Zoe
Manning
Honors
Lang 11A
Ms.
Hansen
24
December 2012
Hamlet Source Analysis
The
reason behind Hamlets ‘madness’ and hesitance in revenge is due to a rivalry
with Cladius and repressed sexual feelings for his mother. This can be
concluded by evaluating multiple aspects of the story. First, although Cladius
made the offence of killing his father and marrying his mother, Hamlet can
never fully denounce him as he does his mother. In scenes such as when Ophelia
tries to return Hamlets mementos, Hamlet lashes out at Ophelia implying that she
is impure and would surely cheat on a man- as any woman would. He states
complete distrust in faithfulness from any woman, although Ophelia has not
proven disloyal as far as the reader can tell. Second, Hamlet becomes enraged
at Ophelia after she rejects his advances and he finds out that she was in
alliance with her father and Cladius to find out the reason for his behavior.
This situation is widely believed to be Hamlet ranting about his mother’s wrong
doings. Finally, after being given the task of avenging his father by killing
Cladius, Hamlet begins to contemplate suicide, suggesting that he sees himself
worthy of the same offence and part of the vengeance.
I
agree with part of the authors’ thesis. The role Ophelia played in Hamlets life
was greatly connected with the role his mother played. However, I do not think
that Hamlet was repressing sexual feelings for his mother. Hamlet sought out
Ophelia because of how different she was from his sexual, conniving mother, and
lashed out at her at moments when she reminded him of her. He felt betrayed and
abandoned by her in the way a son would after the death of a parent and the
immediate redirection of attention to another man. He may find Cladius as a
rival, but that is due to him coming between Hamlets claim to throne. He is
more passionate about his rage towards his mother because he is more
emotionally invested in her. She is the one that allowed Cladius to come into
their family, and for that Hamlet cannot forgive her. He begins to contemplate
suicide when given the task to kill Cladius because he is not a murder at
heart, but he feels if he does not follow through than he is showing allegiance
to Cladius instead of his father. The disturbance and breaking of family ties
distresses Hamlet and ultimately leads to his indecisive ‘madness’.
Hamlet and Oedipus
Hamlet and Oedipus, W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc., 1949. Reprint Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1949.
In the following
excerpt, Jones attributes Hamlet's erratic behavior and delay of vengeance to repressed sexual
feelings toward his mother and subconscious rivalry with Claudius.
That Hamlet is suffering from an internal conflict the essential
nature of which is inaccessible to his introspection is evidenced by the
following considerations. Throughout the play we have the clearest picture of a
man who sees his duty plain before him, but who shirks it at every opportunity
and suffers in consequence the most intense remorse. To paraphrase Sir James
Paget's well-known description of hysterical paralysis: Hamlet's advocates say he cannot do his duty, his detractors say
he will not, whereas the truth is that he cannot will. Further than this, the
deficient will-power is localized to the one question of killing his uncle; it
is what may be termed a specific aboulia. Now instances of such specific
aboulias in real life invariably prove, when analysed, to be due to an
unconscious repulsion against the act that cannot be performed (or else against
something closely associated with the act, so that the idea of the act becomes
also involved in the repulsion). In other words, whenever a person cannot bring
himself to do something that every conscious consideration tells him he should
do—and which he may have the strongest conscious desire to do—it is always because
there is some hidden reason why a part of him doesn't want to do it; this
reason he will not own to himself and is only dimly if at all aware of. That is
exactly the case with Hamlet. Time and again he works himself up, points out to himself his
obvious duty, with the cruellest self reproaches lashes himself to agonies of
remorse—and once more falls away into inaction. . . .
Highly significant is
the fact that the grounds Hamlet gives for his hesitancy are grounds none of which will stand
any serious consideration, and which continually change from one time to
another. One moment he pretends he is too cowardly to perform the deed, at
another he questions the truthfulness of the ghost, at another—when the
opportunity presents itself in its naked form—he thinks the time is unsuited,
it would be better to wait till the King was at some evil act and then to kill
him, and so on. They have each of them, it is true, a certain plausibility—so
much so that some writers have accepted them at face value; but surely no
pretext would be of any use if it were not plausible. . . .
When a man gives at
different times a different reason for his conduct it is safe to infer that,
whether consciously or not, he is concealing the true reason. . . . We can
therefore safely dismiss all the alleged motives that Hamlet propounds, as being more or less successful attempts
on his part to blind himself with self-deception. . . .
