Hamlet is Finally a Hero - Literature review Example

HAMLET Hamlet is a tragic hero because the reader or viewer of the play can see that he is making his own choices, and these choices are effected by his own personal ideas about fate. Hamlet represents indecision and reluctance to carry out what he sees as his goal: “O cursed spite/ That ever I was born to set it right!” (Shakespeare, 1987, I,v, 188-9), he cries upon making Horatio and Marcellus swear to help him make things right. Hamlet is not just following the orders of his father’s ghost; he is struggling with his own goals and ideas about what is right and wrong. He is also a tragic hero because he passes up many opportunities to escape his fate or assure it. He could have called Claudius before a jury, but he chose not to do this. Instead, he made his vendetta intensely personal. Hamlet even provokes Claudius by putting on the play that echoes his own actions. When Claudius is disturbed by this, Hamlet tells him, “Your majesty, and we that have free/ souls, it touches us not. Let the galled jade winch” (Shakespeare, 1987, III,ii,247-8). This is a pun on the freeness of the souls of both Claudius, who has gained the throne by murder and is imprisoned by his knowledge of this, and Hamlet, who is imprisoned by his vow to make things right. Hamlet is finally a hero because he does kill Claudius and rid the throne of this usurper, and it is tragic that he dies in the process of doing this by getting nicked by a poison blade. Hamlet suffers from indecision in the play, but his good qualities are his loyalty to his father and his cleverness, even though this cleverness tends to delay his actions. His tragic flaw wasn’t necessarily pride, but instead was not being able to do anything because he thought about it too much. He rebukes Polonious for being a worthless philosopher, but Hamlet is also the victim of too much deliberation. He does not want to commit to Ophelia. His tragic circumstances, with his father dead and his mother freshly remarried, would gain empathy from the audience. In many of Shakespeare’s plays, the supernatural plays a role in the world of the play and represents urging Hamlet on to leave his indecision aside and go forward with the revenge plot against Claudius. This is also true in Hamlet, where the ghost of Hamlet’s father appears early in the play and later makes it clear to Hamlet what he is expected to do. This is interesting because the audience could differ in opinion about whether or not the ghost is a figment of Hamlet’s own imagination. Whatever the case, the ghost represents Hamlet’s fate: when he delays too much or starts to move on with his life, the ghost appears to remind him of the injustice that has occurred and that it is his duty to set things right. It is not only Hamlet’s own conscience that is related through his soliloquies to the audience, but also the representation of his father’s ghost that actually takes part in the play, and, when it speaks in the presence of others, it is only Hamlet who appears to actually hear the ghost. By using the supernatural to further what could be called natural aspects of the play, Shakespeare highlights the possible presence of things that are out of the characters’ control, such as fate. The ghost also represents the hero’s internal situation. Many commentators have remarked on Hamlet’s indecision as one of his main characteristics that makes the play a tragedy. Even with supernatural intervention and supposed resolve, Hamlet continually delays his plans of vengeance. He pretends to be insane to get proof that Claudius did indeed kill his father, but even when he finds irrefutable evidence that the deed was committed, he still pretends to be insane, and wastes his time at a number of activities that are designed to provoke Claudius. But none of these activities do anything but raise suspicion and make the other characters take him less seriously. “This is mere madness,/” the queen states, “And thus a while the fit will work on him” (Shakespeare, 1987, V,i,287-8). Hamlet is struggling against his indecision and delay to do what he knows to be right, and this struggle is tragic because the reader or viewer can see that Hamlet seems to want to get on with his life at points, but keeps being pulled back to this sense of duty. Indecision is not the only tragic characteristic of Hamlet, however. Hamlet’s ideas of right and wrong also drive him to states of disgust with Claudius and his mother’s behavior. He cannot stand that he has to be a witness to Claudius’s wanton behavior and his mother’s sexuality and apparent shallowness disturbs him. The reader or viewer can see that “in Hamlet’s moral sensibility there undoubtedly lay a danger” (Bradley, 1987, p. 204). The danger is that his steadfast version of right and wrong drives him to consider vengeance and then helps him to go through with this vengeance. Hamlet’s morality leads him to a sense of outrage at Claudius for being drunk and his mother for being superficial. His moral compass gives him an unalterable sense of what is right and wrong, and he sees the world in these terms. The audience is likely to agree with him morally, or at least empathize with his moral situation and his apparent unbalance. One critical discussion remarking of Hamlet’s interaction with his visions states that “the ghost is somehow real, indeed the vehicle of realities” (Mack, p. 196). This is interesting because the audience could differ in opinion about whether or not the ghost is a figment of Hamlet’s own imagination. When he delays too much or starts to move on with s life, the ghost appears to remind him of the injustice that has occurred and that it is his duty to set things right. The ghost also represents the hero’s internal situation. It could be seen to represent the imposition of waking morality into what could be called a Other scholars and critics have seen the play in a more moralistic sense in terms of the impositions placed on Hamlet’s character. These analyses tend to view the play less cohesively and focus on the central problem of Hamlet’s delay as being a choice in which conflicting allegiances are questioned and eventually resolved. Hamlet’s character is indecisive, and tends to abstract his thought and speech, focusing on the problematic nature of his task in philosophical terms. Hamlet has problems following proscribed and imagined fields of duty and moral adherence. As the critic William Diamond has remarked of Hamlet’s character, “to me it is evident that Shakespeare meant to describe a great duty imposed on a soul unable to perform it” (Diamond, p. 90). This condition brings about the indecision of Hamlet’s role in a play of revenge. The nature in which this condition is viewed differs. Many commentators have remarked on Hamlet’s indecision as one of his main characteristics that makes the play a tragedy. Even with supernatural intervention