So I'm working with my kids on a really, really abridged version of Hamlet. We get to the Hamlet Soliloquy, the famous "To be or not to be" speech. I spend a good 10 minutes trying to get them to understand what that question even means. Once I feel they understand that pretty well, I draw an elaborate "TBONTB Matrix" on the board with the pros and cons of each.
"OK," I tell the class. "I'm going to ask you to vote, and if you don't raise your hand, I'm giving you detention. How many of you think Hamlet decides 'to be?'"
No hands go up, and I get nervous.
"Uh . . . and how many think he decides 'not to be?'"
Every single hand goes up.
"NO!" I shout. "If he decides 'not to be' he kills himself and the play just ends!"
The morale of the story: I can't teach Shakespeare.
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Vonnegut's Kilgore Trout wrote "2BRO2B," in which "he hypothecated an America in which almost all of the work was done by machines, and the only people who could get work had three or more Ph.D's. There was a serious overpopulation problem, too.
"All serious diseases had been conquered. So death was voluntary, and the government, to encourage volunteers for death, set up an purple-roofed Ethical Suicide Parlor at every major intersection, right next door to an orange-roofed Howard Johnson's. There were pretty hostesses in the parlor, and Bara-Loungers, and Muzak, and a choice of fourteeen painless ways to die."
So be careful, you might be replaced by a machine or suicided to death or something.
I wish I was taught Hamlet like this.
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