In William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Hamlet undergoes many trials in life that test his moral fortitude and overall character. His moral code revolves around the central aspects of Christianity; by following such guidelines, one spend eternal life in heaven. Hamlet’s religious views are deeply offended when his mother, Gertrude, hastily marrying his uncle, Claudius. When Hamlet deliver’s his soliloquy contemplating suicide, he chooses life over going to hell. Then, when the opportunity arises to strike revenge on his father, he hesitates and does not kill Claudius in prayer. Hamlet’s devout, religious moral code governs his actions with such influence that it causes his indecisions throughout the play.
Hamlet’s moral code is first established once news comes out that his once widowed mother, Gertrude, is now married to Old Hamlet’s brother, Claudius. This abrupt remarriage rattles Hamlet’s view on not only his mother, but to the vast generalization claiming all women are not loyal. Gertrude has a quick change of heart moving on from Old Hamlet that Hamlet reasons if his own mother is...
Always in Shakespeare reading we learn many different themes. The play “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare is a classic published in 1603. The story goes through Hamlet’s everyday thoughts of life, love, people and other ideologies. Hamlet story teaches us throughout the story that he hates King Claudius with a ceaseless passion because he poisoned his brother in order to marry the queen and take the crown. Hamlet is the prince and his mother’s marriage to Claudius causes him to have a deep rooted hatred towards women which pushes him to hate sex. As a result, we see how deeply Hamlet values inner truth and his hatred for deceit. After learning Hamlet’s philosophy of life we see that he would not fit in modern American society. Therefore, Hamlet
One single moment or event during the course of an individual’s life can effectively alter their priorities and transform their identity drastically. In The play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, Shakespeare introduces the readers to the protagonist Hamlet who is draped in anger and emotions and has a new-found mission in life. Initially, Hamlet is portrayed as an individual in mourning over his father's death and his mother's haste in remarrying to her brother-in-law and Hamlet's uncle, Claudius. However, Hamlet’s character and personality were drastically altered after meeting the Ghost and discovering the true nature of his Father’s death. Hamlet is now a man with a lust for revenge and a willingness to do anything that will enable him to accomplish this goal. When burdened with the task of killing Claudius, Hamlet chooses to sacrifice all he holds dear by transforming his identity in a noble effort to avenge his father’s death.
...Gertrude, as does the incestuous Claudius; thus, Hamlet places his identity with his mother. Ultimately, Hamlet seeks not to avenge the death of his father, but to save his mother from her own destructive sexuality, and by extension his own self-destruction. Of course, Adelman prescribes an existential reason to Hamlet's need to rescue his mother; Hamlet needs to "recover the fantasized presence of the asexual mother of childhood" (277). Hamlet needs to separate his mother from all sexuality in order to reap the stability of her selfhood for his own. After refusing to sleep with Claudius, Gertrude restores herself in her son's eyes to the status of "an internal good mother" (279). Hamlet, now, by "trusting her, can begin to trust in himself and in his own capacity for action; he can rebuild the masculine identity spoiled by her contamination" (279).
The main character, Hamlet, is a character that is not true to others, nor to himself. When the Ghost of his father tells him he was murdered by Claudius, Hamlet doubts the truth. He does not trust the ghost of his father, so has to find a way to prove it. Deciding on how to prove or disprove the Ghost, Hamlet predicts: “The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King” (2.2, 616-17). Because he distrusts the Ghost, Hamlet is not true to his father. However, when his plan proves to him that the Ghost’s words are true, Hamlet still does not act; he still cannot avenge his father’s murder. Hamlet decides not to kill Claudius, using the fact that he is praying as an excuse. Hamlet does not want Claudius’s soul to go to heaven, therefore he decides not to kill him, explaining: “A villain kills my father, and for that, I, his sole son, do the same villain send to heaven” (3.3, 76-78). However, after trying to pray, the King claims that his prayers were not heard: “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. / Words without thoughts never to heaven go” (3.3, 97-8). Therefore, had Hamlet chosen to kill Claudius at that time, his soul would have gone to Hell. Hamlet uses God as an excuse for not acting. He is not true and is lying to himself, because he wants to kill Claudius, yet does not.
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is one of the most famous tragedies William Shakespeare has ever written. Found throughout Shakespeare’s tragedy are many religious references. According to Peter Milward, the author of Shakespeare's Christianity: The Protestant and Catholic Poetics of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet, “From a purely religious point of view, which is more than just biblical, Hamlet is rich in homiletic material of all kinds, reflecting almost every aspect of the religious situation in a deeply religious age” (Milward 9). These pieces of religious literature are crucial to the plot of Hamlet. The religious elements found in this tragedy provide the plot, allusions, and foreshadowing.
Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is a complex and ambiguous public exploration of key human experiences surrounding the aspects of revenge, betrayal and corruption. The Elizabethan play is focused centrally on the ghost’s reoccurring appearance as a symbol of death and disruption to the chain of being in the state of Denmark. The imagery of death and uncertainty has a direct impact on Hamlet’s state of mind as he struggles to search for the truth on his quest for revenge as he switches between his two incompatible values of his Christian codes of honour and humanist beliefs which come into direct conflict. The deterioration of the diseased state is aligned with his detached relationship with all women as a result of Gertrude’s betrayal to King Hamlet which makes Hamlet question his very existence and the need to restore the natural order of kings. Hamlet has endured the test of time as it still identifies with a modern audience through the dramatized issues concerning every human’s critical self and is a representation of their own experience of the bewildering human condition, as Hamlet struggles to pursuit justice as a result of an unwise desire for revenge.
