The great Aristotle once said, “All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.” Demonstrating a link between internal thoughts and external action, characters in both William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman harness Aristotle’s philosophical ideology. In both plays, a main character becomes so overwhelmed by mental or psychological events that their actions become reflective of them. Although set in different time periods and involving entirely different circumstances, the fates of both Shakespeare’s Ophelia and Miller’s Willy Loman reach a climax in self-inflicted deaths brought on by the accumulation of traumatic internal events.
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the character Ophelia suffered through many traumatic experiences, often caused by her love interest, Hamlet. As Ophelia transitions from sane to insane, upon being rejected by Hamlet and told she is underserving of his love by her family, Ophelia’s fragile mental state becomes paramount in terms of determining her actions as she takes her own life. As Shakespeare developed the character Ophelia, her dependency on men, for both approval and instruction, becomes her fatal flaw. When Ophelia becomes smitten with Hamlet, her father Polonius and brother Laertes waste no time in deterring Ophelia’s devoted love for him. The challenge of being with Hamlet is hard enough alone, but the combination of forbidden and unrequited love has devastating effects on Ophelia’s mental state. Ophelia is told her social class is too low for her to be romantically involved with a prince and her father takes advantage of her and plays her like a pawn, in order to question Hamlet’s sa...
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... free and clear… we’re free.” (Miller, p.139)
Just like all humans, fictional characters have breaking points. When internal conflicts become overbearing, they usually result in external action. Whether the external action is suicide or a confrontation, the emotionally devastating impacts always leave the character feeling overwhelmed. In both Hamlet and Death of a Salesman, two characters found themselves victims of their own hands as they took their lives to find relief of their mental hardships. The frailty of the human mind is eminent in both situations, as the characters, still deluded, found relief as they decided, “to sleep, perchance to dream.” (Shakespeare, p.66)
Works Cited
Miller, Arthur, and Gerald Clifford Weales. Death of a Salesman. New York: Penguin, 1996. Print.
Shakespeare, William, and Harold Jenkins. Hamlet. London: Methuen, 1982. Print
Riddled with ambiguity by its very nature, the text of William Shakespeare's Hamlet has been a commonly debated subject in literary circles since its first performance. The character Hamlet undergoes intense physical and emotional hardship in his quest for revenge against his despicable uncle. This hardship, some argue, leads to an emotional breakdown and, ultimately, Hamlet's insanity. While this assessment may be suitable in some cases, it falls short in others. Since Hamlet is a play, the ultimate motivation of each of the characters borrows not only from the text, but also from the motivations of the actors playing the parts. In most respects, these motivations are more apt at discerning the emotional condition of a character than their dialogue ever could. Thus, the question is derived: In Kenneth Branagh's film adaptation of Hamlet, does the character Hamlet suffer from insanity? Giving halt to the response, this paper will first endeavor to establish what insanity is and will then provide sufficient examples both from the text, film, and Branagh's own musings on his motivations as proof that Hamlet's character, at least in Branagh's version of the play, is not insane.
While Hamlet may still be feeling depressed Hamlet moves into the stage of denial and isolation. Hamlet feels the effects of denial and isolation mostly due to his love, Ophelia. Both Hamlet’s grief and his task constrain him from realizing this love, but Ophelia’s own behavior clearly intensifies his frustration and anguish. By keeping the worldly and disbelieving advice of her brother and father as “watchmen” to her “heart” (I.iii.46), she denies the heart’s affection not only in Hamlet, but in herself; and both denials add immeasurably to Hamlet’s sense of loneliness and loss—and anger. Her rejection of him echoes his mother’s inconstancy and denies him the possibility even of imagining the experience of loving an...
It goes without saying that we all react to the experiences that we have. What differs from person to person is how those experiences affect our being and what each of us takes from those experiences and how we apply it to our lives from that point on. We see this happening not only in our own lives, but also in literature. The characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth and those from Milton’s Paradise Lost show, through their conflicts, that the experiences that they are exposed to affect their lives in a negative way. In all three of these pieces of literature, the reactions the characters have to their experiences are what bring about their ultimate demise. Unfortunately, these characters don’t realize the error of their actions until it’s too late, but we, as the audience, can learn from the mistakes we see the characters make in Hamlet, Macbeth and Paradise Lost.
In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Shakespeare developed the story of prince Hamlet, and the murder of his father by the king's brother, Claudius. Hamlet reacted to this event with an internal battle that harmed everyone around him. Ophelia was the character most greatly impacted by Hamlet's feigned and real madness - she first lost her father, her sanity, and then her life. Ophelia, obedient, weak-willed, and no feminist role model, deserves the most pity of any character in the play.
