It’s just a question!
New AP Taylor Swift Podcast episode: "...Question?" Deep Dive out now!
In this week’s episode, we do a deep dive into the ultimate rhetorical question song from Taylor Swift - “Question…?” from Midnights. We get into our own questions, such as who is the “I,” the “you,” and the “her” in the story? What were the miscommunications? Was this a one-night stand or a longer situationship? While we never get any answers to the questions asked within the song, you'll have to tune in to see whether we answer our own questions about “Question…?”
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This Week’s Extra Credit - Brought to You By Maansi
In last week’s episode, we got into rhetorical questions and what purpose they serve in writing. In this week’s episode, we dove deeper into one particular “…Question?” And so, for today’s substack, I wanted to go beyond just rhetorical questions and focus on a few famous questions in literature & history.
“To be, or not to be, that is the question” - William Shakespeare
The OG pop star Shakespeare once wrote, “To be, or not to be, that is the question” in his play Hamlet. The famous quote and question comes as a part of an important monologue when Hamlet is contemplating whether to live or die. Hamlet is one of those plays that almost everyone has read at some point but the details get hazy — and rightly so, it is an insanely complicated play, in which, by the end of the play, 9 of the 11 main characters lay dead. What you may remember is that Hamlet’s uncle is responsible for killing Hamlet’s father and Hamlet is faced with the difficult decision of whether or not to kill his uncle. Chaos ensues when Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, the father of Hamlet’s love, instead of his uncle.
The line “To be, or not to be” is perhaps one of the most famous and most recognizable lines in Shakespeare’s plays, but also in English literature. In fact, in prepping for those post, I asked several people I know about some famous literary questions, and unanimously, people said this line. But what is it that makes it so special? But what does this line mean? Many people interpret this line as Hamlet contemplating suicide. Death is an important theme throughout Hamlet, which opens with the death of his father, and suicide specifically makes an appearance when Hamlet’s love Ophelia kills herself. This line has perhaps resonated with so many through the centuries because it is a very simple, poetic question that hits the crux of human questioning. What does it mean to simply exist — to be?
The full soliloquy is:
To be, or not to be, that is the question,
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.—Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
“Does the Absurd dictate death?” - Albert Camus
In the same vein as the above quote, Albert Camus contemplated a similar question of suicide in his famous work, The Myth of Sisyphus. The Myth of Sisyphus is referencing the Greek story of Sisyphus in which Zeus punishes King Sisyphus, who tries to betray death. You may remember this story as the one in which a man (Sisyphus) is forced to repeatedly roll a boulder to the top of the hill, only to have the boulder roll back down, and kickstart the cycle again. Camus, an important 20th century philosopher, introduces the concept of the Absurd by comparing the absurdity of life to that of Sisyphus’ situation. The important question he asks in this book is “Does the Absurd dictate death?”
This book was published in 1942 in French, and 1955 in English, and came at a time when Europeans were feeling incredibly disenchanted by life. The anxieties of the day, the Great War, the depression, the Holocaust, World War II were the backdrop of the existentialism movement, of which Camus was an important voice. The question he asks is one of suicide — whether life is worth living in an absurd and unpredictable world? Truly a delightful and illuminating read in my humble opinion, Camus ultimately concludes that we must imagine that Sisyphus is happy, because the struggle of pushing the rock up the mountain is what gives life meaning.
“What happens to a dream deferred?” - Langston Hughes
Around the same time that The Myth of Sisyphus was making waves, there was another important question confronting another issue of the times. Langston Hughes was an African American social activist, poet, and playwright who also happened to live in our favorite pop star’s favorite city, New York.
In his poem “Harlem” is a commentary on the social injustice of race inequality. He opens the poem with this important question of “what happens to a dream deferred?” The underlying understanding is that those who face discrimination and inequalities of any sort fall victims to their dreams being deferred. The rest of the poem explores the answer — the consequences of inequality.
The full text of the poem is:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?