The aspect which particularly changed my feelings was part discovery, part recollection of a friend's outrage which I share: the book's appendix reveals that that this story pinches the psychiatric notes of a real life patient, without every explaining if it was done with his permission or knowledge. And it's hardly a flattering portrayal.

I wondered how I was meant to take narrator Joe Rose and his supposed stalker, Jed Parry. I didn't like Joe. But I wasn't sure if I was meant to. I thought this story was going somewhere other than where it did - and had it gone there, this would've been a powerful tale. I was intrigued by the scientific rationalist who is pursued by his antithesis. It wasn't so much the twist of making Joe mad that I desired, but that Jed and Joe could give each other something positive. I hoped that faith and love could challenge and enhance science. I hoped that Jed's loneliness and social difficulties could be alleviated through Joe. I fear for a society which warmed to Joe as a hero and put away the Jeds of this world without trying to help him, but put him through violating treatments and damning medical pronouncements, then tell his story as entertainment.

After the ridiculous gun scenes and chase to rescue the apparently hostaged Clarissa, I was relived at the mention of forgiveness. What a wonderful end to the spiralling frenzy and violence. I sought redemption and a journey towards enlightenment; but the trajectory is predictable and diminishing. It diminished the scale of this supposed overarching story of literary and scientific pretensions. It becomes a creep show, a simple story of impending terror. Like Notes on a Scandal, I felt sorry for the ‘mad' one, preferring complexity and pathos rather than a story of compulsion and homoeroticism.

McEwan's style is consciously self reverential; a kind of clunky mix of unnaturalistic dialogue and supposedly metaphysical meditations, puffed up with their own importance (e.g. the gun-getting episode where a dog is ‘bereft of generative grammar'). It is tempting to conclude that this is what Joe fears of his work as popular science writer: a narrative which imparts the ideas and lives of others at a lower level than they were originally transmitted, without doing anything new or earth shattering in itself.

Some research shows that this story is not in fact plagiarism but - as McEwan thinks - cleverly presented as truth, topically blurring the line between what is real. Yet such staging reinforces my low view of the work, and endangers the dupe earning the author the reputation of immorality in pinching the life of another without permission.

As time passes it begins to look as though he has gone from acting insane to actually being insane. Ophelia is another character that is shown to be mad within the play. She is the daughter of Polonius, the advisor of King Claudius. She deeply loves Hamlet, but leaves him when her father commands her. It is after this that Hamlet's madness begins to show itself. Ophelia is stricken with her own madness when Hamlet accidentally kills her father and is then sent away to England. It is during this time that she dies, but it is left up to the audience to decide if she died accidentally or committed suicide. It is through these two characters that a clear picture madness comes to mind. Madness in the play is shown through Hamlet and Ophelia.

Although hamlet is mad by the end of the play, he is not so at the beginning. For example, after he sees the ghost of his father, Hamlet devises a plan to see if what the ghost said to him was the truth or a demon's lie, "As I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put an antic disposition on" (1.5.176). Hamlet knows that as the Prince of Denmark people will look at him every time that he enters a room. To get around this he would have to act crazy until people will not take notice of him whenever he walks into a room. Hamlet is not mad at this point because he is shown to be thinking clearly and is able to come up with a plan that makes logical sense. Hamlet may not be mad yet, but his act is so good that it is hard to tell throughout the play when he is acting and when he is not.

A second way that Hamlet shows that his madness is only an act at first is when he confesses it openly to his mother during the scene that he kills Polonius in my accident, "It is not madness/That I have uttered" (3.4.147-148). With this single confession Hamlet shows the audience as well as his mother that he is in fact thinking rationally even when it seems that he is not. To act mad when one is in fact sane would have taken a lot of acting skills on Hamlet's part. The confession alone shows that Hamlet is sane up until that point in time, at least. Although Hamlet may sound sane as he starts to turn, his actions before and after it bring the whole confession of sanity into question as a whole. Hamlet may appear to be sane, but insanity may already be taking a small root inside him.

