The State of Mind of Hamlet
The Elizabethan play The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark is one of William Shakespeare's most popular works. One of the possible reasons for this play's popularity is the way Shakespeare uses the character Hamlet to exemplify the complex workings of the human mind. The approach taken by Shakespeare in Hamlet has generated countless different interpretations of meaning, but it is through Hamlet's struggle to confront his internal dilemma, deciding when to revenge his fathers death, that the reader becomes aware of one of the more common interpretations in Hamlet; the idea that Shakespeare is attempting to comment on the influence that one's state of mind can have on the decisions they make in life.
As the play unfolds, Shakespeare uses the encounters that Hamlet must face to demonstrate the effect that one's perspective can have on the way the mind works. In his book Some Shakespeare Themes & An Approach to Hamlet, L.C. Knight takes notice of Shakespeare's use of these encounters to journey into the workings of the human mind when he writes:
What we have in Hamlet is the exploration and implicit
criticism of a particular state of mind or consciousness. In
Hamlet, Shakespeare uses a series of encounters to reveal the
complex state of the human mind, made up of reason, emotion,
and attitude towards the self, to allow the reader to make a
judgment or form an opinion about fundamental aspects of human
life. (192)
Shakespeare sets the stage for Hamlet's internal dilemma in Act 1, Scene 5 of Hamlet when the ghost of Hamlet's father appears and calls upon Hamlet to "revenge his foul and most unnatural murder" (1.5.24). It is from this point forward that Hamlet must struggle with the dilemma of whether or not to kill Claudius, his uncle, and if so when to actually do it. As the play progresses, Hamlet does not seek his revenge when the opportunity presents itself, and it is the reasoning that Hamlet uses to justify his delay that becomes paramount to the reader's understanding of the effect that Hamlet's mental perspective has on his situation.
In order to fully understand how Hamlet's perspective plays an important role in this play, the reader must attempt to answer the fundamental question: Why does Hamlet procrastinate in taking revenge on Claudius?
Nick and Jordan are intrigued to discover who Gatsby was. Unexpectedly, Nick discovers a man who remembered him from WWI was Gatsby. Nick illustrates the idiosyncratic Gatsby’s exquisite appearance, his solitude since he is a non-alcoholic, and his reputation. Nick crafts Gatsby’s description, “His tanned skin was drawn attractively tight on his face and his short hair looked as though it were trimmed every day...the fact that he was not drinking helped to set him off from his guests...no one swooned backward on Gatsby, and no French bob touched Gatsby’s shoulder, and no singing quartets were formed with Gatsby’s head for one link” (Fitzgerald 50). Nick’s fascination for Gatsby is clearly evident during the chapter. Since Nick’s fascination for Gatsby is insatiable and he is neighbors with Gatsby, a bond may be established between each other. Also, Gatsby’s solitude is caused by the misinterpretation of his guests of his true persona and there oblivious of his existence. This solitude is displayed in the gratitude he received from the opportunistic, unloyal women. From the information asserted, Tom and Gatsby’s personalities are clearly
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Gatsby’s life story is continuously questioned by Nick because of slight tendencies that Gatsby shows. Despite his wealth, Gatsby acts differently than his wealthy counterparts. During the first party that Nick attends, the other attendees start out acting very civil, but they slowly become partiers later in the text. They drink heavily and all the wives begin to fight with their husbands. While they interact very socially with each other, not everyone is quite sure who Gatsby is. For part of the night, Gatsby is described as watching all the events. Nick states, “I could see nothing sinister about him. I wonder if the fact that he was not drinking helped to set him off from his guests, for it seemed to me that he grew more correct as the fraternal hilarity increased” (Fitzgerald 50). From this quote, the fact that Gatsby acting different is assigned to the fact that he has not been drinking, but even earlier during the party when Nick meets Gatsby, he describes him as “an elaborate elegant young roughneck, a year or two over thirty, whose elaborate formality of speech just missed being absurd. Some time before he introduced himself I’d got a strong impression that he was picking his words with care” (Fitzgerald 48). Nick later admits that “I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New
Much of the dramatic action of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet is within the head of the main character, Hamlet. His wordplay represents the amazing, contradictory, unsettled, mocking, nature of his mind, as it is torn by disappointment and positive love, as Hamlet seeks both acceptance and punishment, action and stillness, and wishes for consummation and annihilation. He can be abruptly silent or vicious; he is capable of wild laughter and tears, and also polite badinage.
Tom is Daisy’s rich husband and was once a member of Nick’s social club at Yale. Tom is arrogant and hypocritical. He is very racist and does not consider trying to live up to the high standard which he demands from those around him. He has no hesitation in his extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he suspects Daisy and Gatsby are having an affair, he becomes upset and confronts them.
The Great Gatsby is probably F. Scott Fitzgerald's greatest novel. This novel is an American classic and a facsinating evocative work that offers insightful views of the America during the 1920s. Fitzgerald, himself, seems to have had a brilliant understanding of lives that are corrupted by sadness and greed. The events in the novel are filtered through its narrator, Nick Carraway who is a young Yale university graduate, who is and is not part of the world he describes. After moving to New York, he rents a bungalow next door to the glorius mansion of a multi-millionare, Jay Gatsby.
