When I broke up with my first real boyfriend I was devastated. We had been together for eight months and he was the first person I trusted with my heart. After we broke up, I was immediately shocked and sad; I cried for days. When I was done crying and feeling sorry for myself, I tried to get back at him by playing mind games and acting as though I was completely over him. Next, I was furious at him. I had no clue why he broke up with me and I was angry as hell. Eventually, I learned that I needed to deal with the grief of losing a loved on in a more mature manner. I tried my best just to let it go; I gave myself what I deserved: freedom and happiness. Shakespeare portrays grief in all its ugliness through three sons whose grief leads to revenge. Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet lose their father and spend most of the effort on taking revenge. Hamlet is indeed a tragedy of grif that focuses on the way individuals handle deaths and how they mourn after death; he represents this through ugly and murderous anger.
Tesik points out each of us is a unique combination of diverse past experiences.
We each have different personality, style, various ways of coping with stress situations, and our own attitudes that influence how we accept the circumstances around us. We are also affected by the role and relationship that each person in the family system had with the departed, by circumstances surrounding the death and by influences in the present (Tesik 1).
Shakespeare understood these philosophical ideas in the 1600s and they are just being studied today by philosophers such as Tesik.
The way Fortinbras grieves depends on his relationship with his father, his own personal history, his personality traits. Fortinbras’ father dies fight...
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...erves us well when our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us there’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will” (V.2.8-11). Hamlet realizes that because there have been witnesses to Claudius’ murders that he isn’t killing Claudius for revenge; Hamlet kills Claudius to execute justice!
Fortinbras, Laertes, Hamlet all grieve differently; the main difference is that Hamlet matures from being a child like Fortinbras, an adolescent like Laertes, and finally a mature adult. Samuel Coleridge explains “Hamlet is brave and careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and loses the power of action in the energy of resolve.” Hamlet is indeed a tragedy of grief that mirrors our real life experiences. We all experience grief differently, but we all can relate in some way to the grief of characters in Hamlet.
Hamlet throughout the play lives in a world of mourning. This bereavement route he experiences can be related to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s theory on this process. The death of Hamlet’s spirit can be traced through depression, denial and isolation, bargaining, anger, and acceptance. The natural sorrow and anger of Hamlet’s multiple griefs include all human frailty in their protest and sympathy and touch upon the deepest synapses of grief in our own lives, not only for those who have died, but for those, like ourselves, who are still alive. Hamlet’s experience of grief, and his recovery from it, is one it which we ourselves respond most deeply.
Overcoming the grief that is felt after losing a loved one is a physically and mentally agonizing task. According to Dr. Christina Hibbert, a clinical psychologist who graduated from the California School of Professional Psychology, three main stages of grief include anger, depression and acceptance. Each one of these emotions can be seen in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Descendants (2011, Payne) as the artists explore the effects of grief and the different emotional responses that one can have due to the loss of a loved one. Additionally, in Ismail Kadare’s Broken April, the Berisha family feels the sufferance that is associated with unexpected death, as well as the various temperamental reactions that one will have after losing a loved one. Each of these works of art represent a powerful example of the stages that one will go through after feeling the intense sorrow that is connected with death, as well as the unavoidable effects of grief.
Many sources on grief declare it to be something that must be faced or it will never go away. Ophelia never faces her grief, but it does go away when she drowns herself. She resorts to singing to solve her problems, while Laertes takes to violence. He believes he will feel relief once Hamlet is dead. Hamlet, on the otherhand, grieves for his father and does not take action for some time. He also has strong feelings on how his mother should take a longer time to grieve for her former husband. These three characters endure the same sort of grief at times, but choose toreact differently. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, but as many of the characters in Hamlet discover, grief can overtake one’s life and lead to downfall.
Although similar in age, class and ambition to destroy their fathers killers, Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras each have characteristics that make them different from each other and show how each acted unlike the others when carrying out their plans. Hamlet seems to be the one who lets things dwell in his mind before taking any action or making an attempt at trying to get on with things. He shows this after the death of his father when he remains in morning and a depressed state for three months without trying to get on with his life. Laertes seems to be the more quick minded of the three as he makes hasty judgements about Hamlet and is quick to force his opinion upon his sister, Ophelia about his fears for her if she stays in the relationship. “For Hamlet and the trifling of his favor, hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, a violet in the youth of primy nature, forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, the perfume and suppliance of a minute—No more.
Hamlet's father, Old King Hamlet who he looked up to was recently killed, and his mother married his uncle within a month. He receives a visit from the ghost of his father which urges him to "revenge [Claudius'] foul and most unnatural murder" (I, v, 32) of Old Hamlet. It is only logical that under these circumstances, Hamlet would be under great duress, and it would not be abnormal for him to express grief. Fortnibra and Laertes also have to deal with the avenging their fathers' death.
