Minds Reason, Hearts Desire In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare the minds reasoning and the hearts desire go head to head. The word “mind” represents logical thinking and reason. Each time it appears Hamlet has to make a decision between his mind and heart. Shakespeare uses the mind to represent the rational thinking of humans in society and the heart to show the true desire that is within everyone. Hamlet’s has a burning desire to kill his uncle, but also has the rational thinking to bring his death in a schematic fashion. This battle between mind and heart continues through the duration of Hamlet’s path to finally avenging the death of his father. Shakespeare reveals to the audience a fight between mind and heart that can be found
“Excitements of my reason and my blood,” shows how he sees the interaction between mind and heart. He shows how the heart can cause people to do things that have no reason or logical meaning. “The imminent death of twenty thousand men,/ That for a fantasy and trick of fame,” exemplifies this meanings less action that only rewards the hearts desire. Shakespeare continues to show the back and forth fight between heart and mind. Hamlet sees these choices with the mind and use reason and logic rather that a hearts instinctive desire Shakespeare creates tension between two parts of a persona that our society has seen as a whole. The mind uses reason and logical thinking to make a decision while the heart or soul uses the true desire that lies deep within every person. Shakespeare allows the audience to see both sides of Hamlet’s decision making. The mind and the heart both help the audience see the indifference between their persona. Throughout the play Shakespeare is at work connecting the audience with similar situations in their lives. Hamlet is caught in between using his minds reason and his hearts desire during the course of his journey to kill his uncle. Hamlet’s decision making is constantly influenced by his minds reason and his hearts true desire. This constant battle within Hamlet helps him see the forces at work within himself and ultimately postpones the slaying of his
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.
Throughout William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Hamlet undergoes a transformation from sane to insane while fighting madness to avenge his father’s death. The material that Shakespeare appropriated in writing Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince whose uncle murders the prince’s father, marries his mother, and claims the throne. The prince pretends to be feeble-minded to throw his uncle off guard, then manages to kill his uncle in revenge. Shakespeare changed the emphasis of this story entirely, making his Hamlet a philosophically minded prince who delays taking action because his knowledge of his uncle’s crime is so uncertain.
Much of the dramatic action of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet is within the head of the main character, Hamlet. His wordplay represents the amazing, contradictory, unsettled, mocking, nature of his mind, as it is torn by disappointment and positive love, as Hamlet seeks both acceptance and punishment, action and stillness, and wishes for consummation and annihilation. He can be abruptly silent or vicious; he is capable of wild laughter and tears, and also polite badinage.
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most famous work of tragedy. Throughout the play the title character, Hamlet, tends to seek revenge for his father’s death. Shakespeare achieved his work in Hamlet through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces that hunt Hamlet throughout the play: moral integrity and the need to avenge his father’s murder. When Hamlet sets his mind to revenge his fathers’ death, he is faced with many challenges that delay him from committing murder to his uncle Claudius, who killed Hamlets’ father, the former king. During this delay, he harms others with his actions by acting irrationally, threatening Gertrude, his mother, and by killing Polonius which led into the madness and death of Ophelia. Hamlet ends up deceiving everyone around him, and also himself, by putting on a mask of insanity. In spite of the fact that Hamlet attempts to act morally in order to kill his uncle, he delays his revenge of his fathers’ death, harming others by his irritating actions. Despite Hamlets’ decisive character, he comes to a point where he realizes his tragic limits.
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.
As the play’s tragic hero, Hamlet exhibits a combination of good and bad traits. A complex character, he displays a variety of characteristics throughout the play’s development. When he is first introduced in Act I- Scene 2, one sees Hamlet as a sensitive young prince who is mourning the death of his father, the King. In addition, his mother’s immediate marriage to his uncle has left him in even greater despair. Mixed in with this immense sense of grief, are obvious feelings of anger and frustration. The combination of these emotions leaves one feeling sympathetic to Hamlet; he becomes a very “human” character. One sees from the very beginning that he is a very complex and conflicted man, and that his tragedy has already begun.
Hamlet’s mourning about the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother drives him to madness. This is the main characters inner tragedy that Shakespeare expresses in the play. First he considers suicide but the ghost of King Hamlet sends him on a different path, directing him to revenge his death. Shakespeare uses Hamlet to articulate his thoughts about life, death and revenge. Being a moral character he must decide if revenge is the right thing to do. Shakespeare relays many scenarios of reasoning to the audience about mankind His hero sets the wrongs on mankind right again.
As often associated with a tragedy, a conflict usually ensues between a protagonist and another force in the play. A tragedy is ‘a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror’ (Webster's dictionary). Given its structure and depth in characterization, this play will or can be analyzed and interpreted from various perspectives and beliefs. However, my analysis of the play is conducted on the basis of various components which are: Hamlet as a tragic hero, the ironic message conveyed in the play, the roles of its characters, the role and personification of madness, the role of paranormality, the role of friends and family, the role of inaction, the role of sex and violence, and the role of death as portrayed in the play. Based on literary definitions and portrayal of his character, there is popular belief that Hamlet as the protagonist acted to satisfy his own conscience but could his actions be attributed purely to his desire or was he being influenced by other factors?
Hamlet is still a young man of great intellectual abilities, but whose mind and heart are both clouded by anger and sorrow, resulting in actions that might be viewed as madness. Hamlet’s affliction began even before the contact with his father’s ghost, and was worsened when the truth about Claudius was revealed to him by the apparition of his late father. Hamlet’s actions are not results of insanity but outcomes of the pain he suffers because of the loss and betrayal of loved ones.
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.
Hamlet is the best known tragedy in literature today. Here, Shakespeare exposes Hamlet’s flaws as a heroic character. The tragedy in this play is the result of the main character’s unrealistic ideals and his inability to overcome his weakness of indecisiveness. This fatal attribute led to the death of several people which included his mother and the King of Denmark. Although he is described as being a brave and intelligent person, his tendency to procrastinate prevented him from acting on his father’s murder, his mother’s marriage, and his uncle’s ascension to the throne.
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.
Hamlet is more like a calculated, rational thinking, and intelligent character. In fact, his calculated thoughts begin to work against him. He uses his rational thinking, and hide behind the excuses instead of seeking unsympathetic revenge, and to kill Claudius the fake king. The evolution of Hamlet’s feelings toward revenge play an important role in the creation of this tragic flaw. Like from the beginning when he gains knowledge about his father’s death. The intense feel...
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.
The perfection of Hamlet’s character has been called in question - perhaps by those who do not understand it. The character of Hamlet stands by itself. It is not a character marked by strength of will or even of passion, but by refinement of thought and sentiment. Hamlet is as little of the hero as a man can be. He is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility - the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune and refining on his own feelings, and forced from his natural disposition by the strangeness of his situation.