“Grief is the price we pay for love.” Queen Elizabeth II Overcoming the grief that is felt after losing a loved one is a physically and mentally agonizing task. According to Dr. Christina Hibbert, a clinical psychologist who graduated from the California School of Professional Psychology, three main stages of grief include anger, depression and acceptance. Each one of these emotions can be seen in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Descendants (2011, Payne) as the artists explore the effects of grief and the different emotional responses that one can have due to the loss of a loved one. Additionally, in Ismail Kadare’s Broken April, the Berisha family feels the sufferance that is associated with unexpected death, as well as the various temperamental reactions that one will have after losing a loved one. Each of these works of art represent a powerful example of the stages that one will go through after feeling the intense sorrow that is connected with death, as well as the unavoidable effects of grief. After the death of Old Hamlet and Gertrude’s remarriage to Claudius, Hamlet feels extremely angry and bitter. “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!” (1.2.133-134). Due to the death of his father, he is already in a state of despair and the lack of sympathy that his mother has towards his sorrow does not aid him in recovering from this stage of grief. “Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted colour off, / And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark” (1.2.68-69). Hamlet is struggling to accept the fashion in which Gertrude is responding to the death of Old Hamlet; she seems quite content with her new life with Claudius, which is a difficult concept for him to accept as after the d... ... middle of paper ... ...ty during these stages of grief. The loss of a loved one is a painful experience and the effects of grief can be very difficult to overcome. However, when one begins to accept death, they also begin to acquire a type of strength that will help them cope with other struggles that they may come across throughout their lifetime. Works Cited Kadare, Ismail. Broken April. Chicago: New Amsterdam Books, 1990. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Cyrus Hoy. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1992. 1-101. The Descendants. Alexander Payne. Fox Searchlight Pictures., 2011. Kiefer, Dale, and George Krucik. “Depression and Relationships.” Healthline. N.p., 29 Mar. 2012. Web 26 May 2014. relationships>. “The 5 Stages of Grief.” Dr. Christina Hibbert. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2014. http://www.drchristinahibbert.com>.
... he over re-acts and the ghost of his father appears to remind him of why he was there. Gertrude senses Hamlets anger after he kills Polonius and asked what have I done? Hamlets reply was one full of grief, anxiety and anger. He begins to tell his mother of what he knows and what he expects from her. Not to share her bed with Claudius as well as take part in any more corruption. Gertrude then begins to see that her son is not mad with sickness, but is more mad with anger over her stupidity. Hamlet has let his mother become his main role model for all women in the world and that is why he is so negative towards women.
Each of us, in time, will experience a heart-stopping reality - the death or loss of someone or something we love. Maybe it will be of a family member or just a pet we dearly cherished, but the feelings we have are all too real and all too painful. This loss is probably by far the greatest and most severe emotional trauma we can encounter, and the sense of loss and grief that follows is a healthy, natural, and important part of healing ("Death"). In The River Warren by Kent Meyers Jeff Gruber learns to deal with the grief associated with the loss of his younger brother, Chris. This grief is perhaps the strongest of all emotions that bind families together, but it can also be the hardest to overcome. We never really get over these feelings; we just absorb them into our lives and move on. According to Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, there are five basic stages of grief. They are denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance. It is not unusual for people to be lost in one of the first four stages, and until they move on to acceptance
Less than two months after his father’s death, Prince Hamlet’s mother Gertrude gets remarried to his father’s brother Claudius, which upsets the prince immensely. During Hamlet’s first important soliloquy, he states
Imagine that the person you love most in the world dies. How would you cope with the loss? Death and grieving is an agonizing and inevitable part of life. No one is immune from death’s insidious and frigid grip. Individuals vary in their emotional reactions to loss. There is no right or wrong way to grieve (Huffman, 2012, p.183), it is a melancholy ordeal, but a necessary one (Johnson, 2007). In the following: the five stages of grief, the symptoms of grief, coping with grief, and unusual customs of mourning with particular emphasis on mourning at its most extravagant, during the Victorian era, will all be discussed in this essay (Smith, 2014).
Although Knight's views of Hamlet and Claudius are almost the extreme opposite of my interpretation, I understand how he developed this interpretation. Hamlet becomes sick and cynical after the death of his father, whom he greatly admired, and the hasty remarriage of his mother to his uncle. Hamlet thinks his father was an "excellent king," who loved his mother so much "that he may might not beteem the winds of heaven/ Visit her face to roughly" (I, ii, 140-141). However, his mother mourned for "a little month" and then she married a man who was "no more like [his] father/ Than [he] to Hercules" (I, ii, 153-152). These extraordinary events cause him to launch into a state of melancholy and depression in which he desires "that this too too solid flesh would melt" (I, ii, 129). In this melancholy, Hamlet loses becomes disenchanted with life, and to him the world seems "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable" (I, ii, 133). Later in the most famous of his soliloquy's, Hamlet contemplates committing suicide because he is troubled by "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (III, i, 58). His disinterest for life, and his wishes for death are a definite indications of Hamlet's sickness.
Furthermore, in Act I, Scene 2, Gertrude asks Hamlet, “Why seems it so particular with thee?” Since death is common to all, she asks, why does Hamlet seem to be making such a particular fuss about his father’s death? He replies, “Seems Madam?
