How Does Oedipus Change In Hamlet

Death has been an eternal problem, which human being faces all across history. Facing death requires enormous brave, furthermore, being responsible for death requires depth of wisdom. Back in centuries, individuals were deeply influenced by the ongoing beliefs, whether it was religious belief or just what people called the belief of the Ancient Greek, it manipulated them into acting in normal life and facing death to a large extent. As in texts “Hamlet” by Shakespeare and “Oedipus the King” by Sophocles, their personality and behaviour have been dramatically and successfully shaped to reflect on how the conception of their belief changed the ways of dealing with the world in regard to the understanding after death. Both of them demonstrated

extraordinary experience as representative of their belief.

Shakespeare manipulated persona’s death in his plays and most of his characters ended up in death as he was at the time when Christianity was the major belief. The Greeks believed that the Gods were in control of the world, and any suffering human took was the punishment given by the Gods. They controlled death or exile; they let individuals being destroyed completely or get on living with much suffering. At Middle Age in Europe, Christian belief was the major social conception at that time, which ruled and united almost all Europeans. Christianity connects between suffering, unfortunate and death, which eventually affected Shakespeare’s play. The unfortunate of Hamlet is the main reason he thought about death, not just because he was born into nobility, but also his life was fulfilled with happiness and joy until the death of his father changed his perspective of facing life and goal. As said by Hamlet, “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in facilities, in form and moving, how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god - the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals.” The truth destroyed his belief in almost everything, including sense of justice, love, friendship and social relationship. The death of Hamlet’s father provoked him to start the revenge, which as Christian suggested, at that time the power of human was over-exaggerated and led to the exposure of the dark side of humanity.
Humanism played a big part in Christianity as it particularly stated that after all the happiness, one could never know what death is like. Human beings are afraid of death, while the death of Hamlet’s father started a series of deaths, which is the biggest tragedy in this play. This sense of fear affected Hamlet in understanding why his mother would marry his uncle as a result of incest. “The association of the idea of sexuality with his mother, buried since infancy, can no longer be concealed from his consciousness.” The limitation of his humanism belief caused Hamlet to feel fearful and painful. This is the stage where he shouted out “To be or not to be: that is the question” as a consequence of thinking death. It seems logical but he couldn’t answer it with leaving “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as a sense of fear and uncertainty towards death.

Furthermore, Hamlet’s madness after accepting his father’s death was reflected on his feeling to Ophelia, as he was then became “dualised” in personality and struggling between faith and incertitude. Hamlet used to be very human as “My virtue or my plague, be it either which — She's so conjunctive to my life and soul, That as the star moves not but in his sphere, I could not but by her.”, while the accident of death changed him so much that his feeling to Ophelia was becoming so complex to some extent. As Hamlet was acting madly, he said something mean and harsh, which indirectly suggested that his love to Ophelia was not true. However, when it came to the scene where Hamlet was talking in front of Ophelia’s grave, “I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.” people started to believe his true feeling to her, though Hamlet was all-focused on revenge at that time. They could have lived a long happy life as Hamlet and Ophelia both liked each other, but Hamlet had lost the direction of his purpose under the influence of father’s death, his negation of passion caused him in deep despair, thus seeking extreme in finding solutions. Overall, the behaviour of Hamlet contradicts with the belief of Christianity in terms of death, but it is also Christianity that led him in revenging for what he believed.

Other than Christianity, the ancient Greeks revered their destiny as it was changeable and unpredictable.

Most people couldn’t face their life straight; they couldn’t bear the weight of their destiny and very often, they tended to avoid the punishment when they did something that was against the Gods. Oedipus on the other hand, at the Greek time, firstly believed as everyone else, that everything happened or will happen were all in their fate, it was destiny that controlled their whole life and nothing could be changed. From the part where Tiresias revealed the Oedipus Complex: his behaviour of killing father and marrying mother, the action of fighting against destiny for Oedipus started to show the influence of facing everything he had done, including causing the death of his own father. Irony is widely employed in the play, such as where the people of Thebes came to the king and asked him to rid the plague, but in reality himself was the origin of the plague. Also he cursed the murder who killed the old king but he was actually cursing himself. These irony reflected on his ignorance before noticing the truth, and created a hint for further comparison. He then “recognised what he misrecognises, namely, his desire, and his history, inasmuch as they are, both, unconscious.” Before when he challenged the Sphinx, the puzzle he was given was a reflection of humanity. How many legs do human use to walk is only a biological description and it is not enough to divide between human and other creatures. Oedipus believed he solved the puzzle, but he then also lost understandings in humanity. The mistake in ethics and humanity was made when he solved the puzzle, which then established a sense of certainty in making mistakes in the future. Everything he did after, including killing father and marrying mother, all followed this pattern, and is a tangible consequence of disobeying his own fate. Oedipus was a character that had braveness, unselfishness and wisdom all inside him,

however he knew nothing about himself. He had been trying to approach the truth, even if he sensed the connection between father’s death and him. After it had been revealed to the king, the death of his mother/wife, Jocasta again provoked Oedipus to face the true truth. He shared this “double love” with Jocasta for years and since she hung herself, Oedipus realised that his fight against destiny had been too rough that almost seemed hopeless. He shouted out, “O god-all come true, all burst to light! O light-now let me look my last on you! I stand revealed at last-cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands!” to express the deep despair to his destiny, and to himself.
In the end when he blinded himself with pins from his mother, two suggestive meanings were created by the scene. One is that only after blinding himself as a punishment, can he truly see this unacceptable world; the other is that he had always been a blind person in the world of destiny. He could have had lived a long peaceful life as the king of Thebes by not discovering the prophecy, but his sense of justice and determination pushed him to investigate for the killer, which happens to be himself. The death of the old king was not a coincidence, but a necessity for Oedipus. For all his people in Thebes, he was ready to face and accept the truth. Overall speaking, the destiny of Oedipus is an extraordinary experience, the prospect of death didn’t destroy him but oppositely, it encouraged him to explore the truth in some ways as a hero. Through it had been a tragedy, his typical Greek spirit was demonstrated throughout the play and the changes in his behaviour and thought before and after experiencing death.

As a conclusion, both texts analysed above have engaged with the persona in depth in relation to how they react and think when facing the prospect of death. The main difference between them is that they shared different types of belief, and the concepts of their belief further caused corresponding reaction in their life. The Christians believed that the Gods were in control of everything, and due to such fear, humanisms started to overtake the power of the Gods. Hamlet mixed his feeling towards the death of his father and the hate to his uncle at the same time, such a complex emotion mixture eventually led him to be inhuman and caused all the bitterness, cynicism and madness. Though the ancient Greeks had similar beliefs, they regarded it as destiny rather than god. Destiny should not be changed but it was Oedipus who challenged own destiny and changed it with an enormous cost. He had the courage to face the destiny, and overcame it with braveness as part of his sense of justice. They both demonstrated how the prospect of death influenced themselves in relation to their belief, and the change after was dramatic, which gave them whole different experiences.