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Ambiguity of the character hamlet
Ambiguity of the character hamlet
Hamlet ambivalence
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In this passage from Act 1, scene 5; lines 14-29, Hamlet finds himself in the woods after following the ghost. There he witnesses the ghost’s revelation, and finds out the ghost is his father. The spirit mentions the “eternal blazon” of afterlife he lives in, a place so horrible he cannot go into great detail. The news that Claudius, Hamlet's uncle, murdered his father surprised him the most. Knowing that now Claudius holds the throne made this discovery even worse. As this scene progresses, we see Hamlet’s anger rise and later lead to his “mad” behavior. In this passage, the use of ambiguity, figure of speech through metaphors, and allusions to purgatory, effectively introduce the reason for Hamlet’s “madness”— the character of King Hamlet’s spirit. The existence of the ghost itself is ambiguous. Horatio, Marcellus, and Hamlet see the ghost first, although only Hamlet speaks to him. This introduction initiates Hamlet’s anger and investigation of the supposed murder by Claudius. He did not want to raise any suspicion that he knew the truth, so acting mad became a cover. Later on, when Hamlet speaks to Gertrude in Act 3, scene 4, he sees the ghost again, but Gertrude does not. He responds to …show more content…
Starting on line 20 and continuing until line 26, he begins to explain what would happen if he told a part of his story. Shakespeare uses images within these metaphors, which creates a stronger image overall. Phrases like “freeze thy young blood” and “each particular hair to stand an end” are metaphorical images of what could happen to Hamlet after hearing his father’s story. King Hamlet’s spirit wants to emphasize his suffering, so Hamlet feels emotional enough to want revenge on Claudius. Hamlet hearing about how his father met an untimely death and now suffers, is an essential part of the play and sets the stage for his plan to prove that Claudius was indeed the
The Tragedy of Hamlet is a play written by William Shakespeare about a young prince trying to avenge his father’s death. In the beginning of the play, young Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his father, who tells Hamlet that his uncle, Claudius, killed him. Meanwhile Hamlets mother, Gertrude, has gotten married to said uncle. Now it is Hamlet’s job to kill his Uncle-father to avenge his dead father, a task that may prove to daunting for Hamlet. In Shakespeare’s, The Tragedy of Hamlet, the author uses diction and syntax to make Hamlet portray himself as mentally insane when in reality, he is sane thorough the duration of the play, tricking the other characters into giving up their darkest secrets.
In the beginning of the play, Hamlet's father comes to him as a ghost from the grave. He tells Hamlet of his uncle's betrayal of him and tells Hamlet that he must kill Claudius to set things right. Through this event, Hamlet...
The three main turning points of Hamlet all revolve around Hamlet seeking revenge for his father’s murder. The three scenes depict Hamlet’s growth of character from a hesitant philosopher to a rash man of action. In the players’ scene, Hamlet takes extra care in confirming the authenticity of the ghost’s story, while deeply debating the morality of killing Claudius. In the prayer scene, Hamlet remains indefinite in the decision of taking vengeance for his father, as he neglects his best opportunity to end Claudius’ life. Hamlet makes a drastic change of character in the closet scene when he kills who he thinks is Claudius without hesitation. This shows he is now ready to take action for his father. However, it is Polonius behind the curtain, and his death sets off a chain of unexpected events that alters the plot and characters of Hamlet.
Our first experience with Hamlet’s tendency to wander into the realm of the abstract comes even before he meets the Ghost. In Act I, Scene iv, as Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus await the spirit, they observe Claudius, who is drunk. His scholarly mind always searching for new intellectual morsels, Hamlet uses the king’s seemingly commonplace actions as the springboard for a discussion of the causes of evil in men. What stands out is how quickly he forgets about practical matters ¾in this case, meeting the spirit of his dead father¾ in order to ponder over a vague, philosophical question. As the play develops, it is this very trait that prevents him from achieving the prompt revenge he has promised.
Hamlet undergoes a series of trials and troubles some that are internal and other’s that create towards a certain path that he cannot escape. Hamlet’s best destruction in this path of no return is characterized in the beginning with his uncertainty of his existence and feeling over the loss of his father’s death. Young Hamlet faces risk within his mind when his mother marries his uncle soon after the death of his father. The death of Hamlet’s father and the immediate marriage of King Claudius and Hamlets mother Gertrude was a major factor in Hamlets depression. Unable to comprehend his melancholy mood he boards on a journey of revenge when learning his father’s ghostly appearance is wandering the Castle at night restless from not finding closure in his life. This event derives from his father’s meeting and revealing the cause of his extraordinary death. Hamlet’s uncle Claudius schemed and conquered in killing his own brother in order to gain the throne and Hamlet in some obligation towards truth, anger, and revenge agrees to expose
Clearly this shows Hamlet grieving his father’s death while showing hostility to the king and queen for being so deathly cold about the previous king’s death. Also the readers can also see in Hamlet’s opening dialogue, it shows that he still has not come to terms with his father’s death and is still in the state of shock when we first see him.
