Hamlet -- Theme
There is lively critical debate about the themes in the Shakespearean drama Hamlet and their proper ranking in importance. This paper hopes to discuss the some of the main themes and their significance in the play.
Is procrastination the main theme of the drama? D.G. James in his essay, “The New Doubt,” expresses his view:
But few of us will deny that Hamlet’s procrastination is the major fact in the play and that it was intended by Shakespeare to be so. But are we really to find his procrastination a mystery and to leave it a mystery? Is there really anything mysterious about a man who has come to no clear and practiced sense of life, and who in the face of a shocking situation which quite peculiarly involves him, shuffles, deceives himself, procrastinates, and in his exasperation cruelly persecutes the person he loves best in the world? (46)
Perhaps the most popular theme in the play is that of revenge. R.A. Foakes in “The Play’s Courtly Setting” explains the burden of revenge which the protagonist must carry for the duration of the play:
And where there is no legal punishment for his father’s death, he must stoop, driven by the universal wrong, and “being thus be-netted round with villainies”, to revenge. He must share the corruption of others in spite of his nobility, and recognize in himself the common features, "we are arrant knaves all." (53)
In the essay “Hamlet: His Own Falstaff,” Harold Goddard makes a statement of the two main themes of the play, namely war and revenge, relating them to the final scene:
The dead Hamlet is borne out “like a soldier” and the last rites over his body are to be the rites of war. The final word of the ...
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... and Production. No. 9. Ed. Allardyce Nicoll. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. P., 1956.
James, D.G. “The New Doubt.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Hamlet. Ed. David Bevington. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.
Levin, Harry. General Introduction. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974.
Neill, Michael. “None Can Escape Death, the ‘Undiscovered Country’.” Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. of “Hamlet: A Modern Perspective.” The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. N. P.: Folger Shakespeare Lib., 1992.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line nos.
There are many topics deeply hidden in the works of William Shakespeare. One of his greatest pieces of works is the story of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Not only are the words of Shakespeare meaningful, but there are also many follow up pieces of literature that contain important interpretations of the events in this play. These works about Hamlet are extremely beneficial to the reader. I have found four of these works and will use them as sources throughout this essay. The first source is “The Case of Hamlet’s Conscience,” by Catherine Belsey, and it focuses on the topic of Hamlet’s revenge in the play. The second source is “’Never Doubt I Love’: Misreading Hamlet,” by Imtiaz Habib, and it explains a lot of information about Hamlet’s “love” for Ophelia. The third source is “Shakespeare’s Hamlet, III.i.56—88,” by Horst Breuer, and it talks in depth about the issue of suicide in Hamlet. The fourth and final source is “Shakespeare’s Hamlet 1.2.35-38,” by Kathryn Walls, and it describes the significance of the role the Ghost plays throughout Hamlet. There are many different confusing parts in Hamlet and the best way to fully understand the play is to understand all of these parts. By understanding every miniscule detail in the play, it creates a different outlook on the play for the reader. In this essay, I will explain these confusing topics, as well as explain why the sources are helpful and what insight they can bring. At the end is this essay, the reader will have a complete understanding and appreciation of the play Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Shakespeare, William. “The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. 9th Ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2009. Print
Almost all people know who serial killers are, but what exactly defines a serial killer. The FBI defines serial murder as “a minimum of three to four victims with a ‘cooling off’ period between, the killer is usually a stranger to the victim, the murders reflect a need to sadistically dominate the victim, and the murder is rarely for profit.” (Vronsky, 2004, p.36) Serial killers are usually a white male from a lower-to-middle-class background typically in his twenties or thirties. Also, 85% of the world’s serial killers live in America, with at least twenty to fifty unidentified active serial killers plotting another one of their killings. On average, every person has seen or met at least 37 serial killers in their lifespan.
Serial killers are people who kill three or more victims over a period of more than thirty days with a cooling off period between each murder. Their murders usually have some of the same characteristics.
Serial killers have many frightening facets. The most frightening thing about them is that experts still do not know what makes a human become a serial killer. Many experts believe serial killers become what they are because they have a genetic disposition or brain abnormality while other experts believe that a serial killer is created by childhood abuse; and some other experts believe that it is a combination of both brain abnormalities and abusive childhood experiences that creates a serial killer. A murderer is considered a serial killer when they “murder three or more persons in at least three separate events with a “cooling off period” between kills” (Mitchell and Aamodt 40). When defining a serial killer, their background, genes, and brain are not mentioned; perhaps one day those aspects of the serial killer can be included.
