Shakespeare’s Hamlet revolves around the title character’s undeniable obligation to immediately avenge his father’s death by killing Claudius. Yet much time elapses before Hamlet finally does slay his evil uncle, leading to a fundamental question: what causes the hero to delay before eventually managing to salvage some retribution? The answer is that Hamlet’s reoccuring state of impractical contemplation renders him incapable of any decisive action that could have brought quick revenge. A key moment in the play comes in the first act, when the ghost of Hamlet’s father informs the prince of his duty: “If thou didst ever thy father love/...Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.'; [1.5: 29, 31] With these words, the Ghost puts the play in motion, for the rest of the story will be governed by Hamlet’s quest for this revenge. Furthermore, the spirit emphasizes the need for Hamlet to act quickly: I am thy father’s spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night And for the day confined to fast in fires Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature Are burnt and purged away. [1.5: 14-18] The message is clear: if the prince is to truly ease the suffering of his father’s spirit, he must avenge the murder immediately. Hamlet initially meets his challenge with zeal, promising the Ghost that he will produce quick results: Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial, fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter. Yes, by heaven! [1.5: 105-111] Yet despite this stirring vow to sweep to revenge, one major obstacle lies ahead: Hamlet’s impractical thinking. Our first experience with Hamlet’s tendency to wander into the realm of the abstract comes even before he meets the Ghost. In Act I, Scene iv, as Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus await the spirit, they observe Claudius, who is drunk. His scholarly mind always searching for new intellectual morsels, Hamlet uses the king’s seemingly commonplace actions as the springboard for a discussion of the causes of evil in men. What stands out is how quickly he forgets about practical matters ¾in this case, meeting the spirit of his dead father¾ in order to ponder over a vague, philosophical question. As the play develops, it is this very trait that prevents him from achieving the prompt revenge he has promised.
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Show MoreHamlet is extremely proud of Old King and respects him.“He was a great human being. He was perfect in everything. I’ll never see the likes of him again” (I.ii.185-188). Hamlet loves his father and gives the greatest praise at the funeral. Grief driven by love tempts Hamlet to think his father’s goodness, and more, the loss of such a favorable figure. Hamlet believes that the ghost that is said to look like the dead king is indeed his father.”He waxes desperate with imagination”(I.ii.92). The Prince, who is deep in sadness and does not think sufficiently, is convinced that the spirit is the Old Hamlet, he is the only person that can physically communicate with the ghost. Hamlet for the second time talks to the apparition in his mother’s chamber, where Gertrude does not see any. What Horatio and other witnesses encounter at the gate at night proves the possibility of the existence of the ghost, Hamlet later in the play is considered to be truly mad on the account of his unusual ability to see and talk to the spirit, which is obviously conjured up by his mind. Rising actions in both the book and the play are implied at the beginning of the stories: Amir’s memory of 1975 and Old Hamlet’s death. The journey of redemption or revenge takes actions of concealing their true emotions and implementing devised
Hamlet wishes to avenge the murder of his father and rectify this great injustice. The conflict between his desire to seek revenge and his own thoughts of incompetence is the cause of his initial unrest. "Haste me to know't , that I , with wings as swift / As meditation or thoughts of love , / may sweep to my revenge (1.5.29-31). Here Hamlet pleads to the Ghost of King Hamlet to reveal the name of his murderer.
This passage from the last soliloquy of Hamlet tries to explain the position Hamlet is placed in in. For example, line 34 “How all occasions do form against me...35 and spur my dull revenge!” These two lines critically reveal that Hamlet is being triggered by some actions to carry out revenge against the person who killed his Father (203). In the passage, the question to take action is not only affected by the sensible contemplation, such as the call for certainty, but also by emotive, ethical and psychosomatic factors (Shakespeare
In “Tragic Flaw in Shakespeare’s Hamlet”, P Indira Devi states “His (Hamlet) tragic flaw is ‘procrastination’... Hamlet is well aware of his fatal flaw. His continuous awareness and doubt delay him in performing the needed act.” (Devi 95). Others would like to believe it is because Hamlet is a thinker and not someone who usually takes action. In a study called “True Hamlet” Oana TATU says “He (Hamlet), the thinker, is required to take action; not any kind of action, but the action of avenging a dead king/father, an action that is objectively evil.” (TATU
Hamlet, while not a man of many actions, is a man of many words. Though like many others, Hamlet gets caught up in the moment; saying or committing himself without fully understanding the consequences or what is going to be entailed. When he is with his father’s ghost, Hamlet promises, “Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift. As meditation of the thought of love/May sweep to my revenge.”(1.5.35-37) Hamlet did not keep his word to his father, his actions were not swift nor where they an act of revenge. Hamlet does not strike in an act of revenge, but in an act of anger and self preservation after the murder of his mother. He is hesitant at an opportune time, while the King was praying, for the reason that when committing himself to the act of revenge Hamlet did not fully understand what was being asked of him. That he would not only have to take the life of another man, but commit treason by slaughtering the King.
