The timeless classic, Star Wars, can be used to describe nearly every popular story written since the dawn of man. Luke Skywalker, a humble farmer living in a desert, meets an old wise mentor, and leaves behind his peaceful life drinking blue milk, and goes on a quest to defeat the Empire, restoring peace to the galaxy, accomplishing nearly superhuman feats, such as dropping a bomb down a tiny vent. As he matures he encounters greater issues, such as the Empire enacting its revenge for the loss of their fragile Death Star. Young Skywalker trains with Jedi Master Yoda, gaining initiation into the ranks of Jedi that defend the peace of the galaxy. However, the young Jedi experiences a fall as he meets his birth father, and accidentally drops …show more content…
Hamlet reveals his desire for an adventure, as he struggles with indecision about whether to follow the ghost of his father when he reveals that, “My fate cries out… As hardy as the Nemean lion’s nerve.” (Shakespeare 53) Hamlet makes another subtle reference to Hercules with his mention of the Nemean lion, a mythical creature that was strangled to death by Hercules. Hamlet’s desire for adventure wins out against his indecision and fear of the spirit, and he ventures forth to meet his father’s posthumous-form. The spirit offers up Hamlet’s call to adventure that signifies the beginning of his Hero’s Journey. The encounter with a supernatural force signals the end of Hamlet’s old life, and the beginning of his new dangerous, and exciting one. The ghost beseeches Hamlet to “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” (Shakespeare 57) In a fit of rage, Hamlet releases some of the pent up bitterness that he has been holding back since the death of his father, vows to forget all but the commandment of his father, seeking vengeance on his uncle, a “Smiling damned villain!” and curses his mother as a “Most pernicious woman!” (Shakespeare 61) Hamlet’s vow for vengeance serves as his acceptance of the Journey set before him, and advances him on the path to restoring peace to the Kingdom. Thus, Hamlet completes the first of three steps on his journey: his …show more content…
As time passed, and his temper cools, Hamlet questions whether he had truly seen his uncle, or if he had instead seen, “A devil, and the devil hath power T’ assume a pleasing shape.” (Shakespeare 117) Hamlet overcomes his doubt by arranging a trap for Claudius, inserting a scene into a play that Claudius plans to watch, that showcases the specific events involving King Hamlet’s murder. Claudius is made visibly uncomfortable by how specific the scene is, and leaves the theater hastily, confirming in Hamlet’s eyes the truth of what the ghost told him. While the truth behind the ghost’s words has been revealed to Hamlet, he is immediately presented with a new dilemma, in what is perhaps one of the most famous soliloquies in history. Hamlet struggles as he questions everything he knows with the revelation that his mother married his father’s killer. The famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy recounts Hamlet’s existential crisis as he questions whether it is nobler to live and put up with the nasty twists that foul luck and life may throw his way, or to fight it all by putting an end to his own life. Ultimately, Hamlet chooses the former option for fear of what may come his way in the afterlife. Hamlet’s struggle once more makes him a relatable hero for the audience, as he faces a distinctly human moment of weakness, and questions everything he knows, a feeling many feel
The “Star Wars” franchise is familiar to most, and may be the easiest in which to discover the hero’s journey. In “Star Wars,” we find young Luke Skywalker, a rebellious youth, living on a farm on the isolated planet of Tatooine, taken in by his aunt and uncle following the death of his mother and father. Luke grows up with dreams of flying through the stars, only dreams until his chance meeting with Ben Kenobi. Kenobi informs Luke of his real past: that his father was a Jedi knight and that Luke was destined to become great. Though Kenobi’s guidance and Luke own adventurous spirit, he finds himself pushed into an intergalactic quest to become a valiant Jedi in a galaxy controlled by the evil Empire.
In literature there are great stories and great heroes that make the stories memorable because of their individual characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. This essay will focus on the protagonist Luke Skywalker from George Lucas’ film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and Hamlet from William Shakespeare’s play drama Hamlet. Luke is a common farm boy from Tatooine that wanted to go off to join the Imperial Academy, but has to stay to help his aunt and uncle tend to the farm. Hamlet, however, does not come from very humble beginnings. He is the Prince of Denmark, and is dealing with his fathers recent death along with his mothers remarriage to his uncle. Luke Skywalker and Hamlet are both the heroes of their stories. Both of these characters
William Shakespeare’s play called Hamlet and George Lucas’ movie Star Wars may seem like two different stories and unrelated at first glance. Although the two have their differences, they are much alike because of their story’s common theme of revenge. The protagonist in each story, Luke Skywalker and Hamlet both have a journey they face in which complications arise and their characteristics are tested. But in the end both Hamlet and Luke have a very different outcome, showing how their characteristics differ throughout their journey. Throughout their journeys both Hamlet and Luke have many similarities and differences because of their journeys, their help from the super natural, and their approach to revenge.
