Coming of Age
This coming-of-age classic directed by John Hughes follows five students bonding during a Saturday detention.
What is The Breakfast Club?
An example we discussed several times in class, calling it clumsy and random, as opposed to its elegant and civilized counterpart.
What is a Blaster?
The primary web in Hamlet comes from Hamlet's, Fortinbras', Laertes' and Ophelia's reactions when people do this to them.
What is Killing Your Father?
This is the primary requirement for the genre: a crime (usually murder) has been committed, and the legal system is unable or unwilling to provide this.
What is Justice?
What is Overthinking?
In this 2012 film, Charlie navigates friendship, trauma, and adolescence through letters to an anonymous friend.
What is The Perks of Being a Wallflower?
These two contradictory, and violent, symbols in Hamlet are meant to showcase the difference between scheming and action.
What are Swords and Poison?
A web discussed in class; residents of a small island nation with a fiery pest problem all generally react in this specific way, except for our main character.
What is Extreme Violence?
Derived from the Roman playwright Seneca, this supernatural element usually appears early to demand vengeance and reveal the truth.
What is a Ghost?
Polonius wants to be seen as this. Unfortunately, he definitely isn't.
What is Competent/In Control?
In this film, a group of boys go searching for a missing body during one unforgettable summer.
What is Stand by Me?
This usually fiery man of action coats his blade in poison, thus cementing him as an antagonist despite seeking revenge in a very similar manner to his protagonistic counterpart.
Who is Laertes?
A character web can be used to illustrate the limited ways characters in the story can solve issues. In Hamlet, what options are available when you're wronged?
What are Taking Revenge and Going Mad?
To carry out their plan, the avenger often adopts this—a "mask" of insanity that allows them to move freely among their enemies.
What is Feigned Madness?
One of Hamlet's first plans; this act was meant to buy him time to think and tells us exactly how he's unsuited to the genre.
What is Pretending to go Mad?
This 1997 coming-of-age film follows a young mathematical genius from South Boston as he struggles between his potential and the life he has always known.
What is Good Will Hunting?
In a coming of age story, symbols are often used to symbolize the main character's choice between these two types of figures, who often also represent different types of people our character can become.
What are Parental Figures?
Laertes and Hamlet are both faced with the death of Ophelia and do this at the funeral, showing that they've both grown into men of action.
What is Fighting in her Grave?
The Greek term (or its translation) for a character’s flaw (like Hamlet's indecision) that leads to their eventual downfall
What is a Hamartia, or Fatal flaw?
Gertrude's goal through most of the play, this usually admirable aim at family dinners doesn't serve the particular stresses of the situation.
What is Keeping the Peace?
At a strict boarding school, an English teacher inspires students to seize the day and think for themselves.
What is Dead Poets Society?
A symbol in a cheerful Disney movie about the inevitability of aging and death with a distinctive onomatopoeic name.
Who is Tick-Tock the Crocodile?
An early example of a character web shows how the two rulers are different when they attempt what action at their wedding?
What is Pacifying Hamlet?
A hallmark of the genre is that the revenge must be "proportional," often leading to a final scene with this specific outcome for almost all main characters.
What is Death?
A shared motivation across many characters that allows Shakespeare to explore the ways Laertes, Hamlet, and Ophelia pursue it differently.
What is Wanting to be Seen as a Good Child?