One way Hamlet can be shown to be insane takes place during the scene that he confesses to his mother that he has only been acting crazy. During the scene Hamlet sees the ghost of his father again, only this time he is the only one that sees it, "To whom do you speak this?" (3.4.135). The Queen cannot see the ghost of her former husband, and from that she believes that Hamlet is seeing things when he is preaching to her that he is not crazy. Because she believes that Hamlet is seeing things she does not believe his confession at all. Because she does not believe his confession she believes that Hamlet is sick of mind. From this we can see that madness in Hamlet may already be taking over his mind, for when he first saw the ghost of his father it was dressed differently and more than one person saw it. From this the Queen still thinks that her son is insane, "Alas, he's mad" (3.4.109). Now that the Queen is sure that Hamlet is mad she is sure not to trust anything that he says to her. Even if he were to tell her how Claudius murdered his father she would only think that it is a wild story coming from the lips of an insane man. Now the Queen believes without a doubt that Hamlet is insane. Hamlet is now labeled crazy by all but those who are in on the plan with him. Now that most people think of him as crazy, the people closest to him begin to wonder if they are right or not, for it is getting hard to tell when Hamlet is acting and when he is not.

Since it appears to most that Hamlet is insane they must ask themselves why he is so to begin with. Polonius thinks that it may be because he ordered his daughter, Ophelia, to leave Hamlet for fear that he did not really love her and was only using her to his own means, "That hath made him mad./I am sorry that with better heed and judgment/I had not coted him. I feared he did but trible/and meant to wreak thee. But beshew my jealousy!" (2.1.111-114). Ophelia tells her father that Hamlet's madness started after she obeyed his command to leave Hamlet and take no token of affection from him ever again. With that in his mind Polonius sees that unreturned love must be the spring from which the madness within Hamlet's mind sprung from. This is but one possibility to how madness entered into Hamlet. Hamlet can be called mad here because the grief within his broken heart has begun to take over him. With a broken heart in mind King Claudius and Polonius set a trap to spy on Hamlet, hoping to find out if this is the truth cause of Hamlet's madness, or that it is from something else entirely, "Madness in great ones must no unwatched go" (3.1.154). If the madness in Hamlet goes unwatched he could end up doing something so crazy that it ends up hurting Denmark. Even if it does not go that far, someone is bound to be hurt in the process, or even killed. By watching Hamlet they can find out what has caused his madness and possibly help him with it. Hamlet's act of madness is so good that he actually has people watching him to see why he is acting the way that he is acting. Hamlet is not the only character in the play that is shown to have madness within them.

Near the end of the play it is made clear to the audience that Ophelia has gone insane. An example of this is when her brother, Larates, has returned to Denmark from France and she seems to take no notice of him and is either talking to people who are not there or misinterpreting the people that she does see, "I hope all will be well. We must be patient, /but I cannot choose but weep to think they would/lay him i'th' cold ground. My brother shall know/of it, and so I thank you for your counsel. /Come, my coach! Good night, ladies, good night, /sweet ladies, good night, good night" (4.5.69-74). Ophelia has been driven over the edge by the death of her father at the hands of Hamlet. In the space of a short period of time she has lost both her love and a close relative of her. Something like that would drive anyone insane, which in this case it really makes her insane. Ophelia is shown to be mad because she begins to act weird in places that others would be normal.

After the death of her father Ophelia begins to show weird traits, one of which is speaking in a short of gibberish, "Pray let's have no words of this, but when/they ask you what it means, say you this:/ Tomorrow is Saint Valentine's day,/ All in the morning betime,/ and I am a maid at your window,/ To be your Valentine./Then up he rose and donned his clothes/And dupped the chamber door,/ Let in the maid, that out a maid/Never departed more" (4.5.47-56). Ophelia speaks only in gibberish and none of the people that are around her seem to know what it all means. Although it is never stated in the text, the maid line could be Ophelia's way of telling the people around her that she is pregnant with Hamlet's baby, but of that it is hard to say. Although gibberish could be spoken by a sane person, it is normally the trait of a crazy person. Because of this Ophelia could be considered insane. That is how madness is shown within the play.

