anton Chekhov’s Misery and the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare all show us how individual experiences shape interpretations. Many people believe that things happened in the past should stay in the past – which they should be forgotten. But others believe that your past defines who you are today. They believe that past experiences shape your identity. Our experiences shape our views and our treatment of others.
Misery demonstrates how the experience of the death of a loved one, in this case, a son, can change the way you view the world entirely. Iona was suffering from the loss of his son, and when he tried to get people to feel or share in what he was going through, his feelings of despair were heightened by the fact that no one seemed to care. In A Poison Tree, the narrator shows us two sides of a similar situation. There’s the good and bad. Your emotions can cause you to react in ways that you would not normally react.
When someone you know does wrong to you or someone you know, being able to forgive them may be easier to forgive than to forgive a person that you do not know so well. In this poem, the narrator is angry with his friend and is able to speak to his conscience and resolve the issue. But when he gets angry with his foe, he is unable to forgive and forget so easily. His emotions get the best of him, and his anger leads to tragedy. The Tragedy of Hamlet the Prince of Denmark also shows us how past events in our lives can determine the path you take in the future.
Hamlet experiences the lost of his mother and father yet he decides to avenge only his father’s death. The events that follow are fueled by the anger that Hamlet felt due to the death of his King. Subsequently, if his father hadn’t been killed, Hamlet may not have released his fury on his entire family. All three of these stories gives us a glimpse into the past and takes us to the present of the characters to demonstrate how the mind has only one motive, survival.
To do this, it records information of past events and emotions and uses them to predetermine how to react in different situations as they happen. Experiences are the doors through which we understand who we are. So we make sense of the world and of ourselves through our past experiences because they play a major part in our present and future and the way we treat others. References Blake, R. (1794). A Poison Tree. Barnett, S. , Burto, W. , and Cain, W. E. (2011). Literature for Composition: Essays, Stories, poems, and plays (9th ed. ).
New York, NY: Longman. Chekhov, A. (1886). Misery. Barnett, S. , Burto, W. , and Cain, W. E. (2011). Literature for Composition: Essays, Stories, poems, and plays (9th ed. ). New York, NY: Longman. Shakespeare, W. (1600-1601). The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Barnet, S. , Burto, W. , and Cain, W. E (2011). Literature for Composition: Essays, Stories, Poems, and Plays (9th ed). New York, NY: Longman, p. 908 – 1013. Charles, M. (2002). Patterns: Building Blocks of Experience. Taylor & Francis, Inc. Marilyn Charles and James S. Grotstein.