A child might assume the words “serial killer” refer to devouring a box of cereal. However, as seen throughout many murders, this innocence and gullibility is to be envied. For in this world, there are greater crimes than “killing” a cereal box-one of which being the “killing” of a human being. Today’s America has seen some of the worst serial killers- Jeffery Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy. However, the phrase “serial killer” had to be originated somewhere, as did these serial killers, starting with Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, America’s first serial killer. From elaborate architecture to entrap and kill its victims to simply tapping someone over a cliff to their deaths, Dr. Henry Howard Holmes could
As if molded directly from the depths of nightmares, both fascinating and terrifying. Serial killers hide behind bland and normal existences. They are often able to escape being caught for years, decades and sometimes an eternity. These are America’s Serial Killers (America’s Serial Killers). “Even when some of them do get caught, we may not recognize what they are because they don’t [sic] match the distorted image we have of serial killers” (Brown). What is that distorted image? That killers live among everyday life, they are the ones who creep into someone’s life unknowingly to torture and kill them. The serial killers that are in the movies, Norman Bates, Michael Myers, and the evil master mind of SAW, these characters are just that characters. They have been made up as exaggerated fictional characters from the Hollywood imagination.
Manning, John. "Symbola and Emblemata in Hamlet." New Essays on Hamlet. Ed. Mark Thornton Burnett and John Manning. New York: AMS Press, 1994. 11-18.
Introduction: On the spectrum of criminal activity, serial killers are rather rare. Rarer still is a serial killer like Ted Bundy. Bundy confessed to killing 28 women in the 1970s in ghastly fashion and some believe he may have killed far more. It is hard to imagine what could cause any person to cross the mental boundary into such macabre behavior as Bundy perpetrated. Nevertheless, it is important to try to understand that behavior because only though such an understanding would society be able to identify and deter mass murderers in order to save lives.
A serial killer is a person who commits more than two murders with a cooling off period in between each one (). Serial killers in society all have similar characteristics and patterns that can be detected, however each killer has different aspects to them. For example, how and why they kill. Psychologists have been able to find similarities between killers that can help spot behaviors of a killer. Researchers also know that serial killers are often psychopaths that have experienced some type of assault or neglect. Ultimately there is no answer as to why serial killers do what they do yet, and psychologist are hoping to find enough research to be able to identify, treat, and prevent serial killers in the future.
Brogaard, Berit, DMSci, PhD, and Kristian Marlow. "The Making of a Serial Killer." N.p., 7 Dec. 2012. Web. 29 Oct. 2013.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is arguably one of the best plays known to English literature. It presents the protagonist, Hamlet, and his increasingly complex path through self discovery. His character is of an abnormally complex nature, the likes of which not often found in plays, and many different theses have been put forward about Hamlet's dynamic disposition. One such thesis is that Hamlet is a young man with an identity crisis living in a world of conflicting values.
Cars or motorcycles need transmissions because of the physics of the gasoline engine. First of all any engine has a redline. A red line is the maximum rpm value above which the engine cannot go without blowing up and sending parts flying everywhere. Transmissions use gears and gear ratios to keep the engine running under its redline. Secondly, transmissions are needed in order to keep the engine in its maximum torque range. Without a transmission the engine would not be efficient at all, because it would never stay in the rpm range with the most power (Brain, n.d.). The whole philosophy behind shifting gears is to keep the engine in its best possible working range. When talking about transmissions there are essentially two different types of them; automatic and manual. A manual transmission simply means that the driver has to shift his or her own gears. An automatic transmission selects the...
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.
In the tragedy of Hamlet Shakespeare does not concern himself with the question whether blood-revenge is justified or not; it is raised only once and very late by the protagonist (v,ii,63-70) and never seriously considered. The dramatic and psychological situation rather than the moral issue is what seems to have attracted Shakespeare, and he chose to develop it, in spite of the hard-to-digest and at times a little obscure, elements it might involve [. . .] . (118-19)