Essay On Mental Illness In Hamlet

The theme in Hamlet is that disloyalty and betrayal drives people to madness. Basically, all of the main characters have gone mad in this story in their own ways. They have all been betrayed or have betrayed someone. The madness spreading was like a domino effect. Someone would do something to hurt the next person. It all started with Claudius and King Hamlet.

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, is about a young prince who wants revenge when he learns about the murder of his father. As the play begins, Hamlet’s character appears to be a normal, sane person. Moving through the acts Hamlet’s personality changes from normal to depressed. There are hints of insanity that try to convince people Hamlet is “mad”. Others might say that Hamlet is faking madness to pursue his goal of revenge. First, he sees a “ghost” that tells Hamlet who killed his father and married his mother. Was this a dream or was this real? Second, Hamlet kills more than one person to avenge his father’s death. Where these accidents or intentional? “Insanity: a legal term for mental illness of such degree

Hamlet had a lot of things in his life gone wrong. For an example his father (the king at the time) was murdered by his own brother the new king. At the end of the book his mother and ophelia end up dead to. Hamlet was obsessed with his father being murdered and tried to seek revenge upon his murderer. At the end of the book hamlet ended up killing polonius because he thought it was Claudius (the new king). He was putting other people in harm's way too make claudius too confess. Hamlet has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because of depression, self-destructive behavior, and unwanted memories of the trauma.

Throughout Shakespeare?s play, Hamlet, the main character, young Hamlet, is faced with the responsibility of attaining vengeance for his father?s murder. He decides to feign madness as part of his plan to gain the opportunity to kill Claudius. As the play progresses, his depiction of a madman becomes increasingly believable, and the characters around him react accordingly. However, through his inner thoughts and the apparent reasons for his actions, it is clear that he is not really mad and is simply an actor simulating insanity in order to fulfill his duty to his father.

Hamlet's to be or not to be soliloquy, illuminates something that crosses every human's mind, even if only for a split second; to live or die, fight or cry. Sometimes the world can get to a person, and when allowed to manifest, it can be hurtful. Suicide is a choice when things get tough, but a cowardly act. Life is precious and the only way to succeed must be to be in it; therefore, living. Suicide doesn't terminate a problem, but hides it. People will be judged sooner or later by the powers that be.

Schizophrenia is a mental illness ; ’’a mental disorder that is characterized by disturbances in thought (such as delusions), perception (such as hallucinations), and behavior (such as disorganized speech or catatonic behavior), by a loss of emotional responsiveness and extreme apathy, and by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life. ‘’ Hamlet displays signs of Schizophrenia with his communications with his deceased father; he has visions of father that can view upon as hallucinations. The hallucinations had occurred on three different events, the beginning of the play when the dead king told Hamlet that Claudius “foul and most unnatural murder” (I.v.25) with poison in the ear. Hamlet does not display disturbance in thought, he does not believe that everyone can hear his thoughts nor does he demonstrate difficulty with a train of thought as well as he does not change. The second time hallucinations are apparent is when his mother witnessed Hamlet “ visioning” his father. In Act Three ; scene two, Hamlet speaks to the spirit of the dead king however Getrude is incapable of viewing it and evaluates her son to be mad. “Alas, how is ’t with you, that you do bend your eye on vacancy and with th' incorporal air do hold discourse? Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep and, as the sleeping soldiers in th' alarm, your bedded hair, like life in excrements,Starts up and stands on end. O gentle son,Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you

The play Hamlet by William Shakespeare can be interpreted in many different ways due to its ambiguous nature. This causes for conflicting arguments and theories to be held throughout the play. One argument is whether or not Prince Hamlet is overwhelmed with madness or he uses it as a persona in order to give others a false perception of him.

Did you ever notice there are many characters in Hamlet that have mental disorders? Hamlet has a few characters that could possibly be diagnosed with a mental health disorder. At the beginning of the story, Hamlets dad is possibly murdered and Hamlet's uncle, Claudius, takes over the king spot. Hamlet's father's ghost arrives in the castle, it causes suspicions with the whole remarrying right after the death. He becomes very confused on how and why his father passed away. Due to the confusion and questions Hamlet wants answered, he could have developed a mental health disorder in the process of trying to figure things out.

