Essay about The Delay of Hamlet

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, the main character continually delays acting out his duty of avenging his father's murder. This essay will discuss how Hamlet's nature and morals (which are intensified by difficult events) prevent him from carrying out the task.

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.

Hamlet recognizes that suicide is a sin in the eyes of God, so consequently wishes that he could simply cease to exist. In doubting that life is worth all the hardships one must face, Hamlet briefly relishes in the concept of death, equating it to nothing more than a sleep wherein one can be rid of the “heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks” of physical life (III.i.70). Though immediately thereafter Hamlet acknowledges the startling unknown, and the fact that one does not know what comes after death. Hamlet feels a great deal of uncertainty, which surely enhances his overall frustration. Herein lies Hamlet’s reservations in regards to committing suicide: it is a sin, and the afterlife may prove to be more unpleasant than life itself.

Throughout the play, Hamlet’s character is characterized both by periods of extreme caution and moments of impulsivity. One of the best examples of Hamlet’s heed can be found in Act 2, Scene 2 where he decides to have his theatre troupe perform his play, The Mousetrap. With this, Hamlet hopes that he will be able to “catch the conscience of the King,” by monitoring Claudius during the performance, that heavily mimics his murder of his brother, for signs of stress and guilt. While Hamlet was fully capable of bypassing this step by simply adhering to what he believes is the ghost of his father, Hamlet’s decision to unearth some sort of evidence that supports his father’s accusations is just one example of his cautious ways and need for certainty before action. However, such displays of caution find themselves juxtaposed with Hamlet’s bouts of impulsivity. One of the most telling illustrations of Hamlet’s rashness can be found in Act One, Scene Five, where he first conversing with the ghost of his father. Here, when the Ghost asks Hamlet to “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder,” Hamlet immediately agrees. In fact, within the next few lines Hamlet pledges he will “sweep to my revenge” with “wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love”. The fact that Hamlet coins this commitment to avenge his father’s murder without making much of any consideration of the possible repercussions of such an undertaking is one of the best representations of Hamlet’s impulsivity. This rash action, marked by a lack of extended over-analysis and internal debate, contrasts with the excessive caution Hamlet exhibits at many other points throughout the play. Ultimately, the interplay between Hamlet’s caution and impulsivity is one of the most notable juxtapositions of the play and serves to strongly steer the development, not only of

Revenge is a recurring theme in Hamlet. Although Hamlet wants to avenge his father’s death, he is afraid of what would result from this. In the play Hamlet, Hamlet’s unwillingness to revenge appears throughout the text; Shakespeare exhibits this through Hamlet’s realization that revenge is not the right option, Hamlet‘s realization that revenge is the same as the crime which was already committed, and his understanding that to revenge is to become a “beast” and to not revenge is as well (Kastan 1).

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the main character continually delays acting out his duty of avenging his father’s murder. This essay will discuss how Hamlet’s nature and morals (which are intensified by difficult events) prevent him from carrying out the task.

Throughout the course of the play, Hamlet is also obsessed with the mystery of death. In the beginning of the play, he states that he is unsure where one ends up after they die. Later into the play, he makes a reference to the afterlife contradicting his first approach. When he attempts to kill

Hamlet is as much a story of emotional conflict, paranoia, and self-doubt as it is one of revenge and tragedy. The protagonist, Prince Hamlet of Denmark, is instructed by his slain father’s ghost to enact vengeance upon his uncle Claudius, whose treacherous murder of Hamlet’s father gave way to his rise to power. Overcome by anguish and obligation to avenge his father’s death, Hamlet ultimately commits a number of killings throughout the story. However, we are not to view the character Hamlet as a sick individual, but rather one who has been victimized by his own circumstances.