In short, the whole
picture presented by Hamlet, his deep depression, the hopeless note in his attitude towards
the world and towards the value of life, his dread of death, his repeated
reference to bad dreams, his self-accusations, his desperate efforts to get
away from the thoughts of his duty, and his vain attempts to find an excuse for
his procrastination: all this unequivocally points to a tortured
conscience, to some hidden ground for shirking his task, a ground
which he dare not or cannot avow to himself. We have, therefore, to take up the
argument again at this point, and to seek for some evidence that may serve to
bring to light the hidden counter-motive.
The extensive experience of the
psycho-analytic researches carried out by Freud and his school during the past
half-century has amply demonstrated that certain kinds of mental process show a
greater tendency to be inaccessible to consciousness (put technically, to be
"repressed") than others. . . . [Those] processes are most likely to
be "repressed" by the individual which are most disapproved of by the
particular circle of society to whose influence he has chiefly been subjected
during the period when his character was being formed. . . .
The language used in the previous
paragraph will have indicated that by the term "repression" we denote
an active dynamic process. Thoughts that are "repressed" are actively
kept from consciousness by a definite force and with the expenditure of more or
less mental effort, though the person concerned is rarely aware of this. . . .
It only remains to add the obvious corollary that, as the herd unquestionably
selects from the "natural" instincts the sexual one on which to lay
its heaviest ban, so it is the various psycho-sexual trends that are most often
"repressed" by the individual. We have here the explanation of the
clinical experience that the more intense and the more obscure is a given case
of deep mental conflict the more certainly will it be found on adequate
analysis to centre about a sexual problem. On the surface, of course, this does
not appear so, for, by means of various psychological defensive mechanisms, the
depression, doubt, despair, and other manifestations of the conflict are
transferred on to more tolerable and permissible topics, such as anxiety about
worldly success or failure, about immortality and the salvation of the soul,
philosophical considerations about the value of life, the future of the world,
and so on.
Bearing these
considerations in mind, let us return to Hamlet. It should now be evident that the conflict hypotheses discussed
above, which see Hamlet's conscious impulse towards revenge inhibited by an unconscious
misgiving of a highly ethical kind, are based on ignorance of what actually
happens in real life, since misgivings of this order belong in fact to the more
conscious layers of the mind rather than to the deeper, unconscious ones. Hamlet's intense self-study would speedily have made him aware of
any such misgivings and, although he might subsequently have ignored them, it
would almost certainly have been by the aid of some process of rationalization
which would have enabled him to deceive himself into believing that they were
ill-founded; he would in any case have remained conscious of the nature of
them. We have therefore to invert these hypotheses and realize—as his words so
often indicate—that the positive striving for vengeance, the pious task laid on
him by his father, was to him the moral and social one, the one approved of by
his consciousness, and that the "repressed" inhibiting striving
against the act of vengeance arose in some hidden source connected with his more
personal, natural instincts. The former striving has already been considered,
and indeed is manifest in every speech in which Hamlet debates the matter: the second is, from its nature,
more obscure and has next to be investigated.
This is perhaps most
easily done by inquiring more intently into Hamlet's precise attitude towards the object of his vengeance,
Claudius, and towards the crimes that have to be avenged. These are two:
Claudius' incest with the Queen, and his murder of his brother. Now it is of
great importance to note the profound difference in Hamlet's attitude towards these two crimes. Intellectually of
course he abhors both, but there can be no question as to which arouses in him
the deeper loathing. Whereas the murder of his father evokes in him indignation
and a plain recognition of his obvious duty to avenge it, his mother's guilty
conduct awakes in him the intensest horror. . . .
The uncle has not
merely committed each crime, he has committed both crimes,
a distinction of considerable importance, since the combination of
crimes allows the admittance of a new factor, produced by the possible
inter-relation of the two, which may prevent the result from being simply one
of summation. In addition, it has to be borne in mind that the perpetrator of
the crimes is a relative, and an exceedingly near relative. The possible
inter-relationship of the crimes, and the fact that the author of them is an
actual member of the family, give scope for a confusion in their influence
on Hamlet's mind which may be the cause of the
very obscurity we are seeking to clarify.
Let us first pursue
further the effect on Hamlet of his mother's misconduct. Before he even knows with any
certitude, however much he may suspect it, that his father has been murdered he
is in the deepest depression, and evidently on account of this misconduct. . .
.
