Hamlet's Journey Through the Grieving Process in Shakespeare's Hamlet

As Hamlet says, ?Frailty thy name is woman?, her actions cause Hamlet to curse women all together. In the first Act, Claudius and Gertrude question Hamlet?s depression. They push Hamlet to accept his father?s death and move on with his life. Hamlet hides his feelings about his mother and the king. He should have admitted his hatred for their marriage. While Hamlet is holding back his feelings, he becomes more angered at their attempts to calm him. Gertrude is also aware of Hamlet?s feelings for Ophelia and uses this as an excuse for Hamlet?s madness. Hamlet has plenty of time to confess the cause of his madness and that?s what he should have done. Instead, Hamlet allows his mother to think he is madly in love rather than tell the truth. After Hamlet delivers his play and sees guilt in his uncle, Gertrude sends for Hamlet. Instead of hurting his mother, he insists on her to tell him the truth. It would have been easier to just go ahead and hurt Gertrude. Also, Hamlet should have acted more swiftly on this, then her confession could have taken place earlier in the play. This could save him from a great deal of pain and leave his thoughts for other problems.

figure out what is wrong with him. The way his mother interprets his behavior, at first, is that he is holding a grudge against her for what he has done. As the play progresses, Polonius tells Gertrude "Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with…" which proves that Hamlet's condition is worsening in the eyes of everyone. As she speaks to Hamlet, she feels that her life is in danger due to the way that Hamlet is speaking to her. "These words like daggers enter mind ears…" is what Gertrude says to Hamlet because of the utter disrespect and the manner in which he is acting. The way Ophelia views Hamlet is that he turned into a different person. In Act II, scene i, she believes that if he really loved her, he wouldn't have grabbed her by the wrists, held her hard, stared at her, and sighed heavily. She also explains how his clothes were unkempt and didn't look very prince-like but more like he "had been loosed out of hell" (line 93). It is sad how Polonius tries to be positive and view it as Hamlet is madly in love with her. But in return, he is killed in Act III scene iv. Also, in Act III, scene ii, Hamlet has becomes a pervert with Ophelia due to all his sexual references that he believes are appropriate because he is just flirting.

Hamlet responded enraged, “Get thee to a nunnery” (III. i. 130), Hamlet’s reaction shocked and appalled Ophelia so much so that she ran out of the castle hurt by Hamlet's accusations. Polonius's death by the hands of Hamlet sends Ophelia over the top. She doesn't have Hamlet to lean on anymore, since his rejection of her and feels all alone. Ophelia then begins to act out, eventually drawing attention to her. Ophelia’s promiscuous demeanor to the guards and random singing in the halls provokes an immense sign of distress in my opinion. She makes known of her anger towards the court by not performing proper social conduct to her peers, because they put Polonius in the ground without another thought, “...I would / Give you some violets, but they withered all when, my father died” (IV.v. 207-209). Ophelia's performance in King Claudius's chair became an obvious cry for attention. Distributing a bouquet of flowers to her loved ones signifies her feelings and warns those around her that she no longer has the will to live because her father

A popular twentieth-century Swiss-American psychiatrist named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross believes that once an individual experiences a loss they exhibit five distinct stages of grieving. Kübler-Ross model can be broken down into five stage: they are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Kübler-Ross believes when a person experiences a death, they have these emotional responses assuring the process of healing. In an article on the Elizabeth Kübler-Ross foundation site, Professor Allan Kellehear explains, “These “stages” [may] overlap, occur together, or even that some reactions are missed altogether” (Kellehear). Hamlet “destructive behavior [that]

Five Stages of Grief The Clockmaker Hypothesis argues that God has set out a path for everything in the universe and fate is already decided without any alterations by God, just as the watch functions independent from its inventor which set up its intricate design. Yet, in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the main character Hamlet is in a constant struggle of trying to change his fate while trying to carry out revenge against his murderous uncle. Through the five acts, Hamlet goes from denial, isolation, anger, depression to bargaining and finally conditional understanding of life and the situation he is faced with. In the beginning of the play, Hamlet is portrayed as an isolated, angry, and depressed prince.

In Hamlet, one of the central themes is that of grief. After the death of his father and hasty remarriage of his mother, Hamlet is filled with grief. His mother and uncle/father do not understand why Hamlet “seems” so depressed. The lines 1.2.76-86 are Hamlet’s reply to this lack of understanding from them. The central message of these lines is that Hamlet looks depressed outwardly, but he is much worse on the inside.

Hamlet experiences deep feelings of grief and loss following the death of his father. Hamlet tries to think through his wish for death, his fears about the likely unfairness of the afterlife, and his inability to act. In the first soliloquy of Act 3 Scene 1, Shakespeare utilizes specific metaphors to reveal Hamlet is caught between the act of revenge and the fear of committing a sin worthy of hell.

Hamlet exhibits the tragedy, the revenge, the madness and the betrayal situations in one’s life. The main character, Hamlet, is the son of the King of Denmark who feels isolated and lonely after his father’s death. Meanwhile, Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, rules the Kingdom of Denmark, which causes confusion to young Hamlet. Therefore, several tragically events occur in the play which leads to conflicts between different characters. Moreover, Hamlet’s lover, Ophelia is presented to be emotionally controlled by her father, Polonius.

