The Grieving of Hamlet
Although many different positions could be taken on writing an essay for this Shakespearian play, the author took it upon himself to write about Hamlet’s grief. His grief is obvious from the beginning of the play and he continues to grieve althroughout the play. Within his twenty-one-page essay, I chose this line to represent that I agree with his outlook on the play. “…his focus is on his grief and the profound impact in which the ghost has upon it. (Hamlet pg.18 paragraph 3)
I strongly agree with this statement because Hamlet is continually showing huge amounts of grief throughout the play. Even in his opening words in the play he shows some amount of grief to his uncle, the new king, and his mother. His mother basically says that his father is dead, and that there is no bringing him back. So what good does it do for him to weep and mourn? Hamlet replies to this by saying:
Seems madam nay it is! I know not seems
‘Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
Not customary suit of solemn black.
Not windy suspiration of forc’d breath,
No, nor the fruitful rover pf the eye,
Nor the dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes, of grief,
That can denote me truly. These, indeed seems,
For they are actions that a man might play;
But I have that with in which passes show---
These but the trappings and the suits of woe. (1,2,76-78)
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.
All throughout the play Hamlet mourns the loss of his father, especially since his father is appearing to him as a ghostly figure telling him to avenge his death, and throughout the play it sets the stage and shows us how he is plotting to get back at the assassinator. Such an instance where the ghost appears to Hamlet is when Hamlet and his mother are in her bedchamber where the ghost will make his last appearance. Hamlet tells his mother to look where the ghost appears but she cannot see it because he is the only one who that has the ability to see him.
...r. Hamlet speaks to Horatio quietly, almost serenely, with the unexultant calm which characterizes the end of the long, inner struggle of grief. He has looked at the face of death in his father’s ghost, he has now endured death and loss in all the human beings he has loved, and he now accepts those losses as an inevitable part of his own condition. “He states, “The readiness is all” suggesting what is perhaps the last and most difficult task of mourning, his own readiness to die” (Bloom 135). Hamlet recognizes and accepts his own death.
After the death of Old Hamlet and Gertrude’s remarriage to Claudius, Hamlet feels extremely angry and bitter. “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!” (1.2.133-134). Due to the death of his father, he is already in a state of despair and the lack of sympathy that his mother has towards his sorrow does not aid him in recovering from this stage of grief. “Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted colour off, / And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark” (1.2.68-69). Hamlet is struggling to accept the fashion in which Gertrude is responding to the death of Old Hamlet; she seems quite content with her new life with Claudius, which is a difficult concept for him to accept as after the d...
Many sources on grief declare it to be something that must be faced or it will never go away. Ophelia never faces her grief, but it does go away when she drowns herself. She resorts to singing to solve her problems, while Laertes takes to violence. He believes he will feel relief once Hamlet is dead. Hamlet, on the otherhand, grieves for his father and does not take action for some time. He also has strong feelings on how his mother should take a longer time to grieve for her former husband. These three characters endure the same sort of grief at times, but choose toreact differently. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, but as many of the characters in Hamlet discover, grief can overtake one’s life and lead to downfall.
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.
Any great king must be compassionate, and Hamlet is the embodiment of compassion. He shows this through his great sadness after his father’s death. Unlike many others in the play, Hamlet continues to mourn long after his father’s death. In fact, he never stops thinking of his father, even though his mother rushed into a marriage with Claudius a mere two months after her husband’s funeral. Also, Hamlet shows the reader his compassion through
His first words in the play is an aside saying "A little more than kin and less than kind" (Shakespeare. 1.2.64-65). Hamlet is already distrustful of those around him, shown in the way Shakespeare uses an aside. This displays a lack of trust and ability to speak his mind out loud. Due to the death of his father and the quick and untimely coronation of Claudius as the new king, Hamlet becomes hostile and distrustful of the people around him as people tell him to move forward and accept his father 's death, just as they have. While he believes his sorrow and mourning is genuine, Hamlet discloses to his mother that the other 's mourning is fake and only "seems"(1.2.83) real. Hamlet believes that their loyalty is fickle and unreliable, there by isolating himself and relying on his inner circle of friends and family to deal with his loss and to loss that support, would leave Hamlet
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a tragic play about murder, betrayal, revenge, madness, and moral corruption. It touches upon philosophical ideas such as existentialism and relativism. Prince Hamlet frequently questions the meaning of life and the degrading of morals as he agonizes over his father’s murder, his mother’s incestuous infidelity, and what he should or shouldn’t do about it. At first, he is just depressed; still mourning the loss of his father as his mother marries his uncle. After he learns about the treachery of his uncle and the adultery of his mother, his already negative countenance declines further. He struggles with the task of killing Claudius, feeling burdened about having been asked to find a solution to a situation that was forced upon him.Death is something he struggles with as an abstract idea and as relative to himself. He is able to reconcile with the idea of death and reality eventually.
