Hamlet - The Imbalance of the Idealistic Mind and Human Nature

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Hamlet - The Imbalance of the Idealistic Mind and Human Nature

It is often heard: Nobody is Perfect. This phrase is often used as a rationalization of foolish human mistakes that could have been prevented. However, this statement has a much more profound significance. It contains an important lesson that guides or rather should guide people through life. By admitting that nobody is perfect, the individual demonstrates a deeper understanding of the human nature and inner self. This knowledge is essential to the individual's creation of healthy relationships with one's surrounding. For as Robert A. Johnson asserts in his book, He, "perfection or a good score is not required; but consciousness is"(76). In William Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, the main character experiences enormous inner turmoil, for he fails to acknowledge the human tendency for imperfection, or more strongly emphasizing, the human proneness to err. With his idealistic perception of the world crushed by his father's death and the incestuous remarriage of his glorified mother, Hamlet unconsciously throws himself into a reality, in which he develops a deep resentment for humanity, and more specifically, for his mother, Queen Gertrude. His frustrating disorientation and misunderstanding of his situation is not brought upon by the repressed sexual desires gaining control of Hamlet's mind, as Sigmund Freud would have it (119), however, it is, perhaps, the necessity, forcing him to abandon his security, that causes Hamlet to become paralyzed in his "meditation of inward thoughts"(Coleridge 95), thus, precluding his ability to act upon his deepest desire to avenge the wrongs.

When King Hamlet, Prince Hamlet's father, was still alive, the prince...

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... now; if it be not now/ yet it [will] come - the readiness is all. Since no man, of/ aught he leaves, knows what is't to leave betime, let be"(5, II, 202-206), Hamlet demonstrates he's newly found understanding as well as contentment with his self, for he has come to terms with the non-idealistic world and reached "tao, the middle way"(Johnson 38).

Through accepting his new identity as it should be in the context of the whole universe, the prince stopped attempting to find everything its place, but rather he allows for the natural order to occur. Accordingly, he is able reason and act in harmony with his mind, for he has reached the Grail Castle, the "inner reality, a vision, poetry, a mystical experience, and it can not be found in any outer place"(Johnson 56).

Works Cited:

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. David Bevington. New York: Longman,1997.

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