Hamlet and Ophelia are two characters that show the madness that is within the play. In the beginning Hamlet is not an insane man, but is rational and clear thinking in his actions. He comes up with a plan to start acting insane to find out if the ghost of his father was speaking the truth when it appeared before him, and for the most part it does work. Even when he confesses that it is only an act no one believes his words because of how good he was at acting insane. When Hamlet confesses his secret to his mother, Queen Gertrude, she begins to think that he is even more insane than she first thought. The reason for this is because when he is confessing his sanity he claims that he sees the ghost of his father watching the two of them, telling Hamlet to kill Claudius, but to leave Gertrude alone. However, unlike before Hamlet is the only one who can see the ghost of his father, who is now dressed in rags instead of the armor he whore the last time they met. Gertrude believes that the ghost that Hamlet sees is only in his mind, so she feels that his mind is going fast. When everyone believes that Hamlet is crazy they try to find out the reason for his madness. Polonius believes that it may have been born from the unreturned love of his daughter, Ophelia.

When he tells Claudius this the king comes up with a plan to find out if this is the reason for his nephew-son's madness: they shall watch Hamlet as he talks with Ophelia and watch the reactions. After Polonius is accidentally killed by Hamlet Ophelia's grief begins to turn her mind from sanity to insanity to the point that she is almost unrecognizable from what she was only a week or so earlier. When Larates returns home from France Ophelia does not seem to recognize her own brother. To add to that she is only speaking in gibberish. Madness is defined as a semi-permanent mental disorder, typically stemming from a form of mental illness. Over the course of the play the minds of both Hamlet and Ophelia begin to crumble away into nothingness from the events that have been going on around them in their lives. As time passes they get worse and worse until they finally snap and do something rash. Hamlet's is the revenge murder of Claudius after it is discovered that the cup of wine that Gertrude drank from was poisoned and that it was meant for him. For Ophelia it is her apparent suicide. It just makes you wonder what would have happened if old Hamlet had not been murdered by his brother, Claudius.

Ambition is a quality that no man lacks, as all men have their ambitions. Once the Thane of Glamis, Macbeth was hooked to his ambitious desire for power. Macbeth's ambitions were at first questioned by himself, after telling his wife that they're not going to kill King Duncan she accuses him of cowardice, and he pleads, "Prithee, peace: / I dare do all that may become a man; / Who dares do more is none" (1.7.46-48). His belief at this time is that a real man wouldn't commit murder. The “dares do more” refers to crossing the line between an honorable kill and an act of sin. In Lady Macbeth's eyes if Macbeth did not kill Duncan than he would not be a man to her anymore, she believes that “When you durst do it, then you were a man” (1.7.47-49). Lady Macbeth also believes he would be denying all urges for greater wealth and prosperity that man should have if he doesn't kill the king. Leaving behind all perspectives of right or wrong, Lady Macbeth wonders why he is not taking the opportunity to be king when he can easily do so. In reality, Macbeth is contemplating the murder of Macbeth because he has morals, qualities that are also considered manly.

Macbeth's journey takes a dark turn when his once high morals begin to decay. After Macbeth was persuaded to kill the king by his wife, his view on what makes a man changed. When Macbeth tries to convince the murderers of all the terrible deeds Banquo has brought upon them, they reply by stating "We are men, my liege" (3.1.102-107). They would not kill unjustified, which is what Macbeth initially believed about killing the king when he identified murder with sin. However, Macbeth replies sarcastically in anger:

Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men,

As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels,

curs,

Shoughs, water-rugs and demi-wolves, are clept

All by the name of dogs. (3.1.102-107)

He compares them to “hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels,” and not true men. Macbeth believes they pretend to act as men, and that the only way they can become real men is if they kill Banquo. This is one of the first significant events where Macbeth changes his view on what defines a man after have murdering Duncan. Macbeth ends up convincing the murderers “That it was he [Banquo] in the times past which held you” (3.1.76). The “held you” refers to the times Banquo held back or made poor the murderers.

