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What Are Hamlet's Tragic Flaws

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In the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare uses irony to display tragic flaws of the human condition that warn the audience “[o]f carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, / [o]f accidental judgements, casual slaughters, / [o]f deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, / [a]nd, in this upshot, purposes mistook / [f]all’n on th’ inventors’ heads” (V.ii.423-427). Many tragic deaths occur to emphasize the negative consequences that self-doubt, indecisiveness, procrastination, cowardice and corruption inflict upon the conscience. As Hamlet struggles to balance morality against ambition, his inability to act swiftly and certainly while contemplating his revenge against Claudius for murdering his father, King Hamlet, ironically results in his own death. …show more content…

Overwhelmed with responsibility to his late father and conflicted by the morality of murder, Hamlet fails to capitalize on his first opportunity to kill Claudius, and he asks himself, “am I then revenged / [t]o take him in the purging of his soul, / [w]hen he is fit and seasoned for his passage? / No” (III.iii.89-92). While Claudius is praying in the castle, Hamlet forgoes the opportunity to end Claudius’s life as he does not want Claudius to receive acceptance by God. Hamlet knows he must overcome his flaws of doubt, procrastination and indecisiveness so that his goal of revenge can be achieved. Ironically though, Hamlet human instinct to continue procrastinating Claudius’s murder allows Claudius to plot and delegate henchmen to execute …show more content…

Hamlet’s desire to avenge his father’s death creates conflicts in his psyche whereby his own moral vision is weighed against the consequences of sinning. Hamlet’s all-too-human self-doubt and indecisiveness cause Hamlet to procrastinate revenge, which ironically eventuates his own death. The cowardly deflections of responsibilities by King Claudius promotes the spread of corruption throughout the kingdom, infects all who follow blindly with aspirations of self-advancement in rank and contributes to the demise of the tragic hero. The death of the tragic hero in Hamlet displays the flaws inherent to the human condition, gives the audience a sense of hope in that the sins of all have been cleansed and that society is purged of corruption so it can now move forward into an era of

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