The Catalyst Of Upward Conflict In Shakespeare's Hamlet

During the first act, Hamlet’s father appears to him as a ghost. As Bridget O’Connor states, the ghost serves as a “catalyst that sets the play in motion” (“The Ghost of King Hamlet”). It is the King’s ghost that allows Hamlet to learn the awful truth that his Uncle Claudius committed the“unnatural murder” of the King, Hamlet’s father (1.5.25). Immediately, Hamlet is determined to seek justice and revenge. He says, “Haste me to know ’t, that I / with wings as swift, / As meditation or the thoughts of love, / May sweep to my revenge (1.5.29-31). The ghost also sparks the catalyst of inward and outward conflicts to follow as now Hamlet is internally pained both by the knowledge of who took his father’s life and the upcoming choice to sacrifice

There is an outward conflict between Hamlet and Laertes with their physical alteration at Ophelia’s gravesite. Hamlet feels that he loved Ophelia more than Laertes did (5.l.247). However, a greater outward conflict occurs not long after, one resulting in more bloodshed and multiple deaths. When Laertes challenges Hamlet to a sword duel, Laertes ends up making an arrangement to cheat with Claudius. However, while Hamlet does kill Laertes and causes him “never to rise again,” Hamlet is also awaiting a coming death as well because he was cut by Laertes’s poisoned sword during their fight (5.2.307-317). During this fight, an outward conflict intended to be between Hamlet and Claudius changes and becomes an unintended outward conflict between Claudius and Gertrude. Claudius poisoned a drink for Hamlet. However, after Hamlet refuses the drink, Gertrude drinks from the “poison’d cup” (5.2.235). In gaining the revenge he sought the entire duration of the play for the death of his father, and also the later death of his mother because of Claudius, Hamlet finally resolves his outward conflict with Claudius when he forces him to drink the same poisoned drink that killed his mother. Hamlet says, “Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, / Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? / Follow my mother” (5.2.320-323). While Hamlet does finally exact revenge on Claudius, he never does take back the throne because he, like all the others who died someway or another because of Hamlet, dies