Hamlet paces around the cold, dark room unsteadily. The unrest of his father’s soul is perturbing and beckoning him to take action. It is decided that he will avenge his father tonight. While killing is a universal and mortal offense, Hamlet is willing to sacrifice his good conscience by being loyal to his father by killing the treacherous King. In the appearance of the restless ghost of Hamlet’s father, the ghost requests his faithful son, Hamlet, to help his soul find peace. Hamlet accepts the ghost’s petition to kill his murderer by assuring him that his “commandment all alone shall live.” He truly loves his father because he shows the disposition to fulfill all of his father’s commands. Hamlet is furious when learning that his uncle
When the King is praying for forgiveness, Hamlet is about to strike his sword, but he thinks that the King will be “sent to heaven” if killed after repenting. Hamlet’s inability to act is caused by his over-thinking. Hamlet does not only desire to take the King’s life, but also desires the King’s passage to hell. Hamlet meditates on whether it is better to be alive “or not to be.” He is tired of the inevitable pain he has experienced in his life including the death of his father. He is considering to commit suicide so that he will not suffer, but his promise prevents him to take the easy way out. As Hamlet is pensive, he develops the notion that nothing is good or bad but “thinking makes it so.” Hamlet has began to complex simple ideas by giving them more thought. His pensiveness allows him to plan intricate plots and make decisions concerning his
In the unexpected arrival of Hamlet’s friends, Hamlet deduces that they “were sent for” by the King and Queen. Hamlet can use both logic and reason to make the right conclusions that relate and coincide with the truth. Deceiving Hamlet is difficult because he is aware of the things happening around him that may pose a threat to his well-being. When Polonius tries to converse with Hamlet, he discovers that “there is method” in Hamlet's madness. Hamlet has the ability to deceive others that he is truly insane so that he may be left alone to plot a way in which his father will be avenged. An insane person cannot be reasonable if he does not display any intelligence. Hamlet’s ingenuity allows him to think of methods in which he can successfully determine if the ghost was right about the King being the murderer. Hamlet displays his willingness to honor his father by constructing a devious plan that will work efficiently to fulfill its purpose. The qualities that Hamlet possesses make him a brilliant individual who values the virtue of faithfulness over the virtue of forgiveness. Even though “thou shall not kill” is an accepted concept, “honor thy father” is more important to
Hamlet wonders whether to live or die, to suffer or take arm. Given to the pain he feels at his father's murder, and his mother's hasty remarriage to his uncle, to the murderer. he wonders if it is nobler to bear his grief, or to take action. His dad’s ghost has told him what really happened at the night his father died and told him to revenge. Now Hamlet has another choice to make. To trust the ghost or not. When Hamlet made the choice to listen and believe the apparition of his dead father, he willingly buys into the spirit's claim that he has been murdered by Claudius. This decision has huge repercussions for the rest of the play.
Throughout the play Hamlet is in constant conflict with himself. An appearance of a ghost claiming to be his father, “I am thy father’s spirit”(I.v.14) aggravates his grief, nearly causing him to commit suicide and leaving him deeply disgusted and angered. Upon speaking with his ghost-father, Hamlet learns that his uncle-stepfather killed Hamlet the King. “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown”(I.v.45-46) Hamlet is beside himself and becomes obsessed with plotting and planning revenge for the death of his father.
Hamlet, a play written by the prominent writer, Shakespeare, is about a Danish prince whose father was murdered by his uncle who then married his mother. The story follows Hamlet for a time period of a few months while he decides how to deal with the situation of his uncle and mother. An important rising conflict is Hamlet?s soliloquy during act III scene I, where he finally realizes the significance of his actions towards his uncle, Claudius. Fortinbras? prompt rebuttal against Denmark for his father?s murder intrigued Hamlet and made him examine the emphasis needed to be placed on the death of his own father. Throughout the soliloquy, Hamlet mentions many thoughts surrounding this dilemma and shows a deeper, more will-powered side of himself.
In Hamlet, William Shakespeare presents the main character Hamlet as a man who is fixated on death. Shakespeare uses this obsession to explore both Hamlet's desire for revenge and his need for assurance. In the process, Shakespeare directs Hamlet to reflect on basic principles such as justice and truth by offering many examples of Hamlet's compulsive behavior; as thoughts of death are never far from his mind. It is apparent that Hamlet is haunted by his father's death. When Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, their conversation raises all kinds of unthinkable questions, for example murder by a brother, unfaithful mother, that triggers Hamlet's obsession. He feels compelled to determine the reliability of the ghost's statements so that he can determine how he must act. Ultimately, it is his obsession with death that leads to Hamlet avenging the death of his father by killing Claudius.
Hamlet's cultural identity causes conflict between his two primary duties. As the son of Old Hamlet, it is Hamlet's duty to avenge his father's murder yet as a citizen and Prince it is also his duty to protect the king and keep stability in society. Because it is Claudius, the King, whom Hamlet would need to kill in order to fulfil his duty to his father, a tension is created as to which duty should take precedence. Hamlet's essential dilemma, and perhaps something that the modern men in the audience would be able to relate to, is the conformation between duty and morality, courage and fear.
