The Dynamics of Identity and Insanity in "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist" and "The Government Inspector"

Throughout the play of Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedy's the main character, Hamlet is faced with the responsibility of getting vengeance for his father's murder. He decides to pretend madness as part of his plan to get the opportunity to kill Claudius who was the suspected murderer. As the play goes on, his portrayal of a madman becomes believable, and the characters around him respond quite vividly. Through his inner thoughts and the obvious reasons for his actions, it is clear that he is not really mad and is simply an actor faking insanity in order to complete the duty his father assigned him.

The world is full of people who portray themselves as someone or something else. People

Without that initial statement, why would we think him mad? Then he says; "Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing." How does he know that madmen know nothing? I wrote in my own journal once; "Insanity is not madness. Sanity is madness, if one can distinguish the difference between sanity and insanity, does that not then make you sane?" So then, if the narrator questions our thoughts on his sanity, he must then know the difference or that there is a difference between sanity and insanity, does that not then create some question as to his own sanity? I think from the very beginning he questioned his own sanity to himself thereby creating the question of insanity to the reader! Isn't that insane? (ha ha) But was he insane? Insane is defined in Webster's New Concise Dictionary as: "Not Sane; mentally deranged or unsound. Set apart for demented persons. Not Whole." OK, well we still cannot prove that he was or was not insane. Was he a psychopath? Some would say yes, most definitely. But what is a psychopath? Psychopaths have a character type that enables them to pursue pleasure with indifference to the suffering they cause others. Psychopaths are completely lacking such virtues as benevolence and compassion. In this story, the narrator says; "I loved the old man.

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.

     The other two characters of the novel who represent his opposing sides are Sonya Marmeladov and Svidrigailov. Sonya represents the warm side of Raskolnikov. She is a prostitute forced into that field because her father drinks away the money in the family. She is

2001. One definition of madness is “mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it.” But Emily Dickinson wrote “Much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye.” Novelists and playwrights have often seen madness with a “discerning eye”. Select a novel or play in which as character’s apparent madness or irrational behavior plays an important role. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain what this delusion or eccentric behavior consists of and how it might be judged reasonable. Explain the significance of the “madness” to the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

Insanity can be defined as a mental illness that causes a person to have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. Whether Shakespeare’s Hamlet was insane or feigning insanity is a controversial topic. Gregory Shafer argues that Hamlet is not insane and that he uses insanity or madness for his own political purposes (42). In William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Prince Hamlet’s circumstances force him to seek revenge for the murder of his father King Hamlet. He creates a plan that he believes will give him an opportunity to kill Claudius, and the main part of this plan involves him faking insanity. Further and further into the book, his actions of a madman become more believable. However through his thoughts and actions it is clear that he is not truly insane, and his is only acting in this way in order to reach is ultimate goal of revenge.

The final point to prove that he was a sane person through out the play is his famous soliloquy (Act 3 sc1 line64-98). At this point in the play he should be thinking about the outcome, but instead he contemplates weather it is better to be alive or dead. Is it nobler to fight his troubles and end them or to die? He asks himself if it is better to be asleep forever, or suffer the pains of life. He talks about when we sleep we dream and what happens if there is a bad dream and you can't getup. He dreads of something after death and wants to know if he should suffer his sorrows, which he is used to, or travel to the unknown and kill the king, but he is afraid of the unknown. He believes that a conscience is bad and that all it does is make a coward of all, conscience makes cowards of us and clouds instinct. He then realizes he is too intelligent to do this. To summarize his thoughts, he has basically said why do we choose to live when death is an easy response to misery, but he answers his own question and then goes on to describe his burden but then sees what his action of revenge must be. Does an insane person go through this type of mental thought. Most think not, showing that he is well witted and knows what life is and what he must do. Insane, no, more or less a manic depressant. One with a quick change of mood, not in and out of sanity.