Any great king must be compassionate, and Hamlet is the embodiment of compassion. He shows this through his great sadness after his father’s death. Unlike many others in the play, Hamlet continues to mourn long after his father’s death. In fact, he never stops thinking of his father, even though his mother rushed into a marriage with Claudius a mere two months after her husband’s funeral. Also, Hamlet shows the reader his compassion through
Hamlet does not take the opportunity to slay Claudius as he prays because he believes it will save his soul. His contemplative nature takes over regarding the ghost’s revelation and he decides to devise a play to pique Claudius’ conscience and make sure he is really guilty.
"’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, / nor customary suits of solemn black / [ . . . ] but I have that within which passeth show; / these but the trappings and the suits of woe” (Shakespeare 1.2.76-73, 85-86) says Hamlet when confronted about his way of grieving over his father’s recent death. Shakespeare’s play Hamlet is a remarkable tale that is centered on the idea of death and grief. While death is a universal occurrence, meaning every person will deal with it, how we grieve after a loss is completely individual. To look at a formula of grief, most turn to the five stages of grief developed by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a psychiatrist, who studied the topic in her book On Death and Dying. This model consists of denial, anger, sadness, bargaining, and acceptance, although the duration and order of the stages are different for every person. In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet the stages of grief are evident in his sadness, anger, and finally acceptance.
Shakespeare put Hamlet through a number of never ending hurdles, causing him to become more and more depressed. For example hamlet Says “ Frailty, thy name is women” (Act 1, Scene 2). Hamlet believes that the “Women” is tenuous, therefore it is why she is unable to grief. Hamlet faces
Furthermore, it is possible to propose that Shakespeare merely uses this scene to provoke irritation and consequently suspense from the audience. If Hamlet wasn’t given this opportunity to kill Claudius we would have not this insight into Hamlet’s indecisiveness, possible cowardice and inability to kill Claudius in cold blood. It is probable to suggest that through this soliloquy we are shown that Hamlet’s initial passion for revenge after the Ghost’s visitation has faded as the play progresses to merely thinking about killing Claudius.
With his thinking mind Hamlet does not become a typical vengeful character. Unlike most erratic behavior of individuals seeking revenge out of rage, Hamlet considers the consequences of his actions. What would the people think of their prince if he were to murder the king? What kind of effect would it have on his beloved mother? Hamlet considers questions of this type which in effect hasten his descision. After all, once his mother is dead and her feelings out of the picture , Hamlet is quick and aggressive in forcing poison into Claudius' mouth. Once Hamlet is certain that Claudius is the killer it is only after he himself is and and his empire falling that he can finally act.
Each man deals with grief in extremely distinct manners, when looking at Laertes in comparison to Hamlet you can swiftly see their great contrast to one another. Hamlet would rather create reason before madness; he is the type to use his brain before his fist. Whereas Laertes is always caught up in his anger that he sees no means to absolve the actions of others.
In 1969, Swiss psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross developed a psychological model for the process of grief. In this model, she outlines five stages, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. While these stages vary from person to person, they represent a universal reaction to loss, like the loss of a father experienced by Hamlet and so many other people. At the start of the play, Hamlet is in the stage of Depression after his father’s death. He himself claims, “‘Seems,’ madam? Nay, it is. I know not ‘seems.’ 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother” (Hamlet 1.2.76-77). As the model suggests, Hamlet withdraws from his personal relationships, like that with his mother, and feels a lack of hope or control. “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all
Hamlet had not gotten over the death of his father then for Ophelia’s death. Hamlet deals with the grief the best way that one could, since Hamlet did not have anyone that he could trust. If Hamlet let would have had someone to trust then, Hamlet could have worked through his emotions the correct way. Also this would have availed Hamlet to get people to believe him, when he blamed Claudius for killing King Hamlet. The death of King Hamlet and Ophelia, Prince Hamlet had lose everyone that he felt love for. The loss of his love ones is hard for Hamlet to handle. This is partly why Hamlet feels so vigorously thinking about life or death, while recollecting his
Like all Shakespearean tragedies, Hamlet’s ending is no different in end-result. Hamlet’s separation from society and his self-imposed confusion caused by over-thinking results in the unnecessary deaths of most of the major characters. In turn, Hamlet’s pre-occupation with factors inessential to his mission of revenge slows down his action. It is this internal struggle that illustrates the intensity and complexity of Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy, something that is often looked at from a psychological perspective.