With countless opportunities neglected, Hamlet’s ability to take any action against his father’s death is questioned. “Now might I do it pat, now ‘a is a-praying, and now I’ll do’t. And so ‘a goes to heaven, And so am I revenged. That would be scanned. A villain kills my father, and for that I, his sole son, do this same villain send To heaven.” [Act III, iii l. 173-180] Hamlet contemplates killing Cladius while he prayed for forgiveness, but then backed out as he learned he’ll send him to heaven for the loyalty Cladius showed towards the Lord. Hamlet once again debates the possibilities put before him by the ghost he swore to avenge.
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.
Hamlet is a conflicted character. He is maddened by his father’s, the King of Denmark, murder and his mother’s, Queen Gertrude, untimely marriage to his uncle, King Claudius, who is also his father’s murderer. It is a tangled web of lies, death, and duplicity that Hamlet lives in. “Denmark [certainly] is a prison” for him (II.2.262). Hamlet becomes withdrawn in the play, no longer having an enthusiastic and playful demeanor. His relationship with his mother is destroyed, he denounces Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Ophelia, and he becomes estranged with society as he feigns insanity. He is the quintessential character for Jean Paul Sartre’s existential principle that “Hell is other people.” Ultimately, Hamlet’s nature completely changes. He states to Guildenstern that as “of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises, an...
...ith moral problems of deep import; recognition of this fact is essential to an understanding of the tragedy.” (Sister Joseph 125) Most every character in the play, whether good or evil, has Christian thought. Hamlet’s decision not to kill Claudius until he knows he will be destined to live in hell, is the main turning point of the play. His fulfillment of his father’s ghost command is the condemnation. Hamlet is a Christian prince whose sense of Christian morals drives his motives in this timeless play by William Shakespeare.
Let us discuss first the relationship between Gertrude and Claudius, which, undoubtedly, is the one that propels the course of the play. Although revenge may seem the main theme in the play, moral behavior also plays a very important role. Hamlet is ashamed of his mother?s hasty marriage, but this shame grows into hatred when he learns that the man his mother married is responsible for his father?s murder. As a consequence, all sorts of situations arise.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the influence of Hamlet’s psychological and social states display his dread of death as well as his need to avenge his father’s death. In turn, these influences illuminate the meaning of the play by revealing Hamlet’s innermost thoughts on life, death and the effect of religion. Despite the fact that Hamlet’s first instincts were reluctance and hesitation, he knows that he must avenge his father’s death. While Hamlet is conscious of avenging his father’s death, he is contemplating all the aspects of death itself. Hamlet’s decision to avenge his father is affected by social, psychological and religious influences.
From this play we learn of the difficulty associated with taking a life as Hamlet agonises as to how and when he should kill Claudius and furthermore whether he should take his own life. Hamlet being a logical thinker undergoes major moral dilemma as he struggles to make accurate choices. From the internal conflict that the playwright expresses to us it is evident that it can kill someone, firstly mentally then physically. The idea of tragedy is explored in great detail through conflict where the playwright’s main message is brought across to the audience; Shakespeare stresses to his audience the point that conflict be it internal or external it can bring upon the downfall of great people and in turn have them suffer a tragic fate. It is Shakespeare’s aim to show us the complexity of man and that moral decisions are not easily made.
Morality is a remarkable dispute of a person’s actions within one’s own mind. Typically, everyone in the human species possesses a sense of their own regards to the matter of positive or negative outcomes. In William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the main character faces a vast majority of internal struggles throughout his story. Hamlet is surrounded by tragedy and betrayal. Hamlet’s endeavors in the play coincide with those of a modern day soldier. Hamlet’s character relates to a soldier on the aspects of honor and murder, but they differ in their sense of morality.
Hamlet is one of the most often-performed and studied plays in the English language. The story might have been merely a melodramatic play about murder and revenge, butWilliam Shakespeare imbued his drama with a sensitivity and reflectivity that still fascinates audiences four hundred years after it was first performed. Hamlet is no ordinary young man, raging at the death of his father and the hasty marriage of his mother and his uncle. Hamlet is cursed with an introspective nature; he cannot decide whether to turn his anger outward or in on himself. The audience sees a young man who would be happiest back at his university, contemplating remote philosophical matters of life and death. Instead, Hamlet is forced to engage death on a visceral level, as an unwelcome and unfathomable figure in his life. He cannot ignore thoughts of death, nor can he grieve and get on with his life, as most people do. He is a melancholy man, and he can see only darkness in his future—if, indeed, he is to have a future at all. Throughout the play, and particularly in his two most famous soliloquies, Hamlet struggles with the competing compulsions to avenge his father’s death or to embrace his own. Hamlet is a man caught in a moral dilemma, and his inability to reach a resolution condemns himself and nearly everyone close to him.