An Examination of Revenge and Forgiveness
The project An Eye for an Eye or "Drown the Book" consisted of reading The Tempest, by William Shakespeare as well as many other articles that all related the the themes of revenge and forgiveness. For about 3 weeks, we read The Tempest aloud in class and discussed vengeance and what the characters gained or lost in the book because of revenge. Once we finished reading, we looked at several articles about the 1992 LA Riots, the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp, the story of Oshea Israel, and the stories of holocaust survivors. Each article was focused on revenge and forgiveness, and how people benefitted from each in certain situations. After reading each article, we had "silent discussions" in class in which we would write and respond to each others thoughts on paper rather than speaking out loud. This was one of my favorite parts of this project because we were able to read people's entire thoughts and reply to them without being distracted by noise or being tempted to interrupt or talk over them. I felt that I "listened" to people more during the silent discussions than during any other discussion we had. When we had read, discussed, and taken notes on all the events we were studying, we created claims in groups. These claims expressed our opinion on forgiveness and/or revenge and which we though was better. My group's claim was: "Although vengeance appears to be a fast, easy solution, it impedes judgement and often causes destruction, whereas forgiveness (though it may take time) lifts the burden of suffering or guilt and provides both parties with a sense of peace and the ability to move forward." We then narrowed the amount of claims in the class to 4 and everyone chose one that they wanted to defend. In these groups, we found evidence to support our claim such as quotes from "The Tempest" or other articles we researched. I chose to defend the claim "Revenge is easier and more satisfying". To finalize this portion of the project and show that we had learned from our research, we held a Socratic Seminar in which we had the opportunity to defend our claim. The Socratic Seminar was a great way to see what everyone else's opinions were and how they used evidence to support what they believed in. Below are some pictures of my work from this project. Two of the documents are examples of the notes we took while reading The Tempest, and one is a reflection on the article about Dachau. To read my group's claim and notes for the socratic seminar, click here.