Hamlet's Father Part V -- Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot?

This is it folks, the home stretch.  We're gonna power through these last thirty pages in this post... wish me luck.

Hey, Rogue One is almost upon us, I'm

entitled to some Star Wars memes...

Hamlet's summoned to appear in court before the king.  Claudius says he hopes to view Hamlet as a son, and wants to send him, along with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to the Orkney Islands to see to matters there.  In the original play this was a plot by Claudius to kill Hamlet (though in the play he sent him to England, not Orkney, and sent orders for Hamlet to be killed the minute he got there), but seeing as Claudius is made of Incorruptible Pure Pureness in this rendition of the play, I have no idea why Card insists on throwing it in.

Although hang on... wasn't there supposed to be a couple things that happened between where we left off and this point?  In the original play Hamlet staged a play of his own -- a play within a play, if you will -- that was modeled after his father's murder, in an effort to implicate Claudius.  Not to mention Hamlet making his first failed attempt on Claudius' life, another scene with Ophelia, Polonius' murder (it still happens, but out of sequence)...  Freaking heck, Card, how can you insist this play doesn't interest you when you cut out all the interesting stuff in your version?  Seriously, the play-within-a-play and Claudius' reaction to it was one of my favorite bits!

Anyhow, Hamlet gripes about how he's not trusted, though given that he's plotting to kill the guy, can you blame him?  Hamlet asks if he can wait until after the king's funeral -- yes, over a month after his death and they still haven't buried the guy.  I'm sure he stinks by now...

"We wait for Polonius's son, Laertes.  You know that your father and he were close." -- p. 71

Ah, I've lost count by this point...

Hamlet grumps that they'll wait for Laertes but not him, the king's own son.  Claudius tells him he can wait to leave until after the funeral, and Hamlet asks to see his father's body.  Ew, dude, are you sure you want to do that?  He's got to be pretty far gone by now...

Apparently they've been keeping the corpse in the ice house up to this point.  I'm sorry, but the most morbid Google search I have ever done states that even with modern technology (cryonics, refrigeration, chemical preservatives, etc.) a body's not going to be in the best of shape after a month and a half.  And given that this story takes place hundreds of years ago, that body is going to be pretty ripe by this point.  Even if they stick it in the "ice house" (a building used by communities or by the ridiculously wealthy to store ice throughout the year), there's going to be some deterioration.  Not to mention that all that ice is going to go to waste.  At least, I sure hope they chuck it after they've stored a dead king in there for weeks...

Anyhow, Claudius forbids him from going to see the body.  Hamlet responds by mouthing off to his mother and insulting her until Claudius finally gives in and lets him have a key to the tomb.  Geez, Claudius, you're kind of a wet blanket in this book...

Page break, and Hamlet's wandering the family tomb.

Sorry, Lara, this tomb's not nearly that exciting...

We get some lovely descriptions of the rotting bodies in the tomb before Hamlet gets around to noticing there's no place set up for his father's body.  Hamlet's positive that they don't want him to see the body because he'll be able to see signs of murder, and Claudius and his mother are plotting to get rid of the body instead of putting it in the tomb.

Horatio's waiting for Hamlet when he leaves the tomb -- hey Hamlet, you ever wonder why this guy keeps hanging around you?  Think he might have something to hide and is trying to make sure you don't find it?

"You're a lunatic, and must be closely watched," said Horatio.

"Better you than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.  They're not the friends I remember."

"Things changed in the four years you were gone.  When the Companions were dissolved at your parting, they decided not to dissolve themselves.  Living four years together on Guildenstern's estates has made them as fusty and peculiar as an old married couple.  I pity the woman who tries to wed her way into that house." -- p. 74

Even Card ships them...

If you're reading a bit of Ho Yay in the above, you're not mistaken... but I digress...

Hamlet spots the name on the gravestone Horatio's sitting on... and it's Yorick!  But if you thought Card was going to pay tribute to the most famous scene in the play -- the "alas, poor Yorick" bit that has been homaged and parodied to the moon and back -- you're sadly mistaken.

"You've been here this long and didn't notice he was gone?"

"But no one wrote to me," said Hamlet.  "I assumed he was away.  Or living privately, pensioned off.  But dead!"

"Not long after you left," said Horatio.  "Suddenly, in his sleep."

"He wasn't old enough to die."

"How old is that?" asked Horatio.  "I think there are tiny graves enough to prove that death knows how to find us all, however old we might not be."

