Indecisiveness In Hamlet

It is undeniable that every character in a literature work holds importance to that piece. If not the case, there would be no point of any individual characters. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, there are numerous characters who are created to enhance the plot line. However, one of the most discussed and analyzed is Prince Hamlet himself. According to Anne Hacht, “Hamlet is set on a course of meditation on life, death, responsibility, and fate” (206). The play is based on Hamlet whose father recently passed, and whose mother remarried to his uncle months after his father’s passing. Hamlet encounters a ghost of his father, the former king, who revealed it was Hamlet’s uncle that murdered him. Hamlet is then “compelled to face problems of duty,

This trait leads to his death due to his many chances to kill his uncle but deciding not to each time. His main conflict lies between “his desire to do what would give peace to his father” and “his conscientious doubts that the ghost may not be his father’s but a damned one from the hell” (Devi 95). In one of his famous soliloquys, Hamlet contemplates “whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.” (III.1.57-60). He has to decide whether it is better to put up with everything life is throwing at him or to take his own life. He comes to the conclusion that “conscience does make cowards of us all” (III.1.83). By saying this, he realizes that his own inability to make a choice comes from his conscience and rational thinking methods. In the final scenes, when he finally decides to kill Claudius, it is too late because he is also about to die as well. Hamlet also displays indecisiveness in his feelings towards Ophelia. He constantly is telling her one thing then turning around and saying another. Ophelia obviously believed in this affection towards her when she told her father that Hamlet had “importuned [her] with love in honorable fashion” (I.3.110-111). Hamlet later leads her to doubt his true love when he states directly to her, “You should not have believed me, for

He is trapped in Elsinore, a town where it seems that people will do almost anything to acquire prestige and power. He believes everything in the world should be good and fair so he does not understand people’s corrupt actions. He finally comes to the realization that “’tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature possess it merely. That it should come to this” (I.2.135-137). The reader also sees a time that Hamlets comes to terms with the world when he tells Rosencrantz that the world has many “confines, wards, and dungeons. Denmark being one o’ th’ worst” (II.2. 132-133). For example, his mother’s marriage to his uncle is something that he does not understand. The reader can tell that the marriage obviously upsets Hamlet when he mutters under his breath, “a little more than kin, and less than kind” (I.2.65). Speaking of his mother, he states that within a month, “ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing of her galled eyes, she married” (II.2.154-156). Hamlet also comes to the conclusion that “to pose with such dexterity to incestuous sheets,” is not good and will have no good result of it (II.2.156-157). The reader is also given insight to Hamlet’s disgust for his mother’s ability to move on so quickly when he calls her weak and states that “a best that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer” (I.2.150-151). By practically comparing his mother to