I apologize for missing your call earlier; coincidentally, I was in the middle of studying for my Humanities 1 final. After listening to your voicemail about whether or not I suggest taking Western Civilization 1 at Providence, I would have to say that I would recommend taking it. I know you are currently an accounting major and do not think it is a class worth taking, but I firmly believe that the material required provides fundamental concepts that will benefit you for your future career in the business world. Three works in particular that I think you will benefit most from are Hamlet by Shakespeare, Antigone by Sophocles and The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. Three characters in particular that would be of most importance …show more content…
In the accounting world, your debits must always equal your credits when recording financial statements. In Hamlet we can see this principle used when Hamlet attempts to figure out if his uncle Claudius killed his father Hamlet Sr. In order to correctly complete financial statements you must be diligent in allocating your assets, liabilities and owners equity in order to provide accurate information for your business. In the playwright we see Hamlet Sr. come to Hamlet as a ghost telling him how his brother Claudius killed him. This can correlate to your boss providing you with all the cash receipts and financial statements for a business that you will later have to provide a trial balance, income statement and balance sheet for. Just like your boss provides you with the necessary information to complete the task, we see Hamlet Sr. provide Hamlet with the actual outcome of the death of his father. Now this may sound like a stretch but consider this, when your boss gives you the necessary documents to complete the task you are assigned do you accept what he gives you and trust that everything adds up? Or, do you go in depth and analyze each document in order to figure out each step to the ending balance equaling the same amount? Hamlet does not just accept what the ghost tells him, he contemplates how he can prove this to the people of Denmark. Just like in accounting, everything in life must add up and in this case Hamlet chooses to figure out how to methodically go about solving the problem instead of acting on impulse. Hamlet stages a play reenacting exactly what Hamlet Sr. had told him to see if he could get any reaction out of his uncle Claudius and he does exactly that. We see here how a fundamental concept of accounting can relate to your potential real life scenarios, in which your Western Civilization course can further teach