Hamlet laughed bitterly at that, ashamed of the tears that streamed down his cheeks.  "I know you're right, Horatio.  But Yorick -- it's a terrible thing to say, but his death strikes me harder than my father's." -- p. 75

Okay, first of all, this bit isn't supposed to happen until after Hamlet gets back from his trip to England/Orkney.  Second of all, Card has managed to take one of the most iconic scenes in the play and cut it down to the barest shred of its former self, showing he has no idea how to prioritize what to leave in and what to cut.  Third of all, once again he has to make it all about Hamlet's whiny daddy issues.  Can this kid have at least one thought in his head that doesn't revolve around how much daddy didn't love him?  PLEASE?

Hamlet gripes some more about how he hated the Companions (new hit single coming out this month!) because Daddy seemed to love them more than him, and Horatio complains that it wasn't exactly their choice.  Horatio also begs Hamlet to tell him what the ghost told him, and Hamlet deflects it by saying he has to go talk to his mother.  Yeah, events in the play are all out of order -- I know Card warned us he was shredding the play, but I at least expected him to keep things in sequential order...

Oh, Horatio also makes a crack about having multiple girlfriends, and Hamlet gripes that "women seem to want so much" and make sucky company.  Geez, Card, do you have woman issues or what?

"I think I would have been a better man if I'd had a father," [Hamlet] said.

"And what if I say not?  Did knowing your father make better men of us?"

Way too many at this point...

"It might have," said Hamlet.  "But you had your own fathers, all of you -- I had none."

"You had Yorick.  You had your uncle Claudius."

"Horatio, all I meant was, I'll never know what I would have become, if my father had been a father to me." -- p. 78

Am I the only one who finds this constant harping about Hamlet's father obnoxious?  How is cutting all the moral and philosophical discussion and monologues from the play and replacing them with constant whining about "waaaaaaaaaaah I never had a daddy!" supposed to be more interesting?  Card, I haven't even gotten to your "brilliant" twist ending and I already think your remake of Hamlet sucks.

Page break, Hamlet goes to visit his mom, and spots Claudius kneeling at an altar in the chapel.  Card breezes over this scene pretty quickly -- Hamlet deciding he can't kill Claudius while he's praying and considering killing him in private the coward's way -- and sends Hamlet on his way to his mother's chambers within a few paragraphs.  Way to gloss over one of the more interesting snippets of the play, Card...

Laertes is with Card's mother, and he immediately accuses Hamlet of messing with his sister.  He states he's become a swordsman now and won't tolerate anyone insulting or harassing Ophelia, then marches off.  Um, bye...

Hamlet's mother asks about the whole stink with Ophelia, and Hamlet, and states that she doesn't understand a thing he's done since he's gotten back.  He retorts with a really cold insult (pardon the pun):

"Did you have them put my father's corpse on ice so you'd be sure it was cold before you got into my uncle's bed?" -- p. 80

She tries to slap him for that (who wouldn't?) but he retorts that she can't hit him for telling the truth.  He also says he's obviously the only person in Denmark who loved his father, and she tells him "don't judge what you don't understand."  Why won't people just freaking TELL Hamlet what's going on?  So much of this play falls under what Roger Ebert liked to call "the Idiot Plot," or "any plot that would be resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot."  Seriously, if the characters would just freaking TALK to each other like mature adults, we could have avoided all this...

Hamlet's mom finally confesses that she forbade his father from spending time with him, and that his death came "in good time for Denmark -- and for me."  Hamlet takes this to mean she was in on the murder and throws her to the ground -- hey Hamlet, didn't your Biblical studies teach you to respect your parents? -- and pulls a freaking dagger.  She screams for help, someone else screams behind a tapestry, and...

If you've read the play, you know what happens next -- Hamlet stabs Polonius through the tapestry.  In the play Hamlet rambles on like a madman at this point, but here Hamlet just thinks "Mom had him here to spy on me, she should have known this was coming" and blames her for Polonius' death.  Excuse me, kid, but it was YOUR choice to stab the guy!  How was she supposed to know you'd turn homicidal maniac on her?

Hamlet, instead of going into the nutcase ramblings he does in the play, calmly states that he'll take responsibility for the death and leaves.  Yeesh... no wonder Shakespeare nuts hate this book.

Hamlet goes to the graveyard to mope, and does he feel any guilt for killing Polonius?  Nope.  Instead we get the words of a true sociopath:

I've killed a man.  It was easy.  As natural as breathing.  Now there's nothing stopping me from doing what must be done. -- p. 83

Dang, I've been using this pic a lot this book...

In the words of Linkara from Atop the Fourth Wall -- "Our hero, ladies and gentlemen!"  *headdesks*

Page break, and Horatio comes running, carrying Hamlet's sword.  Laertes is looking for him, apparently, but not to avenge his father.  Apparently Ophelia's been found dead, drowned from walking into the sea.  She actually fell in a brook in the original play, but it's obvious by this point Card cares nothing about preserving the original play's continuity -- we didn't even get Hamlet's trip to England/Orkney (where he ends up sending Ros and Guild to their deaths, incidentally), or Ophelia's descent into madness, or the altercation at her burial...