The relevance and significance of the revenge tragedy is in the way it explores human nature and forces audiences to evaluate ideologies such as revenge and justice. The concept of revenge is accompanied by moral conflict and Shakespeare demonstrates that by acting immorally society is likely to be riddled with corruption. Hamlet seeks to avenge the death of his father but struggles with the ramifications of seeking righteous revenge through an immoral act. The imposition of revenge instills the existential questioning on Hamlet as it contradicts his with his social expectation. His

Hamlet begins to react upon his feelings and does away with his reason as he says to the ghost that he will do away with all knowledge and memory and keep within his mind the want to revenge his fathers’ murder. “Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live”, (1.5.96-103). Hamlet begins to exhibit the argued theme that revenge causes people to act recklessly

In William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, it’s clear that the title character, Hamlet, has a relationship with death, that relationship is often misunderstood. Some see him merely as an agent of death, and others believe he retains a lust for it throughout the entire play, inspired by the tragedy he’s experienced. While these interpretations are partially true, they don’t hold true throughout the play. Hamlet has a disdain for the world which makes him desire nothing but to fade away in the beginning of the play, but he develops a respect for fate and the unknown aspects of the afterlife. This respect eventually manifests itself in an attitude of indifference towards death.

The play Hamlet is a fable of how the ghost of a slain king comes to haunt the living with disastrous consequences. A rancorous ghost and a brother 's murder, lead the gloomy setting of Hamlet 's Denmark. Hamlet story opens with an encounter between young Hamlet, his dad 's ghost as well as the prince of Denmark. The ghost reveals to Hamlet that its murderer was his brother Claudius, who then rapidly wedded his widowed queen, Gertrude. As a result, the ghost presses Hamlet to seek vengeance on the man who stole his throne as well as his queen to which Hamlet consents.

Hamlet’s lack of knowledge of the afterlife, along with his inability to wrap his mind around a solid belief of what it entails, leads his fear of the afterlife to go beyond his doubt in the Ghost and result in him deciding against suicide. In what is possibly his most famous soliloquy beginning “To be, or not to be: that is the question,” (3.1.68) Hamlet’s question is referring to life. He is debating whether or not he should commit suicide. Despite his pain and suffering, Hamlet does not carry out his suicide as a result of not knowing what the afterlife will entail. The ghost had referred to purgatory as a prison, which naturally does not make it appeal to Hamlet. However, he is not even certain of the ghost’s existence, so the ghosts description of purgatory is not necessarily a reliable account. Hamlet is unsure of what will happen in the afterlife and is not comfortable with the fact that he cannot guarantee it will cause him to be happier than he is on earth. He is aware of his lack of knowledge in regards to the after life and since he cannot guarantee what it will entail, his fear of it prevents him from entering it before his time has come. This is shown when he states that the fact that one cannot predict what the afterlife involves “makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of?” (3.1.81-81) Since Hamlet is unsure

    Hamlet's first thoughts after learning of his father's murder are of an immediate, violent revenge upon Claudius. However, his subsequent actions do not live up to these resolutions. Over four acts he takes little deliberate action against his uncle, although the ghost explicitly demands a swift revenge. In S. T. Coleridge's words, Hamlet's central weakness is that he is "continually resolving to do, yet doing nothing but resolve".

Well known is it that the main plot of Hamlet is outlined by revenge. Upon learning the circumstances of his father’s death, Hamlet’s attitude shifts. Once a saddened mourner, Hamlet becomes a man on a mission for revenge. When the ghost of Hamlet’s father brings the news to the awestruck Hamlet, Hamlet is appalled by the “Foul and most unnatural murder” (1.5, 31). Hamlet immediately promises the ghost the retribution he desires, claiming that he will seek swift vengeance against his father’s murder to prove his love for him: “Haste me to know’t that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge” (1.5, 35-37). Ironically, Hamlet promises the ghost a swift revenge, though his revenge is anything but quick. The theme of delayed activity reoccurs throughout the plot of the story, because, consistently, the protagonist’s time-table for accomplishing the task is slowed due to his pondering of moral issues. Hamlet’s Mousetrap scene is a perfect