To Ophelia, whom he had formerly lovingly courted, he brusquely states “I loved you not” (3.1, 129) and deeply offends her with his brutish behavior and lurid sexual puns. Heartbroken, Ophelia becomes insane and eventually drowns herself in a brook. His fantasies of revenge also become more sinister as he cruelly resolves to kill Claudius “when he is drunk asleep, or in his rage” (3.3, 93) in order to insure that his step-father cannot confess his for his sins and therefore goes to hell. Worst of all, Hamlet murders innocent people without regret. He sends his former best friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths through forging Claudius’s seal with the orders that they are to be killed immediately upon arrival. He does not display any regret for this and only states, “They are not near my conscience” (5.2.65) Similarly, in a fit of madness and rage, he storms into his mother’s bedroom, mercilessly kills Polonius who is in hiding and only references what he has done by brieifly addressing Polonius’s corpse, “Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell.” (3.4, 38) Then, he proceeds to verbally assault his mother who has just witnessed his horrible deed to the point where she exclaims “these words like daggers enter my ears” (3.4, 108) and observes that Hamlet is truly “mad” (3.4, 121) The great tragedy of the play is that Hamlet’s passion for revenge creates an insanity that makes him stray so far from his moral values and leads to so much unnecessary

Bishop 1 Kirslyn Bishop Mrs. Donlon English, block D 1, November 2015 Hamlet's Existentialism What is the meaning of life? How can one person endure such great embarrassment and pain in one life? In the beginning of the play, Hamlet is seen as a man of intelligence and logic. He is one that does not act on his emotions but contemplates them and thinks of the consequences.

Hamlet’s madness is starting to take over him and it’s affecting his relationship with Ophelia. As his journey continues he starts treating and acting differently. Ophelia confronts him about their feeling about one another, but instead Hamlet tells her that he never loved her. Ophelia’s dad forbids her from seeing him. Ophelia is devastated by the whole situation. While Hamlet continues to act crazy in front of Ophelia so she will then go to her father, Polonius and he will then go to Claudius and tell him that Hamlet is

With Ophelia he tells her that he didn't love her and then disrespects her because of her sexuality saying ¨Get thee to a nunnery, go.¨ While Ophelia's father did want them to break up Hamlet’s handling of that is true to irreverence the he feels towards women. When Ophelia passes he changes the outward expression of his feeling towards her and claims “Forty thousand brothers Could not with all their quantity of love Make up my sum.¨ Hamlet doesn't know how to treat women, no matter what his true feelings are he lacks the understanding to express them and rather uses his power to belittle women to avoid feeling things. Hamlet uses women to pin his emotions on, going off at Ophelia for her sexuality then claiming he loved her when it was already too

It’s ironic that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross theory, of the five stages of grief is present in the story “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare after so many centuries later. Hamlet is believed to be the most dramatic play in history, and comes with many personal conflicts that people still today will struggle with. In “Hamlet”, the main character, Hamlet goes through the 5 stages of grief throughout the story. Elizabeth Kubler- Ross developed a theory based on how she believes to be the stages of acceptance of death. “The 5 stages of grief and loss are: 1. Denial and isolation; 2. Anger; 3. Bargaining; 4. Depression; 5. Acceptance. People who are grieving do not necessarily go through the stages in the same order or experience all of them.” (Axelrod, 2016) Even though, Hamlet repeats some of these stages, and is involved in multiple stages at the same time, he does in fact experience through all these stages. Hamlet the Danish prince, son of Gertrude, grieve for the death of his father. The unexpected passing of his father causes Hamlet to experience a roller coaster of emotions. The death of his father is not the only thing he struggles with, but the marriage between his mother and uncle troubles him also. He feels as if his mother has betrayed him, and did not give him the proper time to grief over the fatality of his father. Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, not only replaced his father, but he also inherited the throne that was supposed to be passed down to Hamlet. When Horatio and the

Hamlet, the son of the former King of Denmark is in a state of depression due to his father’s murder which was committed by his uncle. This is followed by the marriage of his mother and the same uncle who killed his father; this forces Hamlet into a state of misery. Upon learning that his father was murdered, Hamlet is also told by his father’s ghost to get revenge. Throughout the play, Hamlet often pretends to be insane or in a state of madness. This is all apart of how he will plan to kill is murderer uncle. Hamlet’s love, Ophelia, is ordered by her Father Polonius to not be with Hamlet, because he is thought to be insane. Hamlet later on in the play is kills Polonius, which causes Ophelia to truly slip into madness, unlike Hamlet’s superficial madness.

Meanwhile, Polonius, Claudius, and Gertrude start to suspect that something is wrong with Hamlet, so they decide to send Ophelia to talk to him, hoping they can find out why he’s all of a sudden starting acting crazy. Before Ophelia confronts Hamlet, he talks to himself about being conflicted about killing Claudius, saying that he’s sad and scared, not knowing if this Ghost is just the devil in disguise, and also he contemplates killing himself to end his grief over his father. While he’s contemplating, Ophelia walks in to talk to Hamlet, hoping she can find out why he’s been acting strange lately. However, Hamlet becomes defensive after she tells him that she wants to give him back the letters that he’s been sending her, saying “Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all. Believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father?” (III.i.131-141). After Hamlet exits, Ophelia says “Oh, how noble his mind used to be, and how lost he is now! He used