During the week, I happened to watch part of a serial where the murdered husband comes back in the body of a young boy and asks his wife to take revenge for his murder. Well, I was impatient to know what will happen, but of course I will have to wait for a few years before the finale. However, my brain started ticking, the following questions streaked in my mind; why do departed ones come back to ask their family members to take action on their behalf? Why don't they reveal the name of the killer openly as Hamlet's father did in the play (of the same name)? Are the departed so selfish that they rather spoil the lives of the beloved living members, for their own peace and well being? Well, I have received no answers.
But then, my mind got diverted
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Here we are faced with a problem. What is loyalty? Is loyalty siding with a family member/friend regardless whether the person is right or wrong? Is loyalty, 'either you are with me or against me'? How far will we willingly go out on a limb to be loyal at the expense of ourselves, and maybe our careers and daily bread, or the bigger picture? These are questions which are haunting me.
The departed ghosts are explicit in their wishes. The living are problematic. Are we being selfish nowadays when we protect our daily bread, sanity and emotional stability ? What about those who ask us to endanger the above for them, to solve their problems or to take their sides? Who deserve our loyalty? I believe they are the persons who are dependent on us for their sustenance and well-being, our children, our partners, our parents. And, it is a two way traffic.
Nowadays, I hope to breathe, step back and act instead of reacting. I hope to calm my voice and use the correct tone when I speak when I am upset. And I hope to think clearly for myself what is wrong and what is right and act accordingly. Loyalty, should be true, loyalty should not endanger us. Loving people and true friends should not ask us to act on their behalf at our expense and they should definitely not use
Topic: Discuss the ideas developed by the text creator about the individual’s capacity for self-sacrifice in the face of compelling circumstances.
In the play by William Shakespeare, the ghost of King Hamlet approaches his mourning and depressed son, Hamlet, who is still affected by his death. The ghost explains to Hamlet how he died and demands that Hamlet avenge his death. Note how the ghost approaches Hamlet when he’s the weakest and still mourning to persuade and manipulate him into taking revenge for him. In Act one Scene 5 the ghost states, “If thou didst ever thy dear father love-/ Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” The way King Hamlet words his request is more as a challenge; in which Hamlet’s love for his dead father can only be proven by carrying out whatever his father wishes. The ghost influences most Hamlet’s behavior, which not only affects the plot, but also the relationships with other characters. The ghost influences the relationship between Hamlet and his mother, Gertrude. He becomes angry at Gertrude because of her fast marriage with his uncle Claudius. Through the use of innuendos, antic disposition, and metamorphic plays, Hamlet makes it his duty to get King Claudius back for killing his father. Hamlet agreed to avenge his father without second thought. As the play advances, Hamlet begins to doubt the apparition. In act 3 Hamlet begins to have second thoughts and states, “The spirit that I have seen/ May be a devil…” This shows Hamlet’s inner conflict between listening to his father and avenging his death or following his ethics. To be sure that Claudius
In the play Hamlet, death takes a major part in every scenario. It begins with the death of King Hamlet. King Hamlet was killed by Claudius. The irony of this was that Claudius is the brother of King Hamlet. Once he is killed, Claudius inherits the throne then marries King Hamlet’s wife, Queen Gertrude; which is Claudius’s sister in-law. One night as the guard men are standing outside of the castle, a ghost appears. The ghost speaks to the son of Gertrude and King Hamlet whom is Prince Hamlet and says that the ghost is his father’s spirit and he shall seek revenge on Claudius for marrying his mother and taking over the throne.
The theme of greed and jealousy are explored through stories of Disney's 'The Lion King' and Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. Both texts show us that greed and jealousy can override someones personality and that guilt will always get the best of you. However, Disney's version of 'The Lion King' doesn't have such a tragic ending because the lion's kingdom is restored at the end of the film whereas in Hamlet, Denmark is ruled by Norwegian prince at the end.
The dictionary defines personal ambition as “An earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honour, fame, or wealth and the willingness to strive for its attainment”. (Dictionary.com) One could argue that too much ambition can be a negative trait. By placing such an emphasis on personal ambition it causes some to push their loved ones away in order to achieve what they want. Within most people, unhappiness is a common feeling and in extreme results, it leads to death. In the texts Fifth Business by Robertson Davies and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, it is evident when the strongest characters place power and ambition above all else they crumble.
“Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness ‘’, a quote by Martin Luther King. This quote relates to one of the principal themes in Hamlet. As a synonym for selfishness, greed also ties in to the theme of the play. The egocentricity of the character Claudius and his brother King Hamlet had a very large impact on several lives. He is the perfect example of ‘’one must do whatever it takes ‘’.
Many fictional characters are presented with unique circumstances that dictate their life long search for justice, often coming up empty-handed. One character that exemplifies this model of a person in searching for justice appears in Shakespeare’s novel, Hamlet. The title character, Hamlet, understands justice in terms of a noble revenge, but fails to take action, due to his weak disposition to act on his thoughts. Hamlet’s search for justice was not successful because his sense of “justice” was flawed, ultimately leading not only to his own death, but to Laertes who had a very similar mission to that of Hamlet. Hamlet’s fatal flaw leads to the question concerning what differentiates real justice from faux justice.
“Envy, on the contrary, finds a place only where there is no inducement to pity, or rather an inducement to its opposite; and it is just as this opposite that envy arises in the human breast.” (Arthur Schopenhauer. Human Nature). According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, envy is best defined as, “Painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage.”. Hamlet experienced envy in act III, scene III, when his uncle was repenting. “Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; and now i’ll do’t. And so he goes to heaven and so am I revenged. That would be scann’d. A villain kills my father, and for that, I, his sole son, do same villain send to heaven.” (Ham. III. III. 76-81). In Act III, Scene III of Hamlet, Hamlet envies the power that Claudius now has over him by repenting.
I define loyalty as the willingness of a person to sacrifice at their own personal expense in order to protect, uphold, defend and edify those persons, ideals and/or things which they cherish most. The amount of loyalty a person feels towards someone or something determines how much they are willing to sacrifice for them. As a soldier, we are called upon to sacrifice every aspect of our lives - the physical, the mental, the emotional and the spiritual - in order to protect, uphold, defend and edify the U.S. constitution, the Army, our fellow soldiers and the nation and heritage
Everyone has been led to believe that all lives are equal, and they are however, in terms of monetary value, lives are not equal. Aside the ethics about assigning value to the live it is still done. The justice system tries to resolve this loss by using unjust means. Life should not be given a value in any sort of currency, it is is not right as there is no way to put a price on something as priceless as life. Even if the life of a person is affected by an illness, their worth should not be decreased. All lives are equal, some people need more help than others and it should be given if and when deserve such help. The value of life has been contemplated throughout history, such as Shakespeare's (1599) play, hamlet; in which Hamlet’s
As C.G Jung once said, the pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong. In Willam Shakespeares Hamlet, the protagonist hamlet and antagonist claudius struggle with basic of notions of right and wrong bringing their morality into question. Despite single noble efforts, hamlet and Claudius both prove to be morally weak. Their
Although Hamlet initially swears he will never forget the ghost while seeking retribution (Hamlet. I. v. 112-113), his focus slowly shifts from his father to his own self-interest. In fact, in his final soliloquy, Hamlet laments over his tragic situation: "How stand I, then,/ That I have a father killed, a mother stained,/ Excitements of my reason and my blood,/ And let all sleep while, to my
Finally, the ghost is obsessed with revenge but urges Hamlet to spare his mother. The ghost's request for leniency leads the reader to believe that it is not the ghost's request at all,
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the titular hero and tragic figure of the play constantly finds himself unable to act on the Ghost’s instructions to take revenge on King Claudius despite the compelling reasons he realizes for doing so. The reason for this delay is Hamlet’s tragic flaw – his tendency towards thought and introspection rather than impulse and action. Because of this flaw, Hamlet is unable to ignore the moral aspects of his actions and “thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and [he] loses his natural power of action” (Coleridge, 343).
There is a lot of corruption in Hamlet by Shakespeare, but how does it effect the main character Hamlet? To start, corruption in this play is made up by multiple elements such as greed, manipulation and immoral choices. All of these elements and corruption as a whole may or may not have affected hamlet. This is the theme that I will be exploring in the following series of paragraphs.