What we do get is another pic on page 84:

Nothing too inspiring, and odd that they chose to illustrate a scene we don't even see in the play.  Maybe the illustrator didn't read the book first...

Hamlet doesn't even show grief at Ophelia's death, which is weird because I could have sworn he grieved for her in the play.  He's more concerned about the fact that Laertes wants to kill him -- which I admit is kind of worrying in itself.  Also, apparently Laertes wanted to kill Hamlet's father, but seeing as the king's dead already he'll settle for offing Hamlet.

Hamlet straps on his sword and heads for the castle, while Horatio screams for him to stop.  And here comes the BEST part of the book.  And I mean that with all the sarcasm in the world...

*evil laughter*

Laertes is in the throne room, where Claudius is trying to stop the duel.  Hamlet throws himself into the fight anyhow, and the two draw their swords and start whacking at each other.  Cue the last picture of the book on page 86 -- again, nothing terrible, but nothing memorable either.

In the play, this is where it's revealed that Laertes and Claudius plotted to kill Hamlet, Laertes for revenge for his father and sister and Claudius to keep the kid from blowing his cover as the king's killer and to get Hamlet out of the way once and for all.  But no, this setup is too BORING for Card!  He's not interested in murder and intrigue, he has something BETTER set up!  Shakespeare's a hack, what kind of street cred does he have, we have an even better ending for one of the most famous tragedies of the theater world!

The two duke it out, and Laertes accuses Hamlet of taking away everything he cares about.  Hamlet retorts that he grieves for Polonius and "I cared for [Ophelia] as much as I could for any woman."  *raises eyebrows*  Seriously, Card?

"Kill me or die," said Laertes.

"The only way I'll die is if you poisoned your blade and some of it spills on me," said Hamlet. -- p. 87

Card's idea of a clever nod to the original, which just makes me pine for the original material...

And then the bloodshed starts.

"I only have one enemy in this room," said Hamlet, "and it isn't you.  It's the man who killed my father, married his widow, and stole the crown." -- p. 87

And as the crowd goes nuts at this revelation, Hamlet disarms Laertes, runs forward to stab Claudius in the heart, and turns around and kills Laertes.  Wow... so much for the poisoned blades and goblets of the play...

And finally... we get to the moment of truth.  The revelation to end all revelations.  The real killer of Hamlet's father, and why he did the deed.  I'm including snippets of the book's text here, but instead of commentary -- because really, what is there to say to most of this? -- you get reaction pictures.  If a picture was ever worth a thousand words, this is really the case...

"O God!" cried Horatio.  "O God, how could you punish them all for my sin!"

"Your sin?" said Hamlet.

"I killed your father!" -- p. 88

A much better "Hamlet" adaptation than this...

"But I never -- why would you kill him?"

"Because he was evil.  Because of what he did to us.  All of us.  The Companions.  All the boys but you!"

Behind him, Hamlet heard his mother wail.

"What did he do?" asked Hamlet.

"He had us," said Horatio.  "All of us, one by one, over and over again.  Told us how much we owed him.  Our duty to the king.  How to thank him."

"Thank him?"

"With our bodies!" -- p. 88

"But you never told me."

"He swore he'd kill us if we did."

"All of you?"

"It twisted us.  I saw it in the others.  Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the could never look at women.  Laertes -- he told me, even before he left for France, that his stick was broken and would never grow again.  And me -- I thought I was all right.  I thought..." -- p. 88-89

Mother's voice came from behind him.  "When I found what he was doing to the Companions, I almost killed him myself.  I caught him fondling you when you were practically a baby, Hamlet.  I held a knife at his throat and vowed that I'd have his blood if he ever touched you or was alone with you again.  I'd tell the barons and they'd kill him themselves.  He took a solemn oath never to touch you and he kept it.  I didn't know what he did with the Companions until -- until Laertes came to me and told.  Then I made him dissolve the Companions and let them all go free.  But it was too late."

"Too late," echoed Horatio.  "A few months ago, a new page came to the castle.  I taught him.  He followed me everywhere like a dog.  I delighted in his company.  And then one day I found myself... I had him naked.  I was telling him how a boy shows love to his friend and teacher... the words your father used, the very words." -- p. 89

"I was the worst of all of them!  I was like him!  I stopped myself.  I told the boy to dress and never come near me again.  That I was evil.  A monster.  And then I went out into the garden to kill your father.  There he was, asleep.  As if the devil had a right to rest in such a place!  I took my dagger and poised it over him.  Then with my other hand I clamped his mouth closed, holding his head in place, and then I pushed the dagger down into his ear and through his brain." -- p. 89

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah... this is what Card has been building up to all this time.  Claudius didn't kill his father to win the throne -- his father was a child molester and Horatio killed him as payback.  Claudius was innocent all this time and Hamlet just offed two more innocent men.

