Hamlet by William Shakespeare
The reason why Hamlet is still discussed today is that it still eludes and confounds us. This intriguing aspect of the play has kept it alive for centuries. Hamlet's doubts, questions, and inability to act strengthen him in our eyes, everything that he struggles with is deeply familiar and it reverberates, to varying degrees and in different contexts, with us even today. These six words 'to be or not to be' haunt Hamlet throughout the play, and this dilemma is no stranger to us, we face it all the time. No living person is immune to it.
The plot of Hamlet is simple; his father, the king, is killed by Hamlet's uncle who then marries the widowed queen – Hamlet's mother. Hamlet gets to know the manner of his father's death by his father's ghost. More than the murder, it is the intrigue behind it that pushes him into a vortex of doubts and shakes his very existence.
Now what Happens to Hamlet in the play is not unusual. Even worse incidents happen in life but not all young men or women respond to death, crime in ways he does. His very being is invaded. He is consumed by what he now knows, and this 'knowing' forces him to act, which means, he has to expose and punish his father's murderer.
When the young Hamlet gets to know of his uncle's heinous deed, he is internally damaged. He has no control over his life. His lover, Ophelia, could not calm him or divert him, nor does he seem capable of responding to her pleadings; strangely enough he is more eaten away by the thoughts of his uncle and mother's sinful union. However, he is not angry with his mother because his father's ghost has nothing against her 'she is blessedly unaware of the darker sides of the world'.
To dissect Hamlet psychologically takes us nowhere, he is a difficult character that defies 'fixing.' T. S Eliot in his critique of Hamlet coined the term 'objective correlative' and claimed that Hamlet's emotions are in excess of the situation he encounters. This seems a valid observation. For instance, one wonders why does the queen never for a second reflect or doubt the abrupt death of the king. How could she be so naive? Not only this, soon after the King's death, she agrees to marry her brother. Hamlet, on the contrary, stops living his life, stops loving his beloved Ophelia. He is only left with one motto, his entire life reduced to one thing – that is to avenge his father's murder.
One can go on analyzing Hamlet and yet not able to know him. Like truth, like life, Hamlet is eternal, elusive, only partly penetrable. Therefore, we are so obsessed with Him.
The plot of Hamlet is simple; his father, the king, is killed by Hamlet's uncle who then marries the widowed queen – Hamlet's mother. Hamlet gets to know the manner of his father's death by his father's ghost. More than the murder, it is the intrigue behind it that pushes him into a vortex of doubts and shakes his very existence.
Now what Happens to Hamlet in the play is not unusual. Even worse incidents happen in life but not all young men or women respond to death, crime in ways he does. His very being is invaded. He is consumed by what he now knows, and this 'knowing' forces him to act, which means, he has to expose and punish his father's murderer.
When the young Hamlet gets to know of his uncle's heinous deed, he is internally damaged. He has no control over his life. His lover, Ophelia, could not calm him or divert him, nor does he seem capable of responding to her pleadings; strangely enough he is more eaten away by the thoughts of his uncle and mother's sinful union. However, he is not angry with his mother because his father's ghost has nothing against her 'she is blessedly unaware of the darker sides of the world'.
To dissect Hamlet psychologically takes us nowhere, he is a difficult character that defies 'fixing.' T. S Eliot in his critique of Hamlet coined the term 'objective correlative' and claimed that Hamlet's emotions are in excess of the situation he encounters. This seems a valid observation. For instance, one wonders why does the queen never for a second reflect or doubt the abrupt death of the king. How could she be so naive? Not only this, soon after the King's death, she agrees to marry her brother. Hamlet, on the contrary, stops living his life, stops loving his beloved Ophelia. He is only left with one motto, his entire life reduced to one thing – that is to avenge his father's murder.
One can go on analyzing Hamlet and yet not able to know him. Like truth, like life, Hamlet is eternal, elusive, only partly penetrable. Therefore, we are so obsessed with Him.
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