When Hamlet is first introduced in Act I, Scene II, the reader is shown the depths of his sorrow. The King asks Hamlet "How is it that the clouds still hang on you" and the Queen tells him to "Cast thy nighted color off." By these comments one can envision Hamlet as someone who appears and radiates out his sorrow over his father's death. Hamlet lets the reader know that his sorrow runs much deeper than his clothes and sorrow filled eyes, saying about them that "These indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play. But I have that within which passes show; These but the trappings and the suits of woe." In this statement Hamlet pours out that his sorrows courses through every part of him.
When we first meet Hamlet, he is moping around Elsinore Castle on account of his father's recent death and his mother's more recent marriage to his uncle. In the first act of the play, it has been two months since King Hamlet was laid in the ground—a fairly short time ago in terms of grief, but not so long that family members could not conceivably begin their lives again, as Hamlet's mother has done in marrying her late husband's brother. Hamlet is still in mourning clothes, is wholly fixated on the loss of his father, and is positively mortified and revolted by his mother's apparent indifference. In the play's first conversation between Hamlet and his newlywed parents, they chide him for his "obstinate condolement" for his father (1.2.93). They believe that "Hamlet's long mourning for his father is against not only the rule of nature, grace, or grace, but also heaven" (Hassel 612). Thinking of death makes Hamlet an unpleasant person for the newlywe...
In the second soliloquy Hamlet calls on the audience, the “distracted globe”, to hear his vow to get revenge on his uncle and to erase all from his mind except that of what the ghost had informed him of. The ghost, Hamlet’s father, had explained to him that Cl...
Tragic death plays a really big role in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet often considers death in many different perspectives, and definitely obsesses with the idea more so after his fathers’ death. Hamlet’s soliloquy is one of the most famous in literature, “To be or not to be, that is the question…” Hamlet’s dilemma is the pain of life that he must endure or the uncertainty of death. From the beginning of the play to the very last scene, the fascination between life and death plays a role throughout. Hamlet is troubled through the play after realizing that his uncle was the one who murdered his father and is now married to his mother. He wants to avenge Hamlet Sr. death and kill Claudius but feels that killing himself would be an easier resolution. After the death of his murdered father and appearance at his funeral, Hamlet will not leave anywhere without making the statement of his all black attire on the inside and out. The turn of events throughout the play only help the reader understand the debt of each character and their specific role to Hamlet and to the story in regards to life and death.
Layng states, “In the story of Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, the characteristics of love and familial acceptance are devastated by constant ideas of greed and evil desire.” Hamlet is distraught and mourning the death of his father. All the while, his new uncle/stepdad King is ruling the kingdom. Hamlet says in Act II Scene II line 558, “And can say nothing - no, not for a king, upon whose property and most dear life a damned defeat was made.” His father’s life was taken from him and he doesn’t know what to
Thus, the first appearance of ghost in front of hamlet is a huge impact and sets the action in motion for the entire plot. The appearance becomes the most important scene in the play. To Hamlet, Hamlet really admired his father, and his father’s death entirely affected his emotion and life. As Hamlet knew that the ghost was the symbol of his father and the unnatural murder. The nightmare...
This scene takes place immediately after the murder of Hamlet’s father. Hamlet has reached the point where nothing makes sense since his father was a loving king admired by everybody. Hamlet is questioning the reason of living after the death of his father and the speedy remarriage of his mother. In his mind it is impossible to explain how such a loving king could be so quickly forgotten. In this soliloquy, Hamlet utilizes classical mythology and metaphorical language to describe his pain and sorrow. We can detect Shakespeare’s mastery of the use of the power of language to explain what Hamlet is going through and for the reader of the ages to understand the fury that is tearing at Hamlet’s very core.
To begin with, Hamlet is emotional and is a character who is in tune with his emotions, even though he might fight with them sometimes. He expects everyone around him to mourn his father’s death as long as he does. “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” (I:ii:66). Hamlet finds it extremely hard to believe that people are celebrating and having parties when the king had so recently passed. Claudius and Gertrude try their best to get Hamlet out of mourning