Hamlet, a young prince preparing to become King of Denmark, cannot understand or cope with the catastrophes in his life. After his father dies, Hamlet is filled with confusion. However, when his father's ghost appears, the ghost explains that his brother, Hamlet's Uncle Claudius, murdered him. In awe of the supposed truth, Hamlet decides he must seek revenge and kill his uncle. This becomes his goal and sole purpose in life. However, it is more awkward for Hamlet because his uncle has now become his stepfather. He is in shock by his mother's hurried remarriage and is very confused and hurt by these circumstances. Along with these familial dysfunctions, Hamlet's love life is diminishing. It is an "emotional overload" for Hamlet (Fallon 40). The encounter with the ghost also understandably causes Hamlet great distress. From then on, his behavior is extremely out of context (Fallon 39). In Hamlet's first scene of the play, he does not like his mother's remarriage and even mentions his loss of interest in l...
Throughout the play Hamlet is in constant conflict with himself. An appearance of a ghost claiming to be his father, “I am thy father’s spirit”(I.v.14) aggravates his grief, nearly causing him to commit suicide and leaving him deeply disgusted and angered. Upon speaking with his ghost-father, Hamlet learns that his uncle-stepfather killed Hamlet the King. “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life Now wears his crown”(I.v.45-46) Hamlet is beside himself and becomes obsessed with plotting and planning revenge for the death of his father.
Hamlet can be seen as a play about obligations, in particularly Hamlet’s struggle with his duty to his father: Hamlet must “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” The appearance of Old Hamlet’s ghost not only sets the plot, but also helps in destroying Hamlet’s illusion about his parents’ relationship as his mother committed adultery with Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius. This marks one of many points where Hamlet losses parts of his life structure. Furthermore a theme of appearance versus reality surrounds Hamlet due to the fact that the characters portray a different outward appearance compared to what they are on the inside. In the play, Claudius displays an appearance of kindness and sensitivity, but in truth, he uses this false, caring persona as a mask to cover up his selfishness and evil personali...
In Hamlet, William Shakespeare presents the main character Hamlet as a man who is fixated on death. Shakespeare uses this obsession to explore both Hamlet's desire for revenge and his need for assurance. In the process, Shakespeare directs Hamlet to reflect on basic principles such as justice and truth by offering many examples of Hamlet's compulsive behavior; as thoughts of death are never far from his mind. It is apparent that Hamlet is haunted by his father's death. When Hamlet encounters the ghost of his father, their conversation raises all kinds of unthinkable questions, for example murder by a brother, unfaithful mother, that triggers Hamlet's obsession. He feels compelled to determine the reliability of the ghost's statements so that he can determine how he must act. Ultimately, it is his obsession with death that leads to Hamlet avenging the death of his father by killing Claudius.
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet revolves around Hamlet’s quest to avenge his father’s murder. Claudius’ first speech as King at the beginning of Scene 2, Act 1 introduces the themes of hierarchy, incest and appearance versus reality and plays the crucial role of revealing Claudius’ character as part of the exposition. The audience is left skeptical after Horatio’s questioning of King Hamlet’s ghost in the first scene of the play. By placing Claudius’ pompous speech immediately after the frightening appearance of Hamlet’s ghost, Shakespeare contrasts the mournful atmosphere in Denmark to the fanfare at the palace and makes a statement about Claudius’ hypocrisy. Through diction, doubling and figurative language, Shakespeare reveals Claudius to be a self centered, hypocritical, manipulative and commanding politician.
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.
Furthermore, it is possible to propose that Shakespeare merely uses this scene to provoke irritation and consequently suspense from the audience. If Hamlet wasn’t given this opportunity to kill Claudius we would have not this insight into Hamlet’s indecisiveness, possible cowardice and inability to kill Claudius in cold blood. It is probable to suggest that through this soliloquy we are shown that Hamlet’s initial passion for revenge after the Ghost’s visitation has faded as the play progresses to merely thinking about killing Claudius.
Hamlet is still a young man of great intellectual abilities, but whose mind and heart are both clouded by anger and sorrow, resulting in actions that might be viewed as madness. Hamlet’s affliction began even before the contact with his father’s ghost, and was worsened when the truth about Claudius was revealed to him by the apparition of his late father. Hamlet’s actions are not results of insanity but outcomes of the pain he suffers because of the loss and betrayal of loved ones.
Old Hamlet is killed by his brother Claudius. Only two months after her husband’s death a vulnerable Gertrude marries her husband’s brother Claudius. Gertrude’s weakness opens the door for Claudius to take the throne as the king of Denmark. Hamlet is outraged by this, he loses respect for his mother as he feels that she has rejected him and has taken no time to mourn her own husband’s death. One night old Hamlets ghost appears to prince Hamlet and tells him how he was poisoned by his own brother. 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 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.