Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most famous work of tragedy. Throughout the play the title character, Hamlet, tends to seek revenge for his father’s death. Shakespeare achieved his work in Hamlet through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces that hunt Hamlet throughout the play: moral integrity and the need to avenge his father’s murder. When Hamlet sets his mind to revenge his fathers’ death, he is faced with many challenges that delay him from committing murder to his uncle Claudius, who killed Hamlets’ father, the former king. During this delay, he harms others with his actions by acting irrationally, threatening Gertrude, his mother, and by killing Polonius which led into the madness and death of Ophelia. Hamlet ends up deceiving everyone around him, and also himself, by putting on a mask of insanity. In spite of the fact that Hamlet attempts to act morally in order to kill his uncle, he delays his revenge of his fathers’ death, harming others by his irritating actions. Despite Hamlets’ decisive character, he comes to a point where he realizes his tragic limits. Throughout the play, Hamlet thinks about the moral consequences of revenge, and as a result his revenge is delayed. Morality is the quality of being in accord with the standards of right or good conduct. In Hamlet, Hamlet struggles morally to accomplish his fathers’ ghost demand of revenging for him. A great example of Hamlet acting morally, is when as he was heading to his mother, who asked for him, he sees the king in church praying to God for forgiveness. When he sees the king praying, he thought it will be better if he killed him now in order to end his struggle. But as he was approaching the king to revenge his fathers’ death, he is he... ... middle of paper ... ... his own limitations and the futility of his attempts to grasp the ultimate truth, he decides to terminate his endless questioning and reasoning, and fearlessly takes the step into the action. The weight of these emotions pushes Hamlet to the edge of his limits, and soon leads him to the point of contemplating death. As shown through textual evidence, Hamlet attempts to act morally. That he does not take action unless he is assured that it will accomplish what he desires. Additionally, during the delay to gain revenge for his father, he not only deceives himself, but also the people around him. Hamlet is a man of many discoveries. The tragic hero in Shakespeare's Hamlet undergoes many changes throughout the play. His mindset is set deep and far away from the physical world that both helps him and hinders him in his plight for revenge against his uncle, Claudius.
William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is the dramatic story of a son who felt betrayed by both his mother, and the woman that he loved. Written in the Elizabethan era, around 1600, “Shakespeare's focus on Hamlet's intellectual conflicts was a significant departure from contemporary revenge tragedies… which tended to dramatize violent acts graphically on stage” (Hamlet). The play depicts Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, who it visited by the ghost of his father, King Hamlet. The ghost reveals how he was murdered by his brother Claudius, who then claimed the title of King, and married Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. Hamlet vows to avenge his father’s untimely death. Hamlet is in love with Ophelia, but her brother, Laertes, and father, Polonius, warn her that Hamlet can never really love her. Ophelia, following her father’s wishes, is unwittingly enlisted to spy on Hamlet, which leaves him feeling betrayed. Hamlet rejects Ophelia, accidently stabs and kills Polonius, and then hides the body. Ophelia becomes so distraught over her father’s death, that she ultimately drowns herself. Hamlet is devastated when he learns of Ophelia’s death. The play culminates with a sword fight between Hamlet and Laertes. Hamlet’s mother dies from inadvertently drinking poisoned wine that was intended to kill Hamlet. Laertes and Hamlet are both stabbed with a poison-tipped sword, but before dying, Laertes confesses that Claudius was the mastermind behind everything. Hamlet forces Claudius to also drink the wine and the irony is that everyone dies in the end. One of the most controversial topics in history is the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia. Hamlet’s letters express his sincere feelings, and reveal that he was very much in love with Ophe...
Hamlet is a character that we love to read about and analyze. His character is so realistic, and he is so romantic and idealistic that it is hard not to like him. He is the typical young scholar facing the harsh reality of the real world. In this play, Hamlet has come to a time in his life where he has to see things as they really are. Hamlet is an initiation story. Mordecai Marcus states "some initiations take their protagonists across a threshold of maturity and understanding but leave them enmeshed in a struggle for certainty"(234). And this is what happens to Hamlet.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the title character is one of histories greatest examples of a tragic hero. Hamlet is born a prince and is seen throughout the play as a hero, but soon the reader begins to see a flaw emerge. Throughout the play, Hamlet exhibits indecision and procrastination. These two traits are his tragic flaws that lead to his death. Hamlet at many times during the play has a chance to avenge his fathers’ death and kill Claudius. At one point Hamlet gives a whole soliloquy debating on whether or not to kill his Uncle, “And ...
