Hamlet Hamartia Analysis

William Shakespeare creates the character Hamlet as an anti-hero; a hero with countless flaws and characteristics of an average citizen. Throughout the Tragedy of Hamlet, a connection is created with the audience when exploring both hamartia and peripeteia within Hamlet as an anti-hero. Therefore, to connect with the audience, Shakespeare creates Hamlet as a hero with flaws, allowing for Hamlet to become further recognisable and relatable towards the audience. Shakespeare depicts Hamlet’s hamartia, leading him to travel down the incorrect path, causing his downfall. This hamartia is brought upon Hamlet when his circumstances change due to his peripeteia, which reverses his fortunes dramatically, causing his rationalized plans to collapse.

Hamlet became reckless in his attempts to exact revenge against Claudius to send his father off to heaven. The tragic flaw that causes Hamlet’s downfall is his indecisive nature, as Hamlet spends adequate amounts of time planning to avenge his father’s death, and hence loses time to inflict revenge. By allowing these distractions and interruptions to come into play, it causes the already difficult task to become even less possible. Consequently, as Hamlet further delays killing the King with his indecisiveness, he puts additional people’s lives into jeopardy, and leads him towards his own tragic downfall. Hamlet’s indecisive nature is displayed in the soliloquy “To be, or not to be – that is the question”; this quote further shows Hamlet’s inability to take conclusive action. In the end, Hamlet simulated madness, to finish all possibilities of justification behind his

The first instance is when Hamlet begins to replicate madness. When he begins to fake his madness, a change in Hamlet’s fortune becomes apparent, as this causes various people, Claudius included, to become suspicious of Hamlet, every move he does to be watched and monitored. Hamlet had the chance to kill Claudius as he prayed, but did not so as hit would grant Claudius into heaven, which would mean a non-exact vengeance. The other main point of peripeteia is the point where Hamlet slays Polonius hiding behind the curtain. At this point when Hamlet kills Polonius, his reversal of fortune begins to turn around for the worst. Hamlet murders Polonius, as he believed Claudius stood spying on his conversation with his mother, this behaviour comes sudden of Hamlet. He jumped at the opportunity to kill whom he believed to be Claudius, although he had never attempted it previously. Hamlet knows that Claudius is responsible for his father’s death, but he fails to take action at the vital time, and loses the plan he