Insanity In Hamlet

Tragedy brings something out in people. For some, tragedy comes with depression and anger, others with confusion and reflection. People respond to tragic events differently, but Psychologists have found trends through studying people through the aftermath of tragedy. Often times when a person undergoes a tragic event, they experience psychological effects that eventually transform parts, if not all, of their personality to feature characteristics of insanity. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, protagonist Hamlet edures the impact of the murder of his father which sends him through an emotional and mental descent to what appears like insanity, but is actually mental disorder.

Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross discovered that after witnessing or being a part

Hamlet specifically is hit the hardest with grief because it was his father who was murdered, and he knew Claudius, his uncle, was the murderer. This affected Hamlet even further because Claudius proceeded to marry Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, after the murder. Hamlet experiences the first stage of denial through “seeing” the ghost of his father. This is his brain’s way of denying that his father is gone. Talking to the ghost allows him to still interact with his father, even if the ghost isn’t real. He turns to the ghost for fatherly advice as if the ghost was real and alive. The ghosts tells Hamlet to “lend [his] serious hearing / To what [he] shall unfold” (I,v, 740-741), revealing that Hamlet will listen to what the ghost says to do, denying the fact that the ghost isn’t real, ultimately denying his father’s death. Shakespeare then puts Hamlet in the second stage of grief, anger, where he remains for the majority of the play. Hamlet is by far the most angry character of this play. The whole plotline revolves around his drive for revenge, which stems from this stage of grief. A prime example of when Hamlet’s anger really takes over is when he enters his mother’s chambers to confront her about her quick remarriage to Claudius following the death of her husband. Gertrude looks him up and down and says, “O gentle son,/ Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper/Sprinkle cool patience” (III, iv, 18-20), illustrating that that Hamlet looks like a disheveled wreck who is so explosively angry that he needs to calm down before he goes nuts. Hamlet actually ends up killing Polonius in this scene which further proves that grief makes people do illogical and crazy things. Hamlet also undergoes the bargaining stage which is seen through him toying with the idea of suicide. Hamlet says in act one, “O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,/Thaw and resolve itself into a