Throughout history, mental illness has always been prevalent. As far as time goes, there have been murders and crimes that could not of been committed by a healthy mind. In the play of Hamlet, the story is based around crimes, lies, and deceiving others. Claudius has murdered King Hamlet, causing a chain reaction of other crimes. After realizing the real fate of his father, Hamlet set out to seek revenge for his father. He wanted to murder Claudius for killing his father, but mistook Polonius for Claudius, killing him. After that event, Claudius realized that Hamlet knew what actually happened and to protect the throne, wanted to get rid of Hamlet. In the process of protecting his throne, he lies to his people. He lies and manipulates

There were various ‘treatments’ used in the span of history to treat those who were affected by anything regarding mental health. Psychology, despite being one of the youngest sectors of science has a very undeveloped, horrific history when it comes to participants. “Madness is a generic term that includes behaviors considered deviant. Deviance is always culturally defined, and varies markedly from society to society.” ("Madness and Culture."). In the play, both Hamlet and Ophelia are affected mental health disorders deriving from the deaths of loved ones yet they both dealt with it differently. Arguments regarding Hamlet’s mental state are made based off his encounter with his father's ghost as well as his general behaviour. Hamlet’s friends often worry that when Hamlet and his father meet “there [King Hamlet] assume some other horrible form, Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason And draw you into madness?” (1.4.71-73). Nonetheless, this worry was often disproved throughout the play. Being described as having a ‘crafty madness’ by Rosencrantz disproves his madness theory. Moreover, there are various instances where Hamlet confesses to faking his apparent decent. With statements such as “I am but mad north-northwest” (Shakespeare 2.2.386) or “...am not in madness, / but mad in craft” (Shakespeare 3.4.188-189) show that Hamlet is fully aware of himself and how others think of him, showing that his acts are done on purpose and he is, in

A major symptom of psychotic depression is auditory/visual hallucinations.Within the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, it is never explicitly stated whether Hamlet has had hallucinations in his past, but if the audience assumes he has in fact experienced these kinds of mental anomalies, psychosis amplified by depression fits strikingly well with his character throughout the entirety of the play. Under this light, Hamlet’s character arc looks flawlessly tied to this idea of a developing mental illness, a mental illness that was

Throughout Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the main character, Hamlet, must seek revenge for the murder of his father. Hamlet decides to portray an act of insanity, as part of his plan to murder Claudius. Throughout the play, Hamlet becomes more and more believable in his act, even convincing his mother that he is crazy. However, through his thoughts, and actions, the reader can see that he is in fact putting up an act, he is simply simulating insanity to help fulfil his fathers duty of revenge. Throughout the play, Hamlet shows that he understands real from fake, right from wrong and his enemies from his friends. Even in his madness, he retorts and is clever in his speech and has full

In return, Hamlet tries to break her down by putting her sins in front of her because she married the king’s brother so soon after his death. When she cries for help, innocent Polonius enters and Hamlet says “How now! A rat?” and kills Polonius because he thought that it was Claudius. Hamlet’s insanity is like a blind rage. He is so focused on revenge that he doesn’t realize what he is doing. Hamlet is taking sick pleasure in hurting the ones around him in order to please himself which his pure insanity.

During the past few weeks, I have been doing extensive investigating into the mental state of Prince Hamlet. He has not been his normal self lately, and upon conversations with several of his acquaintances as well as himself, I have concluded that Hamlet is indeed suffering from a mental illness. This mental illness is caused by the emotional torture that he has went through recently, including the death of his father, the marriage of his mother, and his rejection from Ophelia. My investigation began with an interview with Lord Polonius, where he enlightens me with a story about when he conversed with Hamlet. Polonius claims, “He knew me not at first; he said I

Hamlet exhibits symptoms in the play of being in the midst of a manic episode: an irritable and elevated mood, unusual talkativeness, flight of ideas, and involvement in activities which may have undesirable consequences. Hamlet may possibly have had Bipolar 1. This diagnosis explains why he acts so wildly, and why he’s so suicidal. The psychosis may be causing him to envision the figure of his father coming to him as a ghost, and the mania may be why he acts so strangely and without thinking about the consequences - talking to himself about suicide, killing Claudius, and fighting Laertes.