High morals are usually directly related to the patriotic behaviors shown in the play. When the news of the death of his son reaches Siward, he is strangely unmoved. However, pleased in the knowledge that his son died an honorable man, fighting for his cause, he is happy knowing that his sons wounds were on his chest, that his son was not killed running away, “But like a man he died” (5.8.39-43). Though the boy had not reached physical masculinity, that he was still one of the “unrough youths” (5.2.10), he had proven his manliness through his courage in battle. When Ross tells Siward that his son had marks on the front of his body, his father is proud and brags about his death, "Why then, God's solider be he” (5.8.l46). The boy's father seems to have no grief over his son's death, but instead rejoices that his son “Protest[s] their [his] first of manhood.” This simply means that his son had adequately proven himself worthy to be called a true man.

When it is generally thought that honor, patriotism, and courage are attributes associated with men, the barrier between genders is broken in Macbeth. Especially in terms of violence, women such as Lady Macbeth are capable of murderous and violent actions. Her only barricade is her gender, to do what men do, she must essentially become a man:

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty! (1.5.40-43)

Lady Macbeth is a man trapped in a woman's body. Her masculine nature seeps through her murderous intentions. If the spirits "unsex" her, she won't be bothered by a woman's kindess or remorse. She will be a cruel killer of “direst cruelty,” like a man. Lady Macbeth begins to lose her sanity the night of Duncun's murder and cannot relate to her feelings or guilty conscience. She admits that "she could kill her only child just as easy” (1.7.72-74). All perception of right and wrong lost, Lady Macbeth sinks afterwards into guilt, and eventually commits suicide. Also questioning the barrier separating men from women are the wyrd sisters. Banquo challenges the witches, "you should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so" (1.3.45-47). This gender confusion further symbolizes the confusion Lady Macbeth has in awakening her masculine side.

By the end of the play Macbeth pays dearly for his masculine ways, with death. Ultimately beginning and ending on the battlefield, Macbeth has always agreed that violence and combat was a sure way of proving masculinity. Macduff believed this too, but also thought there was more to a real man than only thoughtless violence. When Macduff realizes that his wife and children have been murdered, he breaks down and begins to weep. Malcolm tells him to “Dispute it like a man” (4.3.259), wanting Macduff to keep his emotions in check. Malcolm affirms his belief that real men don't cry when he says this, but Macduff believes differently, as when he states “I shall do so, / but I must also feel it as a man” (4.3.260). Macduff then promises to convert these emotions into a “manly” revenge against Macbeth. The end of Macbeth reveals there is much more to masculinity than meets physical appearance, that it is only something earned through one's courageous actions and sincere emotions.

To answer the question of madness, the full definition of insanity must be explored. Insanity includes losing touch with reality, lacking the ability to determine right from wrong, or having no concept for the consequences of one's actions. Hamlet proves his sanity when he shows a clear understanding of his situation, believes that he is in the wrong no matter what he does, and realizes the consequences of his actions.

As the play progresses, Hamlet appears to slip into a state of madness. The facts that label Hamlet as a madman are true, but it is the way they are interpreted that will decide if Hamlet's madness is sincere. One main indicator of an unstable mind is the constant mood swings that plague Hamlet throughout the play. When Hamlet first hears of his father's murder he begins to speak “wild and whirling words” (Shakespeare Act I, Scene v).

Furthermore, Hamlet acts very erratically towards Ophelia from then on. He professes to be the only one who truly loves her during the fight with Laertes in Ophelia's grave, but he tells her that he never loved her when she returns his letters and gifts. In one scenario, Hamlet himself tells Laertes that he killed Polonius in a "fit of madness" (Shakespeare Act V, Scene ii). It is Hamlet alone who sees his father's ghost in his mother's chamber. Every other time the ghost appeared someone else has seen it. During this scene he finally shows his evident madness because his mother does not see the ghost.

While there are many arguments for the madness of Hamlet, there are also facts throughout the play that point to the evident sanity of Hamlet. The most obvious of clues to Hamlet's sanity come from Hamlet himself. Hamlet tells Horatio that he is going to "feign madness," and that if Horatio notices any strange behavior from Hamlet, it is because he is putting on an act (Shakespeare Act I, Scene v).

Hamlet tells his mother that he is not mad, "but mad in craft" (Shakespeare Act III, Scene iv). Perhaps the greatest indicator of sanity is that Hamlet's madness only manifests itself when he is in the presence of certain characters. When Hamlet is around Polonius, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he behaves irrationally. When Hamlet is around Horatio, Bernardo, Francisco, The Players and the Gravediggers, he behaves rationally.

