Hamlet Paper

Insanity is a disease. It infects everyone it touches with wild judgment, action, and understanding of a world both real and unreal. It corrupts a man’s soul, dragging a once kind person into a void of angst, loss, and distress. This lunacy spreads around like a wildfire, plaguing those who cannot afford to deal with the trouble and despair that comes with it. In Shakespeare 's play, Hamlet gets “infected” with the condition. Spontaneously, it enters his mind through many fissures, through actions made by his friends, enemies, and even family. The tricky part is whether or not Hamlet’s madness is real or just an act to help him avenge his father. Furthermore, Hamlet seems to be constantly surprised by the crooked nature of not only the royalty, which ironically are his parents, but his friends and family as well. Does a man willing to commit murder of his own brother deserve the throne? Hamlet’s experience with the dead and his contemplation of suicide make him on edge with the topic of life and death. He is ruled by emotions rather than reason. Finally, Hamlet is uneasy with the way his mother has chosen to live her life. In the play Hamlet, Shakespeare uses different scenes and dialogue to portray Hamlet’s slowly diminishing sanity. Hamlet has trouble separating fiction and reality. His personality is like that of a player; the more he thinks about something disturbing or troubling, it eventually becomes the truth to him. He also has trouble drawing a line between his emotions and his life. In other words, he lives through his emotions rather than through rational thought. From Right from the start, Hamlet feels a lot of hate towards his step-father, Claudius, and does not even try to hide it: "A little more than kin and less than kind" (1.2.65). This line is sarcastic and it further proves Hamlet’s feelings. When Hamlet receives a visit from the ghost of his father, or what Hamlet wants to believe is his father, Hamlet discovers that Claudius killed his

Cited: Shakespeare, William. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Robert DiYanni. McGraw-Hill: 2002. 1394-1496. Print.