Hamlet Laertes Character Analysis

Like many tragedies, Shakespeare’s Hamlet does not fail to provide readers with tales of fervent, bloody revenge which satisfies the primal impulses of characters in the play, wrought on by unjust murder and a desire for vengeance. With a temperamental demeanor and mercurial mood, Laertes is portrayed in many instances as a brash, near irrational son whose desire to avenge his father’s death leads to both verbal and physical conflict. Even Hamlet himself enjoys his own moments of frustration, slandering his duplicitous and incestuous uncle in private scenes and soliloquies. Unlike many traditional revenge tales, however, Hamlet also illuminates the question of the morality of revenge itself: whether or not the adage of “an eye for an eye” may
According to Hamlet, Laertes is “passion’s slave” (III.ii.67); instead of acting on reason, Laertes acts on his emotions, disregarding any of the moral principles that Hamlet weighs heavily. Although Hamlet is characterized as relatively rational in his acts, he nonetheless still possess a strong desire to enact just vengeance on those who have wronged him. While Hamlet arrives at a propitious opportunity to kill Claudius in Act III, while the unknowing murderer sits in prayer while Hamlet, dagger in hand, watches, he ultimately chooses not to, postponing the act until his uncle “is drunk asleep, or in his rage / Or in th' incestuous pleasure of his bed / At game a-swearing, or about some act / That has no relish of salvation in ’t” (III.iii.90-94). Hamlet wishes not only for his uncle to pay the ultimate price for his sins – his life – he wants Claudius to suffer in eternal damnation, reflecting the intensity of Hamlet’s feeling (Bloom 20). Only now do audiences realize the full extent to which Hamlet wishes for vengeance. Even among Hamlet’s wit and the guise of his “antic disposition”, passion and hatred