Hamlet

Hamlet
When reading Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, one must ask oneself, who is this person?   Hamlet is love.   Hamlet is passion.   Hamlet is all the emotions that a person can feel, all piled into one.   He is suffering from the recent death of his father, the King of Denmark.   Yet, he seems to be the only one mourning his father’s death.   His uncle (now king) is happy because he is given the chance to rule, and his mother has re-married his uncle (his father’s brother, the new King) in less than a month of being widowed, leaving Hamlet very confused.   How can everyone be so calm after the death of a great king?   Hamlet loved his father very much, and the total disregard of his father has left him sad and depressed.   “Hamlet is unable to define the truth of his subjectivity directly and fully because he has a complex interiority that makes self-knowledge difficult” (Peter B. Murray).
When Hamlet meets the ghost of his father, he is told that Claudius (his uncle) had killed him by putting poison in his ear while he was sleeping.   His mission is to avenge the death of his father by killing his uncle.   In order to prove the fact that his uncle is guilty, Hamlet puts on an act, as though he has gone mad.   Everyone is worried about him to the point that even the people who know he is faking it are worried that he has actually gone mad.   Hamlet has become a stranger to everyone; no one knows who he is anymore.   When given the chance, Hamlet produces a play which includes a scene very similar to the supposed murder of Hamlet’s father in order to seize a worried glance from Hamlet’s uncle.   This is showing us a new Hamlet.   His character changes from being insecure of what he was doing, to being careless and injudicious towards his actions.   A good example is when he sneaks up on his uncle while praying for forgiveness and almost kills him, but stops because he figures it would be wrong to kill someone in prayer. Yet, he later kills Polonius (hiding behind a curtain), even... [continues]

Read full essay