Hamlet's Delay To Kill Claudius Analysis

The hamlet written by William Shakespeare has been interpreted by different people for years. One of the enigmas that people try to explain in the novel is The hamlet’s delay to avenge his father by killing Claudius. Sigmund Freud explains Hamlet’s delay in avenging his father using the Oedipus complex. Freud says that Hamlet’s reluctance to kill Claudius is due to “the torment he suffers from the obscure memory that he himself had meditated the same deed against his father from passion for his mother” (Freud 116). Freud states that Claudius reminds Hamlet about his dreams and yearnings as a child, as Claudius does the things that according to the Oedipus complex hamlet wanted to do as a kid. Therefore, according to Freud, Hamlet’s guilt causes

In Act III, scene III Hamlet finds Claudius praying, and takes out his sword in preparation to kill him however he decides not to. Hamlet attributes his failure to kill Claudius at that moment to the fact that if Claudius was murdered while praying he would surely go to heaven, which hamlet does not want him to do so. What is peculiar about this explanation though, is that Claudius is having a hard time praying. Claudius says “My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never go to heaven go” (Shakespeare 33). Hamlet must have overheard Claudius struggling to pray. The vulnerable nature of praying, (eyes closed, and bent over) was too similar to how Hamlet’s father died. As Freud states, when a person becomes melancholic when losing an object of love, “by the verdict of reality that the object no longer exists; and the ego, (is) confronted…with the question whether it shall share this fate….” (Strachey 255). Therefore, Hamlet decides to not kill Claudius while he was praying because he was worried that if he killed him while he was exposed then when hamlet became king he would also share the same faith as his uncle and

His lack of sleep was caused by his melancholy and his unconscious mind’s constant anxiousness over being murdered while asleep. While on his way to England, he experienced difficulty in falling asleep; “in my heart there was a kind of fighting that would not let me sleep” (Shakespeare 433). One of the symptoms of melancholy is “sleeplessness… (Due to) the impossibility of effecting the general drawing-in of cathexes necessary for sleep” (Strachey 253). His insomnia was also caused by his anxiousness as shown through his actions after getting up from his bed. He went to investigate the letter that Claudius wrote for the England. In this letter, he finds “A royal Knavery, and exact command…that on the supervise, no leisure bated- No, not to stay the grinding of the axe! – My head should be struck off” (Shakespeare 435). His paranoia does save his life, which further unconsciously asserts that he needs to be worried about his