The Ghost explains how he was killed to Hamlet, and how his death was a forged process or murder. He states, “A serpent stung me, so the whole ear of Denmark”, this was how the murder was done. The Ghost also states, “That swift as quicksilver it courses through/The natural gates and alleys of the body”. Both these quotes provide the image of the serpent pouring poison into the ear of the Ghost while he was still alive. The Ghost then adds, “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life/Now wears his crown.” This is the moment that Hamlet makes the discovery that the killer was the current king, Claudius, his uncle. The Ghost and Hamlet start to discuss the Queen and how she was not virtuous after the Ghost’s death. The Ghost states, “Will sate itself in a celestial bed/And prey on garbage” this is providing imagery that the Queen will gratify her appetite to the point of disgust in a heavenly form or angelic bed, and prey on garbage. This is how the Ghost chooses to describe the incestuous relationship between Claudius and the Queen to
Hamlet is cursing his fate and his subsequent decision to feign madness in order to devise the most appropriate revenge plot. However, despite his filial obligation to his father’s spirit, Hamlet considers the legitimacy of the ghost in the Act 2 soliloquy, “out of my weakness and my melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me. I’ll have grounds more relative to this”. The protagonist’s refusal to act based on his emotional angst reflects his humanist values inspired from the playwright’s milieu, while indicating he is still impassive to the rising corruption of the state and any form of deception.
How we respond to the ending of Hamlet – both as revenge drama and as psychological study – depends in part on how we respond to [the most important underlying theme] of the play – that is, to Hamlet as a prolonged meditation on death. The play is virtually framed by two encounters with the dead: at one end is the Ghost, at the other a pile of freshly excavated skulls. The skulls (all but one) are nameless and silent; the Ghost has an identity (though a questionable one) and a voice; yet they are more alike than at first seem. For this ghost, though invulnerable “as the air,” is described as a “dead corse,” a “ghost . . . come from the grave,” its appearance suggesting a grotesque disinterment of the buried king. The skulls for their part may be silent, but Hamlet plays upon each to draw out its own “excellent voice” just as he engineered that “miraculous organ” of the Ghost’s utterance, the “Mousetrap.” (112-13)
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet revolves around Hamlet’s quest to avenge his father’s murder. Claudius’ first speech as King at the beginning of Scene 2, Act 1 introduces the themes of hierarchy, incest and appearance versus reality and plays the crucial role of revealing Claudius’ character as part of the exposition. The audience is left skeptical after Horatio’s questioning of King Hamlet’s ghost in the first scene of the play. By placing Claudius’ pompous speech immediately after the frightening appearance of Hamlet’s ghost, Shakespeare contrasts the mournful atmosphere in Denmark to the fanfare at the palace and makes a statement about Claudius’ hypocrisy. Through diction, doubling and figurative language, Shakespeare reveals Claudius to be a self centered, hypocritical, manipulative and commanding politician.
Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is a complex and ambiguous public exploration of key human experiences surrounding the aspects of revenge, betrayal and corruption. The Elizabethan play is focused centrally on the ghost’s reoccurring appearance as a symbol of death and disruption to the chain of being in the state of Denmark. The imagery of death and uncertainty has a direct impact on Hamlet’s state of mind as he struggles to search for the truth on his quest for revenge as he switches between his two incompatible values of his Christian codes of honour and humanist beliefs which come into direct conflict. The deterioration of the diseased state is aligned with his detached relationship with all women as a result of Gertrude’s betrayal to King Hamlet which makes Hamlet question his very existence and the need to restore the natural order of kings. Hamlet has endured the test of time as it still identifies with a modern audience through the dramatized issues concerning every human’s critical self and is a representation of their own experience of the bewildering human condition, as Hamlet struggles to pursuit justice as a result of an unwise desire for revenge.
A ghost came into Hamlets life and claimed he know what had happened to his father. At first Hamlet did not believe the ghost. The ghost said, “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5.25). The ghost was telling Hamlet he needs to get revenge on the person who had killed his father. Hamlet character progressed
Hamlet is still a young man of great intellectual abilities, but whose mind and heart are both clouded by anger and sorrow, resulting in actions that might be viewed as madness. Hamlet’s affliction began even before the contact with his father’s ghost, and was worsened when the truth about Claudius was revealed to him by the apparition of his late father. Hamlet’s actions are not results of insanity but outcomes of the pain he suffers because of the loss and betrayal of loved ones.
When his father’s ghost visits the castle, Hamlet’s suspicions are confirmed. The Ghost complains that he is unable to rest in peace because he was murdered. Claudius, says the Ghost, poured poison in King Hamlet’s ear while the old king napped. Unable to confess and find salvation, King Hamlet is now consigned, for a time, to spend his days in Purgatory and walk the earth by night. He entreats Hamlet to avenge his death, but to spare Gertrude, to let Heaven decide her fate.
Hamlet has just come from watching Claudius praying for forgiveness, his emotions and his nerves are very brittle, and he has just missed a chance to kill his uncle. Hamlet releases his pent up frustrations upon Gertrude, lashing out at her and condemning her despite the ghost’s order not to. Hamlet lashes out with his id, insulting her and accusing her, she defends with her Superego, innocent in her mind of any crimes he accuses her of.