Madness and Insanity in Shakespeare's Hamlet - Insanity and Hamlet

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Hamlet and Insanity

The following five paragraphs will cover the point of: What is insainity? How does Hamlet tie in with insainity? What or who is the cause of insainity? While I try to overcome these questions to tackle the true answers, you will be thinking and deciding for yourself if Hamlet is "insane" or not.

What does insainity? The Webster's New World Dictionary--Third College Edition defines it as "mentally ill or deranged; demented; mad; senseless." My defintion is not as cruel as the dictionary's definition. My opinion of someone that is insane is they don't necessarily have all of their marbles. The definition in the dictionary kind of explains my definition which is someone that is not paying close attention to those around them. The way people just throw the word insane aroud makes it seem as if it's not a real sickness. But the thing is that people don't realize that it's not something they should joke about. About three or four years ago, there was a song that was titled "Sane" and in one part they said, "...you're insane, got no brain..." So this little line in the song is also part of the true meaning of insainity.

Is Hamlet crazy? I personally don't feel that Hamlet is crazy. I think that because the Queen didn't want to face her past with her first "true" husband, she labelled Hamlet as someone that is "mentally ill, or mad." When we had the discussion of what do we think about the topic of your parents paid one of your friends to talk to you to see if you're okay, I think we also covered some good points to defend both sides of the arguement. On one hand people were saying that what the Queen did was wrong because she shouldn't have someone to talk to her son but that she should do it for herself. And on the other side of the arguement, people were saying that they would talk to their friend for the parent but not if they were going to get paid. I don't think that Hamlet is crazy, I feel that he just needed to get his thoughts to gether because he was still trying to comprehend that fact that his mother got married to his uncle and she didn't even seem to care about what he felt.

What is the cause of someone being insane or who?

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