One single moment or event during the course of an individual’s life can effectively alter their priorities and transform their identity drastically. In The play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare introduces the readers to the protagonist Hamlet who is draped in anger and emotions and has a new-found mission in life. Initially, Hamlet is portrayed as an individual in mourning over his father's death and his mother's haste in remarrying to her brother-in-law and Hamlet's uncle, Claudius. However, Hamlet’s character and personality were drastically altered after meeting the Ghost and discovering the true nature of his Father’s death. Hamlet is now a man with a lust for revenge and a willingness to do anything that will enable him to accomplish this goal. When burdened with the task of killing Claudius, Hamlet chooses to sacrifice all he holds dear by transforming his identity in a noble effort to avenge his father’s death.
Hamlet is a bitter tragedy of revenge and deceit. Unbeknownst to Hamlet, his father, the king of Denmark, is murdered by his own brother, Claudius — who then marries the queen and assumes the throne. Hamlet is visited by his father’s ghost, who compels him to enact revenge upon his uncle — but spare his mother. Hamlet finally decides to stage a play in which there is a poisoning scene, meant to stir his uncle into panic. Hamlet’s plan is successful, but he, in a fit of rage, accidentally...
In Hamlet, the protagonist Hamlet faced many dilemmas that led to his transformation throughout the play. The people around him and the ghost of his father dramatically affect him. Seeing his father’s ghost had changed his fate and the person he had become. The path he chose after his encounter with his father’s ghost led to his death.
Hamlet is a victim of himself in this play. Throughout the entire play Hamlet is very confused, indecisive, and blinded by his mission for vengeance. It also seems that while he is angry about the murder of his father he tries to maintain certain relationships, for example the relationship with his mother, to a fault of allowing himself to be deceived. It is clear many times during the play that Hamlet is confused as to how to proceed in certain situations. These are actions of a person that does not have the clear thought of a mature man.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a tragic play about murder, betrayal, revenge, madness, and moral corruption. It touches upon philosophical ideas such as existentialism and relativism. Prince Hamlet frequently questions the meaning of life and the degrading of morals as he agonizes over his father’s murder, his mother’s incestuous infidelity, and what he should or shouldn’t do about it. At first, he is just depressed; still mourning the loss of his father as his mother marries his uncle. After he learns about the treachery of his uncle and the adultery of his mother, his already negative countenance declines further. He struggles with the task of killing Claudius, feeling burdened about having been asked to find a solution to a situation that was forced upon him.Death is something he struggles with as an abstract idea and as relative to himself. He is able to reconcile with the idea of death and reality eventually.
Hamlet has an enormous amount of stress placed on him by the events of his father’s death and his mother’s hasty marriage. Hamlet’s mentality is further stressed by his father’s appearance in the form of a ghost telling Hamlet the true cause of his death, “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown” (Shakespeare 1.5.38-39), and more importantly telling Hamlet to avenge his death and to never forget him (1.5). This must weigh heavily on Hamlet’s mind as he tries to bring himself to carry out such a corrupt act. As Javed describes Hamlet’s ordeal as, “having taken on unwillingly the task of the revenge whose narrower function may have been to avenge a wronged kinsman, but whose wider one was to purge from society the evil which it could not otherwise escape” (332.) The corruption of Hamlet’s character is tragic because as Polonius says: “the safety and health of [the] whole state” depends on him (Shakespeare 1.3.20). The first drastic demonstration of Hamlet’s corruption is shown when he finds Polonius hiding behind a curtain . Hamlet, who believes his uncle Claudius is spying on him, stabs at the curtain, inadvertently killing Polonius. As Dr. Topchyan describes this act, Hamlet does it in “unrestrained passion,” unexpectedly even for himself. His deed, dictated by the situation, is impulsive, not deliberate – an instinctive action, a desperate
Hamlet’s mourning about the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother drives him to madness. This is the main characters inner tragedy that Shakespeare expresses in the play. First he considers suicide but the ghost of King Hamlet sends him on a different path, directing him to revenge his death. Shakespeare uses Hamlet to articulate his thoughts about life, death and revenge. Being a moral character he must decide if revenge is the right thing to do. Shakespeare relays many scenarios of reasoning to the audience about mankind His hero sets the wrongs on mankind right again.