One should not be someone they are not and you should always be yourself. Similarly, in “On The Bridge” by Todd Strasser, the character Seth starts off trying to be a tough guy like his friend Adam, but soon realizes to not pretend to be someone he isn’t. At first Seth tries doing things like his friend, Adam because he thought he was “cool”. However, once he was let down by Adam when he was beat up by a group of guys and Adam didn’t even put up a fight for Seth, his friend. After that experience that made Seth think a lot differently about Adam because he thought he was a tough guy but in reality he’s really a wuss. Although, Seth originally believed that Adam was a tough guy because he smokes and fought older and bigger kids, once Seth experienced being blamed for throwing a used cigarette onto a car on the highway, Seth learned one should not pretend to be someone they aren't that being a tough guy wasn’t all that and one should not pretend to be someone they aren’t.

The insanity of a person can be contributed through the trauma that is caused by a few events in a person’s life, but in the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare wrote the main character prince Hamlet experiences a few dramatic events from the play which his attitude changes throughout. In order to figure out whether hamlet is insane is by figuring out what the characteristics of his insanity. Characters see Hamlet in different shades of gray, each side more or less sane than others. His sanity can be his truth or his lie.

Often times in literature, we are presented with quintessential characters that are all placed into the conventional categories of either good or bad. In these pieces, we are usually able to differentiate the characters and discover their true intentions from reading only a few chapters. However, in some remarkable pieces of work, authors create characters that are so realistic and so complex that we are unable to distinguish them as purely good or evil. In the novel Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky develops the morally ambiguous characters of Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov to provide us with an interesting read and to give us a chance to evaluate each character.

With the evolution of humanity comes the evolution of words, as is only natural. In the recent past, insanity was a medical term used to diagnose mental illnesses, among others. It’s still used in a similar manner in everyday language, though it has formally shifted to a legal definition, which is that the defendant cannot tell right from wrong. In literature, authors who create “insane” characters add to the unreliability of first person narrators, thus adding another layer of questions for the reader, such as whether a character is fully aware of their actions. After Fortunato insults Montresor in “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe, Montresor takes it upon himself to punish Fortunato by bricking him into a wall of the Montresor family vaults. Doug Spaulding, from Ray Bradbury’s “The Utterly Perfect Murder”, also takes revenge on his tormentor by figuratively murdering him and rescuing his childhood self. According to the legal definition of insanity, both Montresor and Doug Spaulding fit the criteria due to their unsettled minds, trauma from abusive relationships and other underlying mental health issues.

stays true to this statement as he leads a life, not as a phony, but as

Many criminal suspects today are found guilty by them attributing their insane actions to society by breaking human laws. In return, they are to make a contribution to in horrendous places such as place of confinement, guardhouse and correctional facility with their labour, effort and time. Nonetheless, what are the punishments for someone who feigned his or her madness and sparks off the death of the entire royal family? Shakespeare's Hamlet significantly demonstrates the consequences of dissimulating, in a way of dishonesty, but is Hamlet's madness simulated or real? This question is often left unanswered among the fans of Shakespeare's Hamlet. The idea of a character impersonating the concept or motif of insanity is not foreign to great literary works in modern days although many authors in ancient time use it to convey the sanity of the humor. There is much evidence in the play of Shakespeare's Hamlet, which Hamlet deliberately feigned fits of madness to confuse and plan to disconcert the king until he reveals his secret that he is responsible for Hamlet's father murder. However, the majority of the professors continue to argue that Hamlet's anti-decomposition is purely innocent and that he is not pretending. Nevertheless, with the similar saying of “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch”, in Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark, Hamlet’s fatal flaw of

He provides most of the humor content of the play. The madman is whimsical and he constantly contradicts other characters as well as himself. His series of logical/illogical arguments becomes impossible to tackle and it frustrates the Police Department. Even though being termed as psychologically unfit, the madman appears to be the most intelligent character in the play. He ridicules the police officials for missing out on the basic concepts of English grammar and the use of the most important “COMMA” that changes the meaning of a sentence. He dictates the terms of law and judiciary to police officials. He is extremely sarcastic. He ridicules the superintendent for assuming the railway man planted the bomb in railway station without any substantiate evidence and sarcastically rebukes the “kindergarten logic”.