The combination of distress and anger motivated Hamlet to avenge his father’s murder. The first thing that is learned in the play is that King Hamlet had recently died. As a result Hamlet felt an overwhelming melancholy, this is apparent in his soliloquies, he states “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!” (1.2.133-134). Life to him is pointless and tiring. It’s been two months and he is still grieving to a point where it is not sane. This melancholy combined with the anger he felt with the remarriage of his mother to his uncle so quickly after his father’s funeral was a bad combination, but what pushed Hamlet over the edge was the encounter with the ghost of his father w...
all the events which form the play's framework are reduced to a symbolic representation, to an internal unrest which no action will resolve, and no decision will quell. The deepest theme, masked by that of vengeance, is none other than human nature itself, confronted by the metaphysical and moral problems it is moulded by: love, time, death, perhaps even the principle of identity and quality, not to say 'being and nothingness'. The shock Hamlet receives on the death of his father, and on the remarriage of his mother, triggers disquieting interrogations about the peace of the soul, and the revelation of the ghost triggers vicious responses to these. The world changes its colour, life its significance, love is stripped of its spirituality, woman of her prestige, the state of its stability, the earth and the air of their appeal. It is a sudden eruption of wickedness, a reduction of the world to the absurd, of peace to bitterness, of reason to madness. A contagious disease which spreads from man to the kingdom, from the kingdom to the celestial vault':
The loss of a parent can have a traumatic effect on one. It can lead he or she to a place of sadness, darkness and depression. In Shakespeare's revenge tragedy "Hamlet", the passing of the King stirs up the same emotions in the prince Hamlet. Although, it would be the starting point of his journey filled with deceptions, murders and conspiracy. After a visit from his dead father as a ghost, and the revelation of his uncle's betrayal, Hamlet embarks on a path to avenge the death of his father (Shakespeare). In the midst of all the lies and deceptions, before his ultimate downfall Hamlet achieves his goal of avenging the death of his father by killing Claudius, while liberating Denmark from a deceitful ruler; his uncle Claudius.
When the ghost of King Hamlet first appears to young Hamlet, he injunctions three requirements he needs Hamlet to act upon. Revenge his father’s death, do not emotionally affect his mother, Gertrude, with the killing of her new husband, Claudius, and to not let himself go insane by trying to accomplish these vital tasks. Hamlet is bewildered, overwhelmed, and shocked with what the ghost of his father told him, and responds with “ haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift as mediation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge” (1.5.29-31). This response from young Hamlet makes the audience believe that the plot against Claudius will be very swift. Yet on the other hand you get this sensitive side from the response because Hamlet compares the quickness of taking revenge, to the pace two people falling in love with each other. Eventually the revenge of his father’s death takes place, but not until the very end of the play, and the way Hamlet took revenge against Claudius is not how he had planned on doing it. Hamlet wanted the revenge of Claudius to be a very quick and a secret like task, yet his own emotions and conscience caused the murder to be a complete massacre and tragedy. The inj...
Admonished by the ghost of his poisoned father, troubled by the stench of a kingdom in decline, outraged by his queen mother's incestuous liaison, why did Hamlet wait so long to act decisively? Theories abound. Hamlet had an Oedipus complex. Hamlet was mad rather than merely pretending to be. Hamlet was an intellectual pansy. Hamlet was an existentialist. Etc. T. S. Eliot went so far as to say that the play itself was flawed, Hamlet's Problem actually the author's own, insoluble. I believe that the Problem is actually ours. Perhaps the real issue is not Hamlet's hesitation, but our unwillingness to understand it.
When we are faced with critical circumstances we often do not think through the outcome. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the former King was known to be murdered by the Claudius, his brother. When Hamlet gets this information his way of thinking alters. His love for his father, anger, and ambition for revenge, drives him to the destruction of himself.
Hamlet is influenced by his goal to bring out the truth about his fathers death. However, he encounters the ghost of his father and accepts
In the Shakespearean tragedy Hamlet, the young prince of Denmark, faces the difficulty of mourning his father’s death while his mother suddenly remarries the previous king’s brother, Claudius. While finding impenetrability in accepting his mother’s abrupt marriage, Hamlet is advised by his father’s ghost that Hamlet’s uncle murdered his father in order to gain the kingdom and crown. In order to avenge his father’s murder and seek revenge on his uncle, Hamlet seeks to prove his uncle’s crime, but while doing so, he constantly over thinks the outcomes of his plans. Due to his act on thought rather than action in the Shakespearean play Hamlet, Hamlet’s tragic flaw of contemplation ultimately contributes to his demise.
Overall, Hamlet is a tragedy that is the result of too much thought and too little action that is the result of excessive uncertainty. The powerful examination of appearance and reality dominates Hamlets thoughts and causes great questions, in which answers are never certain. The need to be certain of a terrible after life in either hell or purgatory for Claudius is the result of an obsession with death causes Hamlet to delay in his revenge. Lastly, Hamlets inability to act when it is not just impulsive causes him to fail in his preferred delivery of revenge. Hamlets mind, which is his greatest asset, turns out to also be his greatest downfall as it leads to over thinking of everything and causes him to delay in his revenge.
Hamlet begins his soliloquy in Act I, Scene V with passionate diction by shouting to heaven, hell and earth. He compares his life to hell, and the beginning of the soliloquy continues to portray him as a man who is disgusted with life and humanity. He use the phrase “O, fie” which all serves to show Hamlet’s frustration and anger after having heard what the ghost, his father, has told him. He’s enraged because of the deception of his uncle and mother and knows he must get revenge. He tells his muscles to “grow not instant old” because he knows he will need the energy to get revenge. He continues to speak indirectly to the ghost by saying that he’ll “remember thee” and he continues to sound very passionate; but even he may realize that he is overestimating himself as he knows he is confused and tends to overthink as he speaks of his “distracted globe”. But he is very determined as he says he’ll “wipe away” all thoughts and memory, the “baser matter” and only think of his father’s “commandment”. This demonstrates how important it is to Hamlet in this act to get revenge, and in hindsight shows his overestimation for his ability to take action. The Hamlet in this scene is seemingly more passionate and less rational; but the use of his scholarly metaphors such as compar...