Hamlet was forced to endure many painful experiences, and the ways in which he chose to react to those experiences are what largely contributed to the tragedy. In his essay dealing with Hamlet and the loss of innocence, Godshalk claims that “the prince...begins the play dreaming of innocence and personal integrity, and in the course of action, this innocence and integrity are severely compromised.” (221) This is indeed true, as the experiences that Hamlet is forced to endure whittle away at his innocence, and as he reacts to these experiences, he is driven by his reactions to act in a way where he must abandon his integrity. The death of King Hamlet took a toll on Young Hamlet, inducing grief and sorrow to the mourning son. In fact, it seemed that just two months after the King’s death, Hamlet was the only one left feeling any kind of sorrow. The experience of losing a loved one, especially his father, was too much for Hamlet and he was too grief stricken in the eyes of some, Claudius especially. Claudius inquired of Hamlet, “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” (1.2.66) Claudius seems to think that Hamlet has little reason to still be grieving over the death of his father. Claudius continues:
Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother, is in some ways the epicentre around which Hamlet's emotions revolve. Her role is difficult to determine; she can be seen, like Desdemona, as the passive victim of male ambition and strife, or she can be placed amongst the likes of Lady Macbeth as privy to her husband's misdeeds, and as sharing his guilt to an equal, if not greater extent. Her attitude to Ophelia seems positive ('Scattering flowers. Sweets to the sweet. Farewell. I hop'd thou shouldst have been my Hamlet's wife'; V.1.236). Her most vital scene is III.4, in which Hamlet attempts to extract a confession from her, and to persuade her to renounce Claudius. Modern productions regularly home in on the Freudian potential by locating this key encounter between mother and son in the former's bedroom. It takes place in her closet.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet shows a unique mother and son relationship between Gertrude and Hamlet. Stemming from the death of King Hamlet, Hamlet’s depiction of his mother signals a heinous relationship amongst the two. Hamlets and Gertrude relationship looks complicated, but Gertrude still considers Hamlet as her son. After the marriage of Gertrude and Claudius, her affection towards Hamlet is not encountered, excluding for when she questioned his dark demeanor, “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark” (I, II, 68-69). Initially in the plot, Hamlet realizes that his mother is completely oblivious and naïve to her relationship with King Hamlet. Her questioning Hamlet’s character indicates that she
Hamlet possesses an uncomfortable obsession with his mother’s sexuality. For this reason, Hamlet’s soliloquies provide most of the audience’s information about Gertrude’s sexual activities. In his first soliloquy, Hamlet refers to the relationship between Gertrude and Claudius when he exclaims, “Within a month…She married. O, most wicked speed, to post / With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!” (I, ii, 153-157). In saying this, Hamlet displays how hastily Gertrude has abandoned the late King Hamlet, Hamlet’s father, such that she has already married Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle. In addition, Hamlet acknowledges that Gertrude and Claudius have quickly developed a very sexual relationship. Despite the very recent death of her husband, Gertrude is unable to control her sexual desires, and she remarries less than two months after King Hamlet’s funeral.
The relationship between Hamlet and Gertrude is strained at first. From the beginning of the play to act III, Hamlet is bitter with his mother. He feels this way because it has been less than four months since the death of his biological father, yet she is already remarried to Claudius. He feels his father is being betrayed from her lack of mourning. She tells her son to "cast thy nighted color off" (I.ii.68) and "all that lives must die" (I.ii.72). Clearly, she isn't grieving over her late husband's death and instead puts forth an optimistic attitude to her new husband and life. Gertrude's concern with Hamlet's odd behaviour after his encounter with Ophelia in act II scene i also shows the strain in their relationship. For example, she agrees with Claudius' words that "of Hamlet's transformation" (II.ii.5) and suggests Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy and find out the underlying cause of her son's problems. In addition to that, she consents Polonius to hide behind the tapestry in act III scene iv without Hamlet knowing. These two decisions suggest their inability to communicate. Instead, spying is required for Gertrude to find out about her son's inner mentality. The mother and ...
In the beginning of the book, Hamlet behaves as any normal person would when he mourns the untimely death of his father, the King. He is dreary and depressed and also contemplates suicide. On the other hand, Gertrude behaves as though her husband’s death did not even occur, not in such a way that she is denying it happened, but as if it was insignificant and trivial. She marries her husband’s brother a month after his death. She continues to live on in a blissful world, while Hamlet is repulsed by his mother’s decision to remarry so quickly. Hamlet refers to it as an incestuous marriage. “She married:--O most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!” (Act 1, Scene 2, lines 156-157, page 33). He appears to be the only one in the entire kingdom affected by the death of his father and it makes him feel more alone.
From the very moment Claudius and Gertrude enter the play, we get a very good idea as to how they are coping with the loss of King Hamlet. The two are very nonchalant about his passing and encourage young Hamlet to stop obsessing over his beloved father. They essentially chastise him for mourning the loss of his father for so
Gertrude influenced Hamlet significantly throughout the course of the play. Hamlet was very angered by his mother's remarriage. A few months after his father's death, Gertrude married Claudius, Hamlet's uncle. He was driven mad when his father's ghost appeared to him and revealed that Claudius was responsible for the death of Old Hamlet. Hamlet even termed the marriage as incest. Hamlet's fury is displayed when he throws his mother on the bed and says, "Frailty, thy name is woman" (Act #. Scene #. Line #). This shows his extent of anger because he makes a generalization that all women are weak. As a result of his mother's actions, Hamlet strives to seek revenge against Claudius for the death of his father. In order to marry Gertrude, Claudius kills his brother. Therefore, Gertrude is the driving factor for the whole setup of the play.
Hamlet has just come from watching Claudius praying for forgiveness, his emotions and his nerves are very brittle, and he has just missed a chance to kill his uncle. Hamlet releases his pent up frustrations upon Gertrude, lashing out at her and condemning her despite the ghost’s order not to. Hamlet lashes out with his id, insulting her and accusing her, she defends with her Superego, innocent in her mind of any crimes he accuses her of.