and supposed resolve, Hamlet continually delays his plans of vengeance. He pretends to be insane to get proof that Claudius did indeed kill his father, but even when he finds irrefutable evidence that the deed was committed, he still pretends to be insane, and wastes his time at a number of activities that are designed to provoke Claudius. This is perhaps because his character breaks under the strain of his duty. As Diamond states regarding Hamlet’s moral duty, the prince’s abstracted conscience “sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and which it must not renounce” (Diamond, p. 90). Indecision and creativity are the main results of this sense of splitting between filial piety and self-absolution. Some critics have a positive view of Hamlet’s growing sense of resolution and clarity of purpose which forms positive role considerations in terms of bravery and will. Others have seen Hamlet’s character as being an essentially indecisive character who is able in his moments of abstraction to offer audiences and readers rare insight into philosophical conundrums. Hamlet’s speech differs in relation to the character to whom he is speaking. Some of these speeches seem rather melancholy, while others are witty and some spiteful. His melancholy seems to be rather affected, which has led some critics to view his character in terms of his sustained mental courage and clever plotting that winds off closer to resolution gradually. “Indeed, a man who acts as Hamlet does in Shakespeare’s play can hardly be characterized as inherently lacking in courage, energy, and willpower” (Diamond, p. 91), perhaps considering the moral dissonance he is xperiencing as a character. Hamlet wants to delay his vengeance in any way possible, but in his dreams or hallucinations of his father, he is bound by moral duty. Hamlet, in his waking reality, finds himself unable to enact revenge for most of the play. It is possible that the ghost of his father represents his dreams of becoming both effectual and morally correct in a world where morality may matter less than in the real world. Hamlet is a character who is educated and tends to brood on decisions instead of making them immediately. He almost seems to revel in taunting Claudius with his knowledge of the secret that haunts him, and perhaps wants to extend this position he holds over the king. “This is, of course, also Hamlets own secret: he is unpredictable, not only to the audience, but also, deliberately, to Claudius. The more irrational… Hamlet seemed, the more dangerous he was” (Rosenberg, p. 151). Therefore, his indecision and delay in seeking revenge serves two purposes: it allows him to think about what he is doing, and it also allows him to use the fact that he is privy to the secret as an offensive weapon against Claudius. This is a pun on the freeness of the souls of both Claudius, who has gained the throne by murder and is imprisoned by is knowledge of this, and Hamlet, who is imprisoned by his vow to avenge the ghost of his father. “The issue was settled. Revenge was a sin against God, a defiance of the State, a cancer that could destroy mind, body and soul -- and that was that” (Prosser, p. 72). Hamlet’s delay in seeking revenge in a concrete way is involved with his concern for his soul, and is also, with duality, based on the fact that Hamlet essentially fears Purgatory. Hamlet overcomes his indecision. In putting on the play to mock Claudius, Hamlet takes a step towards making his vengeance complete, but he loses something of his own nature in the process. “Forced to master his opponent’s craft of smiling villainy, he becomes not merely an actor but also a dramatist, ingeniously using a troupe of traveling players, with their ‘murder in jest,’ to unmask the king’s own hypocritical ‘show’” (Neill, p. 314). This is just playing at real revenge, though. Hamlet does eventually kill Claudius and rid the throne of this usurper, and it is tragic that he dies in the process of doing this. Vengeance could have been carried out with less of a tragic risk to his own personal safety if it had been less personalized and brooded over for a lesser period of time. But it is perhaps Hamlet’s nature to brood over his decisions, because he is a young man with a mercurial temper. “As the irrational adolescent he was doubly disturbing: he united the alarm of the unreachable, uncontrollable mind with the anarchism of youth” (Rosenberg, p. 152). This anarchism tends to put delaying the inevitable in high regards in a way that is ultimately supported by Hamlet’s self-interest in doing so: he doesn’t want to lose part of himself to revenge, but ultimately finds that , “Act by act… Hamlet moves from a pathetic, waif-like child to a semi-unbalanced, role-playing adolescent, and finally to the quiet certainty of new-found maturity” (Prosser, p. 27). This seems to be a simplification of a very complex process, however, and a reflection of a maturity that brings about the death of many innocents, including Polonius. Hamlet is perhaps more decisive as the play progresses, but his maturity is something that appears to be relative. He certainly appears more mature than Laertes, who is also depicted as avenging his father’s death, but in an entirely different situation that would be likely to earn much less empathy from the audience. Hamlet never meant to kill Polonius, and the behavior of Laertes is more abrasive and intrusive than motivated by conscience and vengeance. His revenge is more straightforward and simpler, but it is also more treacherous and duplicitous. One does not get the feeling that Laertes thought too much about exacting vengeance, as the audience is more attuned to Hamlet’s character and his internal struggles. And it is obvious that as vengeance is displayed through Hamlet to be an honorable burden, the treachery of Laertes disqualifies him from being considered to be the best avenger of his father’s death. Hamlet goes through much more struggle and transformation in dealing with vengeance. “Unlike Gertrude… Hamlet must insist he is not made of ‘penetrable stuff’” (Neill, p. 317). But aside from the duty he has to prove himself, Hamlet still wants to protect his mother and do what is right by his own code of values. REFERENCE Bradley, A.C. (1987). From Shakespearean Tragedy. Hamlet. Edward Hubler, ed. New York: Signet Classics. Diamond, William. “Wilhelm Meister’s Interpretation of Hamlet.” Modern Philology, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 89-101. Neill, Michael. “Hamlet: A Modern Perspective.” Hamlet. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992. Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet and Revenge. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Rosenberg, Marvin. The Masks of Hamlet. Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1992. Shakespeare, William (1987). Hamlet. Edward Hubler, ed. New York: Signet Classics. Read More