Throughout the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, Hamlet delivers many soliloquies that provide insight on his innermost thoughts. Hamlet reveals the effects of the ghost of his father, the former king, who has returned to command Hamlet to avenge his death by killing his uncle, the current king. He shows his contradicting thoughts on the ghosts request, causing him to question his morals and his trust for the people around him. Within Hamlet 's soliloquies he reveals moral conflict, his inability to take action, and his mental instability.
In a world full of hopelessness and horror, Ophelia represents a diming beacon of hope in Hamlet’s life. It is clear from the beginning that Ophelia's love for Hamlet is real and reciprocated in strength. Even after Laertes and Polonius try and convince her that even if Hamlet’s feelings for her were real, things between them could never work out, Ophelia insists that he “hath given countenance to his speech, [...] with almost all the holy vows of heaven” (11). She is convinced that Hamlet’s love for her is so real his feelings couldn’t be faked. Reluctantly Ophelia agrees to call things off with Hamlet at her father’s request even if it means pretending she doesn’t love him. From the beginning Hamlet conveys his dismal attitude towards the world through his devaluation of life; but Ophelia’s presence represents a light in Hamlet’s never ending darkness.
When he meets the ghost of King Hamlet and the details of his father’s murder, Hamlet is at first shocked, but then doubtful of the words of this spirit. He vows revenge for his father, but immediately backtracks on it, believing that the ghost may be lying to him, an ...
Hamlet One of the themes I found in the play Hamlet, was the way Hamlet seemed to hold back on getting revenge for his father’s murder once he knew who did it. After his father’s death and the hasty remarriage of his mother to his uncle, Hamlet started to spiral into a suicidal frame of mind. It is in this state that he meets the mysterious figure of his father’s ghost, where he is told that it was his uncle, Claudius, responsible for his death. Hamlet pledges to revenge his murder by Claudius who, the ghost also informs Hamlet, had already committed adultery with his queen during his lifetime. “Although Hamlet accepts the ghost’s word while he is with him, seeds of doubt about the ghost’s authenticity have been sown from the very beginning of the play and continue to torment Hamlet up until the end of the play” (Heilman p.45).
Shakespeare’s protagonist Hamlet experiences internal conflict as he seeks to elucidate a personal identity to determine his duty, authenticity and morality in a disparate world presenting contradictory societal expectations. Hamlet is characterised as a royal prince, learned scholar of Wittenberg and eloquent poet with extreme states of mind, imagination and intense feeling. His understanding of the disturbance of the ‘Great Chain of Being’ in light of his father’s ‘foul murder’ causes him to assert that he has been ‘born to set it right’. His assertion
Hamlet’s anger and grief- primarily stemming from his mother’s marriage to Claudius- brings him to thoughts of suicide, which only subside as a result of it being a mortal and religious sin. The fact that he wants to take his own life demonstrates a weakness in his character; a sense of cowarness, his decision not to kill himself because of religious beliefs shows that this weakness is balanced with some sense of morality. Such an obvious paradox is only one example of the inner conflict and turmoil that will eventually lead to Hamlet’s downfall.
“Hamlet is another of the great creations of tragic poetry…What is it that inhibits him in fulfilling the task set him by his father’s ghost?...Hamlet is able to do anything—except take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father’s place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressed wishes of childhood realized. Thus the loathing which should drive him on to revenge is replaced in him by self-reproaches, by scruples of conscience, which remind him that he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom he is to punish.”- Sigmund Freud
From here on, he promises to shed his attachment to the words that cause a deed’s “currents to turn awry and lose the name of action.” Hamlet pledges to stop his over-thinking of events and recognizes in himself the strength and means to complete the required act. It is this conviction that sets this Hamlet apart from the Hamlet of the past: he has realized that the death of his uncle is his moral obligation. He must disregard the methodical side of himself and instead adapt the vigor displayed by Fortinbras’s men in order to fulfill his filial duty. His reason, which questions the honor in revenge, in animalistic violence, and in death, must give way to his familial obligations. Hamlet declares, “my thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!” He does not say, however, “my deeds be bloody”, emphasizing again his fixed habit of “thinking too precisely on th’ event” instead of simply acting. Hamlet continues on his path of passivity, as he has done at every previous moment to avenge his father’s death. Although Hamlet’s sense of conviction has evolved, it still remains a question as demonstrated in the seventh
Hamlet lives in a world where thing seems to be happening contrary to the societal expectation. However, he portrays such characters as thoughtfulness; sincerity and genuineness that make him appear unique, most probably exclusive (Bloom, and Brett 56). His death therefore reaffirms tragic honor of appropriately a decent person in a wrong world. Hamlet, as opposed to the current world, leaves a message that even the people considered bad and satanic in an evil world, are worth living in such a world. In support of this statement, Hamlet at first, develops cold feet and as such avoids killing Claudius. He argues that Claudius qualifies not for death at the moment he has prayed asking for forgiveness. Hamlet sees this as issuing him with a direct permit to heaven as opposed to his father who still wonders in the
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the influence of Hamlet’s psychological and social states display his dread of death as well as his need to avenge his father’s death. In turn, these influences illuminate the meaning of the play by revealing Hamlet’s innermost thoughts on life, death and the effect of religion. Despite the fact that Hamlet’s first instincts were reluctance and hesitation, he knows that he must avenge his father’s death. While Hamlet is conscious of avenging his father’s death, he is contemplating all the aspects of death itself. Hamlet’s decision to avenge his father is affected by social, psychological and religious influences.