Hamlet Character Analysis

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In today’s society, William Shakespeare’s tragedy plays fascinate readers by highlighting characters’ flaws that lead them to their downfall. In the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare demonstrates the characters’ flaws make individuals victims of their own. According to Aristotle,
“Men were full of self-control and were, therefore, responsible for their own actions. It was the tragic heroes’ own actions, then, that brought about the chaos and tragic events” (“Aristotle’s Poetics”). To display the characters’ flaws, Shakespeare uses three main characters: Hamlet, Ophelia, and Claudius. Hamlet’s downfall is demonstrated through his flaw of inaction. Ophelia lacks self-confidence and opinion, and has to obey men like her father, Polonius. Claudius’s greed for power is the reason for his tragic fall. In Shakespeare tragic play Hamlet, the characters’ flaws of Hamlet, Ophelia, and Claudius makes them victims of their flaw. Hamlet lacks the ability to take action towards his goal, whereas Ophelia has no free will and follows men like Polonius, while Claudius follows his greed of power.
Shakespeare displays Hamlet as the protagonist. He describes Hamlet having a conflict with himself that prevents him to accomplish his goal to …show more content…

The reason he struggles is the conflict between him and himself. Shakespeare illustrates how Hamlet struggles along the path of achieving his goal. Shakespeare explains Hamlet’s internal conflict through this line: “the mind to suffer/The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,/Or to take arms against a sea of troubles”. His conflict is being compared to his “outrageous fortune” and “mind to suffer”; Shakespeare also compares death to sleep, sleep full of dreams. Hamlet weights the troubles of living against the unknown nature of death and the afterlife; the unknown nature can be “full of dreams” or an outrageous fortune. Therefore, Hamlet’ internal conflict makes him a victim of his

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