In the modern world, is deception able to be differentiated from the truth? If so, by what means? According to who? How does the truth appear? After that but still on the same first page, there was another quote within the paper that stated ″One can only discern fact from fiction through deception, as the act always exposes itself, differentiating the truth and the lie.″, my professor commented: how so? For Hamlet, what is the lie and what is the truth? On the second page where it was stated ″Polonius asks a servant to spread rumors about Laertes to find out what the boy had been doing.″, my professor said: In this scene, what is Polonius′ reasoning about deception? By the third page, there was a quote where it was stated ″However, it is worth noting that deception acts as a risk factor that results in the development of depressive symptoms in Hamlet.″, my professor commented and asked: interesting! What is the precise relationship between self-deception and depression?! By the fourth page, my professor finally had said this to me: Thanks for your really smart draft on deception in Hamlet and its relationship to the state of social relationships in the modern world. I think you do a nice job of selecting scenes from the play for examination and relating them to what you as contemporary problems. In those moments of analysis, I wished you had gone a bit deeper into the text of the play. What exactly do these characters say at these moments about deception and how do you relate the exact text to your argument? Also, I think the question of TRUTH remains obscured in your paper. When/ How does Hamlet ever arrive at the TRUTH? Does it ever satisfy him? You made me think that perhaps a part of living in the modern age is that truth can no longer be defined outside of any one perspective. Perhaps what we can see is ONLY UNTRUTH. In other words, the deception we experience and perpetuate is clear to us, right? But where is the alternative? Perhaps truth is only a way of seeing that we are ALWAYS lying?
