The Use Of Deception In Hamlet

A Deceitful Heart

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).The world in which we live has been tainted with sin, and the devil does not cease to attack us. Although the devil and the world may both contribute to falling into sin, the individual is ultimately responsible for his or her own sin. In the passage taken from Jeremiah, it is understood that the heart is a metaphor for the emotions and will of humans. Our will in and of ourselves is crooked like a winding road, we are so sick because of our sin that we are medically incurable. The question “Who can understand it?” happens to be a rhetorical question, with an expected answer of no one. However, if we discern God’s will

Without deception in Hamlet, there would be no plot. The whole story revolves around Hamlet trying to kill his Uncle Claudius, all the while being deceptive enough so that no one finds out about King Hamlet’s ghost who instructed Hamlet to kill his uncle as payback for killing him. First of all, Hamlet’s major antagonist, Claudius, who through his use of language is very skillful at manipulating others, lied to all of Denmark by telling them that King Hamlet died from a snake bite, when really we learn from King Hamlet’s ghost that Claudius was the source of his death. Another example of when Claudius deceived others was when he was giving a speech at his brother’s funeral, his words did not sound sincere and from them we get the feeling that he may be trying to cover up the fact that he killed his own brother. Claudius was not the only character that repeatedly deceived others. Hamlet himself used deception, as mentioned previously, we learn that Hamlet deceives others by keeping his father’s ghost a secret. Hamlet’s own lifestyle, his madness, acts as a way of deceiving others, distracting them from noticing his plot against