The Existential Hero: Hamlet

797 Words2 Pages

To be without value or meaning permits the violation of norm behavioral standards. Existentialism is championed in the responsibility and free will of man. The world is utterly “worthless, meaningless, empty, and hopeless, … to use a favorite Existentialism, absurd”(Ross 1). A man must become unconventional by supplying an authentic meaning to life. Shakespeare’s character Hamlet in the play Hamlet, explores these existential principles as he seeks truth and understanding after his father’s murder. He attempts to establish order in a chaotic world full of betrayal, spying, and death. This leads to Hamlet’s inevitable downfall and the death of those close to him. Hamlet rises as the existential hero in Shakespeare’s Hamlet through his confrontation with moral responsibilities and the purpose of life. The existential ideal gives structure and meaning to the action of Hamlet.
Hamlet is a conflicted character. He is maddened by his father’s, the King of Denmark, murder and his mother’s, Queen Gertrude, untimely marriage to his uncle, King Claudius, who is also his father’s murderer. It is a tangled web of lies, death, and duplicity that Hamlet lives in. “Denmark [certainly] is a prison” for him (II.2.262). Hamlet becomes withdrawn in the play, no longer having an enthusiastic and playful demeanor. His relationship with his mother is destroyed, he denounces Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Ophelia, and he becomes estranged with society as he feigns insanity. He is the quintessential character for Jean Paul Sartre’s existential principle that “Hell is other people.” Ultimately, Hamlet’s nature completely changes. He states to Guildenstern that as “of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, an...

... middle of paper ...

...in England 23 (2010): 34+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 24 Nov. 2013.

Meron, Theodor. “Crimes and Accountability in Shakespeare.” The American Journal of International Law. 92.1 (Jan.,1998): 1-40. JSTOR. Web. 24 Nov. 2013. .

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012. Print.

Snider, D. J. "HAMLET." The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. 7.1 (Jan.,1873): 71- 87. JSTOR. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. .

Williamson, Claude C. H. “Hamlet.” International Journal of Ethics. 33.1 (Oct., 1922): 85-100. JSTOR. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. .

Ross, Kelly L. "Existentialism." The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series. Kelly L. Ross, Ph.D., 2013. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.

Show More
Related

  • Topics Deeply Hidden in Hamlet by Williams Shakespeare

    2200 Words  | 5 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Crawling Inside the Mind of Shakespeare's Hamlet

    1720 Words  | 4 Pages

    Vickers, Brian. 1993. Appropriating Shakespeare: Contemporary Critical Quarrels. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

    Read More

  • Poisoned Through the Ear: The Power of the Spoken Word in Hamlet

    1576 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Hamlet Unmasked

    1629 Words  | 4 Pages

    Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2002. Print.

    Read More

  • Greatity In Hamlet

    923 Words  | 2 Pages

    William Shakespeare’s Hamlet embodies the moment at every young person’s life when they are forced come to terms with death. This moment is characterized by the angst it produces. For some, this angst turns into a soothing realization that every moment is worth taking advantage of. For most however, it causes an existential crisis that shatters the very essence of their identities. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, experiences this crisis when he is asked by the ghost of his father to avenge his unjust murder. The conflict arises when Hamlet fears the reprisal he will receive for such actions in the afterlife. This fear however, is abandoned as soon as Hamlet becomes an eyewitness to murder and the consequences decomposition has on physical bodies.

    Read More

  • Hamlet Vs. Much Ado About Nothing

    1746 Words  | 4 Pages

    Shakespeare, William. The New Cambridge Shakespeare: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Philip Edwards. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1985.

    Read More

  • Hamlet and Claudius’ Power Struggle

    1838 Words  | 4 Pages

    Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul Werstine. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Washington Square Press new Folger ed. New York: Washington Square, 2002. Print.

    Read More

  • Hamlet-identity Crisis

    1845 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Hamlet and Claudius

    1922 Words  | 4 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Hamlet, the Existentialist

    1068 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Moral Matters in Hamlet

    759 Words  | 2 Pages

    Brought up with the spirit of humanism, Hamlet suffers a deep spiritual stress because he has to cope with evil in all of its dimensions for a short period: a murder, fratricide, adultery, incest, treachery and complicity of the crime. Shockingly for him, the people who have done the evil deeds are those who he loves- his uncle, his own mother, his love, some of his friends who he has known since his childhood. This confrontation with the evil that follows and attacks him takes the joy away from Hamlet and distorts his ideal of humanity. Hamlet seeks the relation between him and the common taint and violence which surround reality from the beginning itself. According to him the murder has been done because of these factors of disgust and hatered. His disappointment leads him to the insight that Denmark is a beautiful prison. Moreover, the tragedy of a humanist, forced to live in an inhumane society changes his idea of the world, which now different and in his view is a desert garden, ruled by the weed that is among people.

    Read More

  • Free Essays - Hamlet as a Tragic Hero

    1445 Words  | 3 Pages

    As the play’s tragic hero, Hamlet exhibits a combination of good and bad traits.  A complex character, he displays a variety of characteristics throughout the play’s development.  When he is first introduced in Act I- Scene 2, one sees Hamlet as a sensitive young prince who is mourning the death of his father, the King.  In addition, his mother’s immediate marriage to his uncle has left him in even greater despair.   Mixed in with this immense sense of grief, are obvious feelings of anger and frustration.  The combination of these emotions leaves one feeling sympathetic to Hamlet; he becomes a very “human” character.  One sees from the very beginning that he is a very complex and conflicted man, and that his tragedy has already begun.

    Read More

  • Condemned: Hamlet’s Moral Dilemma

    1663 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Inconsistency in The Character of Hamlet

    1079 Words  | 3 Pages

    The perfection of Hamlet’s character has been called in question - perhaps by those who do not understand it. The character of Hamlet stands by itself. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can be.  He is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility - the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, and forced from his natural disposition by the strangeness of his situation.

    Read More

  • Hamlet as the Tragic Hero

    828 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about The Existential Hero: Hamlet

Open Document