If we ask, not what ought to produce
such soul-paralysing grief and distaste for life, but what in actual fact does
produce it, we are compelled to go beyond this explanation and seek for some
deeper cause. In real life speedy second marriages occur commonly enough
without leading to any such result as is here depicted, and when we see them
followed by this result we invariably find, if the opportunity for an analysis
of the subject's mind presents itself, that there is some other and more hidden
reason why the event is followed by this inordinately great effect. The reason
always is that the event has awakened to increased activity mental processes
that have been "repressed" from the subject's consciousness. . . .
We come at this point
to the vexed question of Hamlet's sanity, about which so many controversies have raged. Dover
Wilson authoritatively writes: "I agree with Loening, Bradley and others
that Shakespeare meant us to imagine Hamlet as suffering from some kind of mental disorder throughout
the play." The question is what kind of mental disorder and what is its
significance dramatically and psychologically. The matter is complicated
by Hamlet's frequently displaying simulation
(the Antic Disposition), and it has been asked whether this is to conceal his
real mental disturbance or cunningly to conceal his purposes in coping with the
practical problems of this task?. . .
More to the point is
the actual account given in the play by the King, the Queen, Ophelia, and above
all, Polonius. In his description, for example, we note—if the Elizabethan
language is translated into modern English—the symptoms of dejection, refusal
of food, insomnia, crazy behaviour, fits of delirium, and finally of raving
madness; Hamlet's poignant parting words to Polonius ("except my life",
etc.) cannot mean other than a craving for death. These are undoubtedly
suggestive of certain forms of melancholia, and the likeness to
manic-depressive insanity, of which melancholia is now known to be but a part,
is completed by the occurrence of attacks of great excitement that would
nowadays be called "hypomanic", of which Dover Wilson counts no fewer
than eight. . . . Nevertheless, the rapid and startling oscillations between
intense excitement and profound depression do not accord with the accepted
picture of this disorder, and if I had to describe such a condition as Hamlet's in clinical terms—which I am not particularly inclined
to—it would have to be as a severe case of hysteria on a cyclothymic basis.
All this, however, is
of academic interest only. What we are essentially concerned with is the
psychological understanding of the dramatic effect produced byHamlet's personality and behaviour. That effect would be quite
other were the central figure in the play to represent merely a "case of
insanity". When that happens, as with Ophelia, such a person passes beyond
our ken, is in a sense no more human, whereas Hamlet successfully claims our interest and sympathy to the
very end. Shakespeare certainly never intended us to regard Hamlet as insane, so that the "mind o'erthrown"
must have some other meaning than its literal one. . . . I would suggest that
in this Shakespeare's extraordinary powers of observation and penetration
granted him a degree of insight that it has taken the world three subsequent
centuries to reach. Until our generation (and even now in the juristic sphere)
a dividing line separated the sane and responsible from the irresponsible
insane. It is now becoming more and more widely recognized that much of mankind
lives in an intermediate and unhappy state charged with what Dover Wilson well
calls "that sense of frustration, futility and human inadequacy which is
the burden of the whole symphony" and of which Hamlet is the supreme example in literature. This intermediate
plight, in the toils of which perhaps the greater part of mankind struggles and
suffers, is given the name of psychoneurosis, and long ago the genius of
Shakespeare depicted it for us with faultless insight.
Extensive studies of
the past half century, inspired by Freud, have taught us that a psychoneurosis
means a state of mind where the person is unduly, and often painfully, driven
or thwarted by the "unconscious" part of his mind, that buried part
that was once the infant's mind and still lives on side by side with the adult
mentality that has developed out of it and should have taken its place. It
signifies internal mental conflict. We have here the reason
why it is impossible to discuss intelligently the state of mind of anyone
suffering from a psychoneurosis, whether the description is of a living person
or an imagined one, without correlating the manifestations with what must have
operated in his infancy and is still operating. That is what I
propose to attempt here.