The only questionable quality Horatio notes about Hamlet is his inability to “control his wild and whirling moods,” but unstable emotions could very well be a byproduct from Hamlet's traumatizing situation (Kermode 1139). Even the antagonist Claudius confesses that Hamlet's "actions although strange, do not appear to stem from madness" (Shakespeare Act III, Scene i).

Now that the facts concerning the two points of view of Hamlet's madness have been revealed, it is possible to compare the facts for contradictions. The facts gone over in the second paragraph point to the alternate conclusion that Hamlet merely uses his “madness” to his political and social advantage throughout the play. Hamlet hides behind madness because he knows that he will not be seen as committing crimes against the crown, such as mutiny, or conspiracy to kill the king.

This plan works because the king knows that the people of Denmark love Hamlet. If Hamlet is killed while in a brief period of madness, Claudius himself will be up for questioning and his country will turn on him. The deliberate ambiguity which Hamlet puts into his actions can not be described as mad behavior. He is challenging characters such as Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius but challenging them cleverly enough as to not be held responsible from the interpretations that they take.

If Hamlet was truly mad, then he would have had the actions of a mad man. His actions were not mad but of a man far beyond his time, because as he states in the play "time is out of joint" (Shakespeare Act I, Scene v). If he was mad, Hamlet's actions would have been unpredictable and inefficient at achieving revenge. A mad man can not think logically, but Hamlet does the very opposite and analyzes every single action that he does, or does not make. If Hamlet was truly mad then he would display blundering action, not careful hesitation, perhaps by immediately killing the king or taking up his own desires to kill himself.

He makes the world believe he is mad so that he may have the chances that only a mad man could gain, such as challenging authority, killing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Killing Laertes, and finally in the end, getting his revenge of killing Claudius. As stated by Kermode, “Hamlet's problem is a problem of action...” (Kermode 1139). Hamlet does not become insane, but rather becomes saner throughout his plan; he learns about diplomacy, becomes aware of the consequences, and finally, taking the actions that only a true genius could ever wish for, the total annihilation of all that was wrong when he starts his revenge.

Hamlet's methods and intentions were not of a madman, but an overstressed genius far beyond his time. Hamlet craftily employs his technique of madness to avoid the consequences of activities he would have certainly been convicted of had he been acting sane. Hamlet may have also acted mad in retaliation to an acquired social hatred of women.

Andrews reveals this idea when he states “the madness that Hamlet assumes... is the individual symptom of a deeper social malaise” (Andrews 244). No matter the cause of feigned madness, it is in this fashion Hamlet is able to escape punishment for the very act he seeks revenge for, murder. Hamlets methods and intentions contradict the idea of madness and reveal a much smarter Hamlet character than originally perceived.

Don Quixote symbolizes the irrational imagination shared by the universal human spirit. Don Quixote cannot, for instance, identify with the priest's rational perspective and objectives, and Don Quixote's belief in enchantment appears ridiculous to the priest. Toward the end of the Second Part, however, there seems to be a compromise between two incompatible systems of morality, allowing Don Quixote's imaginary world and the commonplace world to infiltrate each other.

Don Quixote also symbolizes great honor in his chivalric endeavors. Don Quixote's obsession with his honor leads him to do battle foolishly with those who never mean him offense. Dorothea's concern for her personal honor leads her to pursue her lover with satisfactory results. In these examples, we see that characters who are primarily concerned with socially prescribed codes of honor such as Don Quixote meet with difficulty, while those who set out merely to protect their own personal honor, such as Dorothea, meet with success.

Don Quixote also revitalizes the concept of romantic love. Though many people in Don Quixote's world seem to have given up on romantic love, Don Quixote and a few other characters hold this ideal to the fullest. Camacho's wedding is a situation in which romantic love rises above all else. Even in the case of Sancho and his wife, romantic love prevails as a significant part of commitment, which we see in Teresa's desire to honor her husband at court. Don Quixote pushes romantic love to the extreme as he idolizes a woman he has never even seen.