liar liar

Throughout generations people are taught to think before they act because actions make a greater impact than words. It is a phrase that it constantly alluded to, in life and literature. The issue is often times people think too much and don’t do anything. Incidentally in Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet” the plays namesake is exactly this type of person. Hamlet’s main objective in the play is to avenge his father’s death by killing the murderer, Claudius; he is entrusted this task by his father’s ghost who found him “apt” (i.v.38) to do it. Yet Hamlet spends most of the play not doing anything he seems to be an incompetent character for such an arduous task. Going against the ghost’s belief entirely, for throughout the play Hamlet continuously does not do what he has to.

It is early on in the play that Hamlet learns that what the ghost of his father had told him was true, he indeed was murdered. And even when he has this information and the means to go about killing Claudius the killer, Hamlet proceeds to do nothing. Primarily through exposition of the play Hamlet is spent worrying about little else but how to make the plan perfect, yet he executes none of them. He continuously babbles and does nothing to uphold his claims. Furthermore proving he is not capable of doing the job.

Hamlet is constantly given opportunities to kill Claudius, especially after he learns that what the ghost told him was true, the most prominent moment being when Claudius in the confessional. This would have been the opportune moment to kill him and yet Hamlet talks himself out of it saying it is too merciful to kill Claudius like that and it would be “hire and salary not revenge” (iii.iii.84) and that his father’s killer should be more sinful when he dies. T...

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... marriage whilst he also reveals even more Hamlet cared for his mother. Thus making the audience question the veritably of his claims to be able to kill Claudius in the beginning, for this is a moment he shows no hesitancy like he once had. Calling to question if he truly would have avenged his father or if the last scene was more to avenge his mother. The ghost had he must be avenged with the death of his murder but one can not truly be sure if this will let his soul rest when the murder was not done for him.

In conclusion, multiple insistences in the play propel the belief that Hamlet is neither fit nor ready for the tasks given to him. He is extremely weak willed and his greatest flaw is that he over thinks things, together this creates an unstable character, to go against Old King Hamlet his son was not ready to take on such a ask and should have chosen another.