In Hamlet Prince of Denmark young Hamlet is left facing the outcomes of the conflict his father had with his brother. Old Hamlet is dead, killed by his own brother for the thrown of Denmark. Young Hamlet is in deep morning over the loss of his father and now he has to handle the remarriage of his mother to his own uncle, the man who in cold blood killed his father. Hamlet, with the death of his father, is acting strangely but his whole outlook changes for the worst when his father's ghost visits him. He finds out the true causes of his death and he is influenced by his father to seek revenge. Hamlet's father tells his son to kill his uncle, Claudius because he is the cause of his death. Hamlet loved his father deeply and would do anything for him. He becomes enraged with anger and hate for Claudius and begins to plot his revenge, Claudius' own death. Throughout the play his father's ghost visits Hamlet. Even after his death he has a great control over his son and his actions. These visits are a constant reminder to Hamlet of the truth. Knowing the truth of his father's death has driven Hamlet to the brink of insanity. The only thing he can think of is revenge. His father's death and prior conflict with his brother has left Hamlet in a position of honoring his father and doing right by him, and the only thing he sees fit to do is rid himself of the man that brought about the anger Hamlet is feeling. In the end Hamlet finally gets the revenge he sought with the death of Claudius.
Hamlet is one of the most often-performed and studied plays in the English language. The story might have been merely a melodramatic play about murder and revenge, butWilliam Shakespeare imbued his drama with a sensitivity and reflectivity that still fascinates audiences four hundred years after it was first performed. Hamlet is no ordinary young man, raging at the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother and his uncle. Hamlet is cursed with an introspective nature; he cannot decide whether to turn his anger outward or in on himself. The audience sees a young man who would be happiest back at his university, contemplating remote philosophical matters of life and death. Instead, Hamlet is forced to engage death on a visceral level, as an unwelcome and unfathomable figure in his life. He cannot ignore thoughts of death, nor can he grieve and get on with his life, as most people do. He is a melancholy man, and he can see only darkness in his future—if, indeed, he is to have a future at all. Throughout the play, and particularly in his two most famous soliloquies, Hamlet struggles with the competing compulsions to avenge his father’s death or to embrace his own. Hamlet is a man caught in a moral dilemma, and his inability to reach a resolution condemns himself and nearly everyone close to him.
Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies. At first glance, it holds all of the common occurrences in a revenge tragedy which include plotting, ghosts, and madness, but its complexity as a story far transcends its functionality as a revenge tragedy. Revenge tragedies are often closely tied to the real or feigned madness in the play. Hamlet is such a complex revenge tragedy because there truly is a question about the sanity of the main character Prince Hamlet. Interestingly enough, this deepens the psychology of his character and affects the way that the revenge tragedy takes place. An evaluation of Hamlet’s actions and words over the course of the play can be determined to see that his ‘outsider’ outlook on society, coupled with his innate tendency to over-think his actions, leads to an unfocused mission of vengeance that brings about not only his own death, but also the unnecessary deaths of nearly all of the other main characters in the revenge tragedy.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a very clear and moral order is established as Hamlet completes his journey through the phases which define a Shakespearean tragedy. The play begins with Hamlet seeing his father’s ghost. He finds out that his father had been murdered by his uncle Claudius. After Hamlets encounter with the ghost, it is his wish to avenge his father. This causes all other moral dilemmas in the play, and is what defines the plays moral order. As the play continues Hamlet is always trying to remain morally in the right, always taking the precaution to remain so. As the play goes on, and Hamlet learns that Claudius now trying to kill him continues attempting to right the original wrong, and he does succeed at the end with Claudius’ death. Hamlets words “thus bad begins, and worse remains behind” (Act III, Scene IV) illustrate the moral order. The actions against him were wrong, but to a lesser extent, so was his revenge.
Hamlet is the best known tragedy in literature today. Here, Shakespeare exposes Hamlet’s flaws as a heroic character. The tragedy in this play is the result of the main character’s unrealistic ideals and his inability to overcome his weakness of indecisiveness. This fatal attribute led to the death of several people which included his mother and the King of Denmark. Although he is described as being a brave and intelligent person, his tendency to procrastinate prevented him from acting on his father’s murder, his mother’s marriage, and his uncle’s ascension to the throne.