Analysis on Laura Bohannan's R
In her essay "Shakespeare in the Bush," Laura Bohannan attempts to illustrate whether there is a "universal understanding" through her experience of sharing Hamlet with the Tiv in West Africa. Throughout the story the Tiv object to some of its details, however, overall they are able to understand Hamlet, a very English play. Different cultural backgrounds not only make the Tiv and Bohannan have very different interpretations of Hamlet ,but also the general ideas of life and death. The essay is very much developed around their simple and abstracted relationship between the Tiv and Bohannan. In her opening paragraph, Bohannan implies a very direct and assumptive relationship of herself and the Tiv. Using a sharp comparison "left Oxford for the Tiv in West Africa" (300), Bohannan implies that she is from an educated background and the Tiv are not. In addition, Bohannan goes to Africa to conduct her
With all the objections, the author feels that "Hamlet was clearly out of my hand" (308). The relationship between the Tiv and Bohannan starts to change dramatically. The author finally surrenders her story telling position to one of the Tiv elders. Even though the elder is able to predict how the story goes, the different beliefs on details in the story change the interpretation of the general plot and motivation. However the Tiv ,like Bohannan assume that "people are the same everywhere" (308) and tell her that she does not have her own story completely figured out. She does not only lose her story telling position but also her "correct" interpretation of Hamlet. Both interpretations of Hamlet are "correct" according to the cultural values of the two different cultures because what we accept is influenced by our won cultural values. At first Bohannan thinks that "human nature is pretty much the s
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Approximate Word count = 614
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)
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