preview

Hamlet Turning Point Essay

Decent Essays

Hamlet realizes that he needs to seek his vengeance upon Claudius in his soliloquy that occurs in Act IV, scene iv. This soliloquy is one of the turning points for Hamlet as a character. Hamlet’s character that wants to patiently wait to murder Claudius completely drastically changes to where he will stop at nothing until Claudius is killed. Determination is the thematic issue that is overcome in this passage.
The way that Hamlet carefully choses his words and punctuation and creates his sentences in his soliloquy carefully portrays the transformation of Hamlet’s demeanor to a tenacious man. In the beginning of his soliloquy, one can sense Hamlet’s frustration by his language. He wanted to wait as long as possible to kill Claudius, but when he sees Prince Fortinbras leading his army, it strikes a fire in him and he will now stop at nothing until Claudius is dead. He says,
The imminent death of twenty thousand men, that, for a fantasy and trick of fame, go to their graves like …show more content…

There are several poetic devices throughout all of Hamlet, but in this soliloquy some of the main ones used are irony, allusions, metaphors, and foreshadowing. “What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more” is a perfect example of structural irony. Hamlet is deliberately expressing his hatred for Claudius, and at the same time, he is directly pointing to society as a whole and commenting on its laziness. “That capability and godlike reason to fust in us unused” is an allusion to God; it also helps point out the use of religion in Hamlet. “Gross as earth,” “Even for an egg-shell,” “quarrel in a straw,” “graves like beds” are all metaphors used to help Hamlet clarify what he wants to be interpreted out of this passage—to paint a clearer picture for the audience. “My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth” is foreshadowing an inevitable

Get Access