On the journey through the path of life, there are encounters with many different incidents and situations where we must act accordingly. Depending on what type of personality is possessed, there are numerous ways that we can deal with these encounters. In the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, the main character is confronted with a cluster of dilemmas and is in emotional distress. The ghost that encounters Hamlet, the monarchs’ incest, and the contemplation of murder, are the major conflicts which he must deal with one way or another. As a result of these three issues, as well as Hamlet’s particular character, he handles these issues internally which causes internal struggle and a passive response.
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most famous work of tragedy. Throughout the play the title character, Hamlet, tends to seek revenge for his father’s death. Shakespeare achieved his work in Hamlet through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces that hunt Hamlet throughout the play: moral integrity and the need to avenge his father’s murder. When Hamlet sets his mind to revenge his fathers’ death, he is faced with many challenges that delay him from committing murder to his uncle Claudius, who killed Hamlets’ father, the former king. During this delay, he harms others with his actions by acting irrationally, threatening Gertrude, his mother, and by killing Polonius which led into the madness and death of Ophelia. Hamlet ends up deceiving everyone around him, and also himself, by putting on a mask of insanity. In spite of the fact that Hamlet attempts to act morally in order to kill his uncle, he delays his revenge of his fathers’ death, harming others by his irritating actions. Despite Hamlets’ decisive character, he comes to a point where he realizes his tragic limits.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a tragic play about murder, betrayal, revenge, madness, and moral corruption. It touches upon philosophical ideas such as existentialism and relativism. Prince Hamlet frequently questions the meaning of life and the degrading of morals as he agonizes over his father’s murder, his mother’s incestuous infidelity, and what he should or shouldn’t do about it. At first, he is just depressed; still mourning the loss of his father as his mother marries his uncle. After he learns about the treachery of his uncle and the adultery of his mother, his already negative countenance declines further. He struggles with the task of killing Claudius, feeling burdened about having been asked to find a solution to a situation that was forced upon him.Death is something he struggles with as an abstract idea and as relative to himself. He is able to reconcile with the idea of death and reality eventually.
Hamlet is a scholar, speaker, actor, and prince. For some reason, Hamlet is not able to avenge his father's death without considerable delay. There is one major flaw in Hamlet's character which causes him to postpone the murder of Claudius. I believe that this flaw is Hamlet's idealism. While his idealism is a good trait, in this case, Hamlet's environment and his...
Hamlet’s mourning about the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother drives him to madness. This is the main characters inner tragedy that Shakespeare expresses in the play. First he considers suicide but the ghost of King Hamlet sends him on a different path, directing him to revenge his death. Shakespeare uses Hamlet to articulate his thoughts about life, death and revenge. Being a moral character he must decide if revenge is the right thing to do. Shakespeare relays many scenarios of reasoning to the audience about mankind His hero sets the wrongs on mankind right again.
Up until this point the kingdom of Denmark believed that old Hamlet had died of natural causes. As it was custom, prince Hamlet sought to avenge his father’s death. This leads Hamlet, the main character into a state of internal conflict as he agonises over what action and when to take it as to avenge his father’s death. Shakespeare’s play presents the reader with various forms of conflict which plague his characters. He explores these conflicts through the use of soliloquies, recurring motifs, structure and mirror plotting.
As illustrated through his speeches and soliloquies Hamlet has the mind of a true thinker. Reinacting the death of his father in front of Claudius was in itself a wonderful idea. Although he may have conceived shcemes such as this, his mind was holding him back at the same time. His need to analyze and prove everythin certain drew his time of action farther and farther away. Hamlet continuously doubted himself and whether or not the action that he wanted to take was justifiable. The visit that Hamlet recieves from his dead father makes the reader think that it is Hamlet's time to go and seek revenge. This is notthe case. Hamlet does seem eager to try and take the life of Claudius in the name of his father, but before he can do so he has a notion, what if that was not my father, but an evil apparition sending me on the wrong path? This shows that even with substantial evidence of Claudius' deeds, Hamlet's mind is not content.
Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies. At first glance, it holds all of the common occurrences in a revenge tragedy which include plotting, ghosts, and madness, but its complexity as a story far transcends its functionality as a revenge tragedy. Revenge tragedies are often closely tied to the real or feigned madness in the play. Hamlet is such a complex revenge tragedy because there truly is a question about the sanity of the main character Prince Hamlet. Interestingly enough, this deepens the psychology of his character and affects the way that the revenge tragedy takes place. An evaluation of Hamlet’s actions and words over the course of the play can be determined to see that his ‘outsider’ outlook on society, coupled with his innate tendency to over-think his actions, leads to an unfocused mission of vengeance that brings about not only his own death, but also the unnecessary deaths of nearly all of the other main characters in the revenge tragedy.
Hamlet is the best known tragedy in literature today. Here, Shakespeare exposes Hamlet’s flaws as a heroic character. The tragedy in this play is the result of the main character’s unrealistic ideals and his inability to overcome his weakness of indecisiveness. This fatal attribute led to the death of several people which included his mother and the King of Denmark. Although he is described as being a brave and intelligent person, his tendency to procrastinate prevented him from acting on his father’s murder, his mother’s marriage, and his uncle’s ascension to the throne.