Shakespeare in the Bush

In this story Laura Bohannan is telling to story of Hamlett. She starts to tell some people that she thinks will understand the story and enjoy it. So she starts to tell it and not to long into the story the people start asking her questions about some of the things she is saying in the story. They don’t agree with some of the things in the story and they are being very ethnocentric towards it and this starts to bother her as it would me too. “His question barely penetrated my mind; I was too upset and thrown too fat off balance by having one of the most important elements of Hamlet knocked straight out of the picture” (218). I don’t understand why the people can’t just listen to the story and know that since its a story there will probably be some things in it that they themselves don’t agree with. “Two years is too long,’ objected the wife, who had appeared with the old man’s battered goatskin bag. ‘Who will hoe your farms for you while you have no husband?” (219). This is just one of the comments that someone made. They are looking at things from their own point of view and how there culture tells them those things should be. But back in hamlets time the culture told them that they shouldn’t rush into a marriage and they should morn for two years after a death. I think the people that were listening need to understand the other point of view and look at the situation sociologically. They are judging the story based on their own values and beliefs not on those of the time that culture was. The people also had a problem when she was talking about the omen. The were arguing about how omens couldn’t talk and the differences between an omen and a ghost. They weren’t even willing to listen to the story because they were just picking away at it and finding things in it that they didn’t agree with in their culture. “Omens can’t talk! The old man was empathetic” (220). “What is a ghost? An Omen?’ (220). “But again they objected. ‘Dead men cast no shadows” (220). “Dead men can’t walk,’ protested my audience as one man” (220).