Urgent Help with Essay on Hamlet?

[Maria Wallace]

Please help!!!

I have a paper that's due tomorrow and I'm completely stuck on the topic.

The prompt is: "What does Hamlet by William Shakespeare suggest about the interplay of time and opportunities when one seeks to create a meaningful life?"

I need three ideas for a body paragraph and a thesis. Although I hate to be 'outsourcing my work', I've spent days after days on this topic and all my paragraphs end up repeating the same exact idea. I feel terrible and the teacher is gone for a week. Please don't overlook me, I'm desperate.

Edited December 12, 2017 by Maria Wallace

[Nomenclature]

Not at all, I'd love to help you. I'm afraid I can't write your paper, but I actually aspire to an even loftier goal: arming you with the confidence and belief necessary to churn out any IB English paper.

First off, if you've read the play or watched the four hour Branagh rendition (I love that one; it's my favourite); good job. You've done most of the work.

Your paragraphs having the same idea running through them is not a fatal flaw; in fact, it may not be a flaw at all. A good paper of basically any scholarly type is going to echo (not exactly restating) its thesis throughout.

It's not your job to keep your teacher or an IB examiner interested by writing in a plot twist in your third paragraph in which you dramatically change your thesis claiming that a theme of Hamlet is "Power conquers all" to claiming that "Death conquers all". (I chose that at random, but it's oddly fitting for this play). Just focus on proving your thesis, my English teacher used to joke–and it's true–that we weren't going to win any prizes for our IB Lit. analysis essays.

Your main idea of each paragraph can distinguish it, and you don't have to spend a great deal of time worrying about it. I spent much more time crafting my thesis and then picking my evidence. Only after those two tasks did I plan organization and pick "paragraph ideas". I'd advise picking your evidence to support your thesis first, then categorizing the evidence into logical groups, and then making paragraphs out of the groups.

I really wouldn't worry if paragraphs are similar, at least when you're writing it. You can go back and edit that if you feel it's a problem at the end. Also if you try to use varied evidence of different types and different literary devices–always a good practice–your paragraphs should naturally sound a bit different. 

Good luck.