Ways of Grieving in Shakespeare

1083 Words3 Pages

When I broke up with my first real boyfriend I was devastated. We had been together for eight months and he was the first person I trusted with my heart. After we broke up, I was immediately shocked and sad; I cried for days. When I was done crying and feeling sorry for myself, I tried to get back at him by playing mind games and acting as though I was completely over him. Next, I was furious at him. I had no clue why he broke up with me and I was angry as hell. Eventually, I learned that I needed to deal with the grief of losing a loved on in a more mature manner. I tried my best just to let it go; I gave myself what I deserved: freedom and happiness. Shakespeare portrays grief in all its ugliness through three sons whose grief leads to revenge. Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet lose their father and spend most of the effort on taking revenge. Hamlet is indeed a tragedy of grif that focuses on the way individuals handle deaths and how they mourn after death; he represents this through ugly and murderous anger.

Tesik points out each of us is a unique combination of diverse past experiences.

We each have different personality, style, various ways of coping with stress situations, and our own attitudes that influence how we accept the circumstances around us. We are also affected by the role and relationship that each person in the family system had with the departed, by circumstances surrounding the death and by influences in the present (Tesik 1).

Shakespeare understood these philosophical ideas in the 1600s and they are just being studied today by philosophers such as Tesik.

The way Fortinbras grieves depends on his relationship with his father, his own personal history, his personality traits. Fortinbras’ father dies fight...

... middle of paper ...

...erves us well when our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will” (V.2.8-11). Hamlet realizes that because there have been witnesses to Claudius’ murders that he isn’t killing Claudius for revenge; Hamlet kills Claudius to execute justice!

Fortinbras, Laertes, Hamlet all grieve differently; the main difference is that Hamlet matures from being a child like Fortinbras, an adolescent like Laertes, and finally a mature adult. Samuel Coleridge explains “Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve.” Hamlet is indeed a tragedy of grief that mirrors our real life experiences. We all experience grief differently, but we all can relate in some way to the grief of characters in Hamlet.

More about Ways of Grieving in Shakespeare

Open Document