Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Violence, whether in the past or in the present, has been a huge issue that is facing
humanity. It can be viewed in many different way. Violence can be a symbol to mean something
else, but can be a tool people use in order to get what they want, whether the goal behind is was
obvious, or hidden. A lot of literary works contained the idea of violence, which allows to make
some connection between some of those pieces of literature. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare,
and Bab Al-Hara, directed by Bassam Al-Mulla are two works that elaborate to the way violence
is one of the things people resort to in order to get what they want.
Hamlet was one of the plays that taught me how people viewed violence as, and how they
used it to achieve many things hundreds of years ago. Hamlet, one of the character, was one of
the characters who highlighted an idea, which was that violence is one way of self fulfilling
action. It was self fulfilling. That is because revenge was a hope and a motivation for Hamlet; he
wanted to kill his uncle, who killed his father, king Hamlet. Hamlet said, “O, from this time forth
my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!” (IV, iv, 68-69). As can be inferred, the author
wanted us to understand that anything that was not “bloody,” nor done with violence is not worth
being done. Violence was referred to in multiple acts of the play, which affected the message and
meaning of the play and showed how important violence is in terms of revenge.
Bab Al-Hara, a soap opera directed by Bassam Al-Mulla reflected a lot of violence. That
can be looked at from two points of view. The story of it was centered around the lives of Syrian
people during the French occupation. They had a lot of restrictions and obstacles that interfered
in everything they plan to do. There was a resistance movement, that felt that the country
deserves to have its own voice. They were considered heroes by some people, or terrorists, in the
views of others. The French occupation, or as their forces claimed in the show, The French
mandate was there to civilize Syrian people because they basically do not know how to live, nor
react with their environment. The French forces killed innocent people, and sent spies to know
the location of any resistance movements, either to get rid of them, or imprison them basically
because they consider self defence as “terrorism.” When people refused to spy on their brothers
and village people, they get murdered, that simple. Obviously, hiding information like that was
considered guilt, so violence should be used in order to “teach” those “uncivilized people” how
they should react to the commands of higher authorities. One of the results of mysteries in
violence as mentioned in How to Read Literature Like a Professor was having “the guilty
punished” and that is what happened with one of the actors, Subhi (97).
Hamlet and Bab Al-Hara were so different, yet closely related pieces of literature. They
both had violence used to justify the insane actions against humanity. In Hamlet, violence was
used as a justification for revenge. In Bab Al-Hara, it was used to justify the civilization process,
or can be called occupation. I feel that Hamlet and Bab Al-Hara both took the principle of “I
must be cruel only to be kind” in the attempt of reaching their goals (III. iv. 199). The problem
with it is that people taking that action are taking the decision, believing that it will be the only
way to promote justice, which is totally invalid, and makes no logical sense.
Work Cited
Foster, Thomas C. How To Read Literature Like a Professor. Harper Perennial. 2014. Print.