The story of Hamlet is a morbid tale of tragedy, commitment, and manipulation; this is especially evident within the character of Ophelia. Throughout the play, Ophelia is torn between obeying and following the different commitments that she has to men in her life. She is constantly torn between the choice of obeying the decisions and wishes of her family or that of Hamlet. She is a constant subject of manipulation and brain washing from both her father and brother. Ophelia is not only subject to the torture of others using her for their intentions but she is also susceptible to abuse from Hamlet. Both her father and her brother believe that Hamlet is using her to achieve his own personal goals.
Ophelia, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, represents a self-confident and aware female character. She analyzes the world around her and recognizes the multitude of male figures attempting to control her life. Her actions display not only this awareness, but also maturity in her non-confrontational discussions. Though she is demeaned by Laertes, Polonius, and Hamlet, Ophelia exhibits intelligence and independence and ultimately resorts to suicide in order to free herself from the power of the men around her.
“Pretty Ophelia,” as Claudius calls her, is the most innocent victim of Hamlet’s revenge in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Hamlet has fallen in love with Ophelia after the death of his father. Ophelia “sucked the honey of his music vows” and returned Hamlet’s affection. But when her father had challenged Hamlet’s true intentions, Ophelia could only say: “I do not know, my lord, what I should think.” Ophelia was used to relying on her father’s directions and she was also brought up to be obedient. This allowed her to only accept her father’s views that Hamlet’s attention towards her was only to take advantage of her and to obey her father’s orders not to permit Hamlet to see her again.
The psychology behind inner conflict and an individual’s decisions has been well explored, but it can be truly demonstrated through the use of William Shakespeare’s dramatic play, Hamlet. An inner conflict evolves as he learns of his father’s death and that it was due to the ambitions of his uncle Claudius. Depression is the first conflict that is shown by Hamlet in which he is mourning, but shortly after we see a contemplation between action and inaction in regards to avenging his father’s death. He eventually reaches an epiphany which allows him to truly understand that absolute control can not be achieved. Until one’s life is hurt by another’s evil ambitions, a true understanding of self is not yet fully developed. It is when they are influenced
William Shakespeare is widely known for his ability to take a sad story, illustrate it with words, and make it a tragedy. Usually human beings include certain discrepancies in their personalities that can at times find them in undesirable or difficult situations. However, those that are exemplified in Shakespeare’s tragedies include “character flaws” which are so destructive that they eventually cause their downfall. For example, Prince Hamlet, of Shakespeare’s tragedy play “Hamlet,” is seemingly horrified by what the ghost of his father clarifies concerning his death. Yet the actions executed by Hamlet following this revelation do not appear to coincide with the disgust he expresses immediately after the ghost alerts him of the true cause of his death. Thus, it is apparent that the instilled self doubt of Prince Hamlet is as the wand that Shakespeare uses to transform an otherwise sad story to an unfortunate tragedy.
Miller, Arthur. "Death of a Salesman." Compact Literature. Ed. Laurie Kirszner and Stephen Mandell. 8th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2013. 1262-331. Print.
William Shakespeare's Hamlet is, at heart, a play about suicide. Though it is surrounded by a fairly standard revenge plot, the play's core is an intense psychodrama about a prince gone mad from the pressures of his station and his unrequited love for Ophelia. He longs for the ultimate release of killing himself - but why? In this respect, Hamlet is equivocal - he gives several different motives depending on the situation. But we learn to trust his soliloquies - his thoughts - more than his actions. In Hamlet's own speeches lie the indications for the methods we should use for its interpretation.
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the influence of Hamlet’s psychological and social states display his dread of death as well as his need to avenge his father’s death. In turn, these influences illuminate the meaning of the play by revealing Hamlet’s innermost thoughts on life, death and the effect of religion. Despite the fact that Hamlet’s first instincts were reluctance and hesitation, he knows that he must avenge his father’s death. While Hamlet is conscious of avenging his father’s death, he is contemplating all the aspects of death itself. Hamlet’s decision to avenge his father is affected by social, psychological and religious influences.
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.
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.
The psychological aspect of Hamlet which is most prominently displayed is his melancholy. This condition is rooted in the psyche and the emotions, the former causing the latter to go awry. Lily B. Campbell in “Grief That Leads to Tragedy” emphasizes ...