Free Hamlet Essays: Little Control in Hamlet

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Little Control in Hamlet

Even though Hamlet is a prince, he has little control over the course of his life. In that time many things were decided for the princes and princesses such as their education and even who they married. This was more or less the normal way of life for a child of the monarch. But in the case of Hamlet, any of the control he thought he had, fell away with the murder of his father. Having his father, the king, be killed by his own brother, sent Hamlet into a state of feeling helpless and out of control. Cooped up in a palace with no real outlet, he tries to control at least one aspect of his life. Hamlet deliberately toys with Ophelia's emotions in order to feel in control of something since he cannot control the situation with Claudius.

So much is going on in Hamlet's life, his father's death, his uncle's rise to power, Fortinbras at the ready to strike and invade Denmark, and his relationship with Ophelia, that he is feels helpless and not even in control of his own life. He feels trapped and confined by his situation and therefor not in control of it. Hamlet feels as if the situations that he is in are controlling him rather than he being able to control them and he feels trapped by them, particularly the situation with Claudius. "Hamlet: …What have you, my good friends, deserved at the hands of Fortune that she sends you to prison hither? Guildenstern: Prison my lord? Hamlet: Denmark's a prison" (Act 2, Scene 2, verses 242-247) Hamlet even goes so far as to call Denmark a prison because he feels so trapped in his life there and feels so helpless to change his situation, as if he were locked into it like a prison cell.

Another interpretation could be that Hamlet is melancholy and indecisive, and is not trying to control anyone. He is trying only to take revenge on Claudius, at which he fails for lack of an opportune time. "Hamlet: Now might I do it pat, now'a is a-praying, And now I do it. And so'a goes to heaven. And so I am revenged…But in our circumstance and course of thought, 'Tis heavy with him; and then I am revenged, To take him in the purging of his of his soul…No.

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