"For there is nothing good or bad but thought makes it so" (2.2, 249-250) Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay From the beginning of Shakespeare's Hamlet it is clear that much of the action is cerebral. The play never leaves the confines of Hamlet's head. You are never sure whether Hamlet's madness is real or invented, or whether his mother's intentions are adulterous or innocent. This is because Hamlet's interpretation of events is the dominant voice of the play. He states that there is no meaning outside of thinking "thinking makes it so" because his thoughts and opinions are the sole arbiter of "good or bad". The action in Samuel Delany's The Tale of Gorgik is similarly limited to the protagonist's interpretation of his world. Gorgik's narrative involves his struggle to constantly read and interpret the foreign world of court life. Both Hamlet and Gorgik must rely on their evolving sense of the action around them to navigate social contexts. Their social navigation is analogous to the reader's experience of navigating a text. Their interpretive positions influence the action of the work just as the reader's interpretation creates the meaning of a text. A symptom of Gorgik and Hamlet's social navigation is that both are intensely involved in the worlds they navigate. They must simultaneously interpret and remain engaged, despite their ignorance of the rules of the world. However, in Gorgik's case, Delany points out that it is the lack of knowledge that grants him a closeness to his new world. But in his ignorance, the young Gorgik was once again closer to the lords and ladies who surrounded him than an equally young potter's boy would have been. Because it is precisely at its center that the clear vision of what surrounds is lost, of what controls and outlines every statement, decides and develops every action, just as the bird does not have a clear concept of the air, although it supports it in his every movement, or the fish no real vision of the water, even if it blurs everything he sees. (52)Gorgik's ignorance allows him to thrive in the world because he is not perceived as a threat. He is "closer to the gentlemen and ladies" than an educated outsider would have been. This is because his interpretive position is an innocent observation. His ignorance gives him an intimacy with the players on the field. He is therefore a part of the world but not of the world. He must interpret and read their actions, but he is too close to the center, too involved in the world to clearly see how it works. It is the bird and the fish that have no knowledge of the medium through which they travel. He is ignorant of his medium but is still able to successfully navigate that medium. Because he "has no clear vision of his surroundings", he relies on his observations for meaning. There is no outside information and Gorgik's interpretation is the only option available. This is the experience of readers who, rather than possessing the presumed distance and knowledge of the apprentice, are instead intensely involved in the text they absorb as it becomes part of their world. The reader must make his or her way through a text by becoming part of the world it contains but, in doing so, becomes part of its world. The text becomes part of her interpretive context and she moves closer to the center and therefore the meaning that resides in her comes closer. It must blur the distinction between itself and the text until the text, like the bird in the air, "holds it every time" and it ceases to be a foreign world. Stanley Fish maintains that in the act of reading, one never possesses an intuition beyondoutside of one's personal context. In "Is there a text in this class?" he argues that "communication occurs within situations and that to be in a situation is to already be in possession of (or be possessed by) a structure of presuppositions. It is in the assumption of these goals and objectives that any expression is immediately heard" (583). A reader has a "structure of assumptions" that color his or her interpretation of the text. These presupposition structures form his context, and his context is how he receives a text. The reader cannot be separated from these structures it is a symbiotic relationship with the reader who owns and is "possessed by" these assumptions. Therefore all interpretation, whether it is Gorgik's reading of his world, or the reader's analysis of a text, depends on the interpreter's "structure of." "A reader's thought makes him so" to the extent that his interpretation is the meaning of the text. Gorgik's social navigation differs from Hamlet's in Gorgik's choice of an interpretive position. He is not ready to evaluate the meaning of what he sees. Evaluate the extent to which it allows him to survive. Because he does not claim to know the motivations behind what he sees, he is able to remain in favor of the royal family. Gorgik is more successful than Hamlet in navigating his world because he alters his interpretation as he goes as Hamlet claims to know the truth about what he sees. Yet he always sees the situation through his paranoid perspective. This choice of static interpretation is demonstrated by Hamlet's inability to kill the king while he is praying. Hamlet finds himself faced with the definitive act of the play. It has consumed him from the moment the game began, yet when faced with the opportunity, he can't do it. He has the opportunity, but he lacks a definitive interpretation of what his act will mean. He reads the act differently than the King and so convinces himself that it is not the right time. "Am I then avenged/to take him in the cleansing of his soul/when he is fit and seasoned for his passage? No" (3.3, 84-87). He sees the King asking for forgiveness and receiving it, while the King reads his own actions very differently: "My words fly high, my thoughts remain low/ Thoughtless words never go to heaven" (3, 3, 97-98). The King thinks he lacks the focus and remorse needed to receive forgiveness. The audience is led to believe that if Hamlet had killed Claudius, he would have died without forgiveness. Hamlet misses his chance for revenge because he stops to decide the meaning of the situation. If put in the same situation, Gorgik would have killed Claudius because he would not have hesitated to judge the true meaning of Claudius' action. Gorgik's interpretive position is not to pretend to know while Hamlet has to constantly remind everyone that he is the only one who knows what is going on Immediately after killing Polonius, he goes on a tirade criticizing his mother for what he has condemned for adulterous behavior : "Sit down / And let me twist your heart; why will I do it / If it is made of penetrable material? Let it be proof and a bulwark against the sense" (3,4, 34-37). He reproaches her and claims to offer the " proof" of his sin. He takes the liberty to rebuke his mother's actions because he claims to be the judge of right and wrong while simply interpreting everything through the lens of emotional turmoil. The play is influenced by Hamlet's dominant voice of justice . Likewise, Gorgik also influences his world. In Gorgik's case, however, the affect is more subtle and perhaps more influential. While the inability to play Hamlet works against him, Gorgik's method of entering and exiting from the context.