.....................

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

There are SO many problems with this I don't even know where to begin.  I'll cover some of them below, but I doubt I'm going to be able to get to them all.  Just... brace yourselves.  This is going to be painful.

First of all, using rape, especially child rape, as a means to get cheap drama is... well, cheap.  Authors seem to think that the "best" way to make a character sympathetic is to include rape in their backstory, and the best way to make a villain EXTRA EVIL is to make them a rapist, and bonus points if they're a pedophile in the bargain.  And every time I come across it in a book, it makes me want to hurl it at a wall.  It drove me nuts when Karen Russell used it as a means of injecting pointless drama into her book Swamplandia!, and it drives me bonkers here too.

Second of all, this twist REEKS of "homosexuality equals pedophilia."  This is a squicky trope that crops up a LOT in Christian works, especially the works of the late Jack Chick, and it's one that's widely discredited by most psychologists today.  If one were to assume all homosexual men like little boys, then wouldn't that also mean all heterosexual men also like little girls?  Homosexuals are no more likely to abuse children than any other adult, and assuming so is both disgusting and dangerous.

Third of all, the fact that Horatio almost turns child molester here says a lot more about his character in general than about the king.  Because despite what you might have seen on Law And Order: SVU, there's no conclusive studies that have proved that victims of child sexual abuse will grow up to be abusers themselves.  It's a risk factor, but by no means a guarantee that a molester's victim will grow up with those same urges.  (And in case you're wondering, yes, my Google search history hates me and I'll be deleting my browsing history after posting this...)

Fourth of all -- WHY HAS NO ONE TOLD HAMLET ABOUT THIS BEFORE NOW?  I can understand not telling him as a child, because the knowledge that his father's a pedophile is heavy stuff to be telling a kid, but why not sit him down and tell him the whole story the minute he got home?  Everyone had the opportunity to tell him the truth at some point -- Horatio, Laertes, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Claudius, Hamlet's mom -- and nobody said a thing!  We could have avoided all this if someone had just freaking said something!

Damn right I'm mad right now... there's adapting a play for modern audiences, and then there's just plain sullying Shakespeare's work.  The Bard must be turning somersaults in his grave right now, knowing someone decided to take his work and do THIS with it.  It's like Jack Chick rose from his own grave to swipe a Cliff Notes of Hamlet and pen yet another homophobic pamphlet with a warped version of this story as his basis.

Guh... okay, I'm wrapping this up, I'm about sick to death of this freaking book...

Hamlet confesses that his father's ghost told him to kill Claudius, and Horatio insists that the king wanted Claudius dead because he couldn't stand someone being a better king than him.  The queen laments that she should have killed him herself when she had a chance, tells Hamlet she loves, him, and poisons herself with a phial she just happens to be carrying on the waistband of her dress.  Convenient, that...

Horatio begs Hamlet to kill him and avenge his father's death, but Hamlet says he has no desire to avenge him now and forbids him to die.  He tells Horatio to hail Fortinbras as the king of Denmark, and to live his life... and he stabs himself in the heart.  He does hear Horatio tell him "I love you, Hamlet!" just as he dies, which is a scream considering Card was doing his darndest to make this book homophobic to the last.

And just in case the audience didn't think the king was a complete monster already, Card gives us this ending:

Then Hamlet's body slumped onto the floor.

But his spirit did not go where his body went.  His spirit arose and looked around the hall.  To where Laertes' spirit held his father's and his sister's hands; then they arose into heaven.  To where his mother and Claudius, bright spirits both, embraced each other, and also rose into the air, toward the bright light awaiting them.  

And finally to the dark shadowy corner where his father's spirit stood, laughing, laughing, laughing.  "Welcome to Hell, my beautiful son.  At last we'll be together as I always longed for us to be." -- p. 92

WELP... after THAT lovely ending, what is there to say?  Except that apparently Orson Scott Card's definition of a tragedy seems to be, not a mess of moral ambiguities and the weaknesses of mankind, but a simple (disgusting) case of The Bad Guy Wins, with a massive side order of squick and trying to justify his homophobia in the bargain.  Ugh...

Next post will be a wrap-up post -- Card's reaction to the criticism of this book, my reaction to HIS reaction, and my final thoughts on this travesty of a book.