“Shakespeare in The Bush” Summary Paper

The story “Shakespeare In The Bush” was written by an American Anthropologist, Laura Bohannan. This is “Shakespeare in The Bush” summary paper. To start with, this story is a perfect lesson to showcase that language and literature are open to many interpretations around the world and, different parts of the world understands a particular story only based on what they have been taught and engrained in their own culture. The thesis statement could be found in the third paragraph, when Bohannan states “human nature is pretty much the same the whole world over; at least the general plot and motivation of the greater tragedies would always be clear—everywhere”. The statement indicates that Bohannan assumed that any story that we know and interpreted here in the west is also understood the same way across the world.

The author starts with a friendly argument with her British friend regarding the understanding and interpretation of Shakespeare’s literature. We are able to see that her friend states Shakespeare as “a very English poet” and people across the world would definitely misunderstand his literal meaning. Laura Bohannan seemed to disagree with this statement as she believed the plots and motivations of Shakespeare’s play would be clearly evident due to human nature is usually universal around the world.

Regardless of her disagreement, she however does take to account that Shakespeare’s translation could be slightly different and open to interpretation. As she prepared to head to Africa, her friend gave her a copy of Hamlet hoping that Laura could use this to find the true interpretation. Her trip to Africa becomes an eye opener as she becomes aware that traditional customs, culture and translations has a big impact in the interpretation of Shakespeare’s stories and that his plots and motivations were not universal as she thought prior to this trip.

During her stay with the Tiv tribe, Laura got the opportunity to tell them the story of Hamlet. She began with the appearance of Hamlet’s father’s ghost and right away, an elder questioned the concept of ghosts because, ghosts and life after death was something new to them. They began convincing her that the author had the story wrong. As per the Tivs’ culture, ghosts are spirits that are sent by a witch. It started to become obvious that their customs and traditions are what lead to their interpretation of the Hamlet, thus changing the plot drastically

The elders in the tribe had their own version of explanations to the story. They believed that prince Hamlet was bewitched and that is what caused his strange behavior. Moreover, they also had an explanation for the ghost - in their belief, the ghost of the former king was a spirit by the witch, sent to let prince Hamlet know the real cause of his father’s death. Even though these answers provided by the Tiv elders were not the same views Shakespeare had, Laura found it captivating and decided to go along with it. Throughout the story, the author was gradually learning the Tiv culture and, their belief systems did not line up with the original storyline that Shakespeare wrote.

To end “Shakespeare in The Bush” Laura Bohannan summary paper, going back to the argument Laura had with her friend at the beginning, it was clear to her that her British friend was in fact right. The difference between the two cultures had a huge impact on the interpretation of the story of Hamlet. Regardless of the inaccurate story predictions by the Tiv elders, Laura Bohannan failed to prove that the plots and motivations of Shakespeare’s plays were universal. The Tiv’s had a different way of justifying the progression of the story’s plot and individual character’s motives. The author also failed to take it serious enough that the customs and traditions of the Tiv tribe would impact the analysis of the Hamlet. In the end, Laura Bohannan learns that the main reason for these differences in opinion is culture. Considering the cultural differences between the west - the author herself and her friend, and the African tribe - Tiv seems clear as to why a Shakespeare story would be interpreted in different ways.