Various Lenses

Objective writing can be difficult due to the influence of various social milieus. Influences radiate from many sources including the ever-intruding personal world and personal relationships. In addition, one’s upbringing can also color his or her perspective. However, tempered writers are aware of these influences and try not to be lead astray from their true intent. Two such seasoned writers are William Shakespeare and Michael Herr. Shakespeare and Herr are inherently products of their respective eras, yet one commonality these literary geniuses do share is the talent for pungently depicting the character’s world. Although William Shakespeare and Michael Herr narrate to perfection circumstance, Herr focuses more on the sociological perspective while Shakespeare captures psychological conflict.

Given the accounts by Shakespeare and Herr overflow with lucid detail, Shakespeare’s role as an observer more often than not allows him to study personal conflict better than the author Herr. Secondly, Shakespeare elaborates more on the humanity experience while Herr initiates his audience into the bigger picture by actively participating as a correspondent himself. In addition, perspective can also become likewise influenced according to an individual author’s personality, albeit an introvert or an extrovert. If Shakespeare actively participated as a correspondent himself during Vietnam, his outlook would consist of the injustice to humanity or of some aspect of the human experience. However one difference between Shakespeare and Herr is likened to the assertion that Shakespeare uses the characters themselves as a model for humanity while Herr applies the experience itself to describe humanity.

It is evident that humanity can be studied through many different lenses when comparing Shakespeare’s choice of verbiage to Herr’s summary of events. In many of Shakespeare’s works, psychological conflicts subtly call into question humanity compared to Herr’s obvious comments about the soldier’s deplorable conditions in Vietnam. Shakespeare also takes the liberty of employing soliloquies, as if to express to a barely perceptible audience one’s personal health. Another difference is that Shakespeare’s characters are forced into the public sphere no matter their personal conflicts, while Herr’s character’s seem to have more a choice given the bigger picture notwithstanding war. This variance also hints of the individual tones in writing, perhaps in part due to most of Shakespeare’s life being in the public eye whereas Herr’s was not, at least before his career.

Shakespeare and Herr also go against public consensus, even if the style of defiance is increasingly obvious in Herr’s case as a pencil-toting soldier. In the same vein, Shakespeare’s covert plots faintly indicates his characters are independent of their own accord. In contrast, Herr’s personal milieu before Vietnam allowed him more objectivity in comparison to Shakespeare. Yet once in the drama of the war, Herr was too close to the situation to write objectively. In short, immersion in a social milieu doesn’t necessarily promise objectivity, as the respective characters are indeed a cog on the sociological wheel. On the other hand, distancing oneself from current events exemplifies the observer from being too close to the situation. Therefore Shakespeare’s and Herr’s artistry via words is not only influenced by their particular milieu, but their respective work is also relevant to the voice of an era.