For some deep-seated
reason, which is to him unacceptable, Hamlet is plunged into anguish at the thought of his father being
replaced in his mother's affections by someone else. It is as if his devotion
to his mother had made him so jealous for her affection that he had found it
hard enough to share this even with his father and could not endure to share it
with still another man. Against this thought, however, suggestive as it is, may
be urged three objections. First, if it were in itself a full statement of the
matter, Hamlet would have been aware of the jealousy, whereas we have
concluded that the mental process we are seeking is hidden from him. Secondly,
we see in it no evidence of the arousing of an old and forgotten memory. And,
thirdly, Hamlet is being deprived by Claudius of no greater share in the
Queen's affection than he had been by his own father, for the two brothers made
exactly similar claims in this respect—namely, those of a loved husband. The
last named objection, however, leads us to the heart of the situation. How if,
in fact, Hamlet had in years gone by, as a child, bitterly resented having
had to share his mother's affection even with his own father, had regarded him
as a rival, and had secretly wished him out of the way so that he might enjoy
undisputed and undisturbed the monopoly of that affection? If such thoughts had
been present in his mind in childhood days they evidently would have been
"repressed", and all traces of them obliterated, by filial piety and
other educative influences. The actual realization of his early wish in the
death of his father at the hands of a jealous rival would then have stimulated
into activity these "repressed" memories, which would have produced,
in the form of depression and other suffering, an obscure aftermath of his childhood's
conflict. This is at all events the mechanism that is actually found in the
real Hamlets who are investigated psychologically.
The explanation,
therefore, of the delay and self-frustration exhibited in the endeavour to
fulfil his father's demand for vengeance is that to Hamlet the thought of incest and parricide combined is too
intolerable to be borne. One part of him tries to carry out the task, the other
flinches inexorably from the thought of it. How fain would he blot it out in
that "bestial oblivion" which unfortunately for him his conscience
contemns. He is torn and tortured in an insoluble inner conflict. . . .
[It] is often overlooked that childhood
(roughly speaking, between the ages of three and twelve) is preceded by another
period, that of infancy, which is vastly more fateful for the future than
anything that happens in childhood. The congeries of emotions, phantasies, and
impulses, forgotten or never even conscious, that occupy the dawning mind was
only made accessible to our knowledge when Freud devised his psychoanalytic
method for penetrating to the unconscious mental layers. . . . The main
discoveries here may be summed up in the statement that, side by side with
loving attitudes and peaceful contentment, there are always to be found mental
processes reminiscent of the most primitive aspects of savage life of an
intensity that is only faintly mirrored later on by the distressing aspects of
our international relations, including even the tortures and other atrocities.
Violent and ruthless impulses of destruction (i.e. murder in adult language)
follow on the inevitable minor privations of this period. The jealousies,
hatreds, and murderous impulses of which signs may be detected in childhood
are, in fact, the weakened derivatives of a very sinister inheritance we bring
to the world and which somehow has to be worked through and chastened in the
painful conflicts and emotions of infancy. . . .
Of the infantile
jealousies the most important, and the one with which we are here occupied, is
that experienced by a boy towards his father. The precise form of early
relationship between child and father is in general a matter of vast importance
in both sexes and plays a predominating part in the future development of the
child's character. . . . The only aspect that at present concerns us is the
resentment felt by a boy towards his father when the latter disturbs, as he
necessarily must, his enjoyment of his mother's exclusive affection. This
feeling is the deepest source of the world-old conflict between father and son,
between the younger and the older generation, the favourite theme of so many
poets and writers, the central motif of most mythologies and
religions. . . .
It was Freud who first demonstrated,
when dealing with the subject of the earliest manifestations of the sexual
instinct in children, that the conflict in question rests in the last resort on
sexual grounds. . . .
The complete expression of the
"repressed" wish is not only that the father should die, but that the
son should then espouse the mother. . . . The attitude of son to parents is so
transpicuously illustrated in the Oedipus legend, as developed for instance in
Sophocles' tragedy, that the group of mental processes in question is generally
known under the name of the "Oedipus-complex".
We are now in a
position to expand and complete the suggestions offered above in connection
with the Hamlet problem. The story thus interpreted would run somewhat as
follows.
As a child Hamlet had experienced the warmest affection for his mother,
and this, as is always so, had contained elements of a disguised erotic
quality, still more so in infancy. The presence of two traits in the Queen's
character accord with this assumption, namely her markedly sensual nature and
her passionate fondness for her son. . . . Nevertheless Hamlet appears to have with more or less success weaned
himself from her and to have fallen in love with Ophelia. The precise nature of
his original feeling for Ophelia is a little obscure. We may assume that at
least in part it was composed of a normal love for a prospective bride, though
the extravagance of the language used (the passionate need for absolute
certainty, etc.) suggests a somewhat morbid frame of mind. There are
indications that even here the influence of the old attraction for the mother
is still exerting itself. Although some writers, following Goethe, see in
Ophelia many traits of resemblance to the Queen, perhaps just as striking are
the traits contrasting with those of the Queen. . . . Her naïve piety, her
obedient resignation, and her unreflecting simplicity sharply contrast with the
Queen's character, and seem to indicate that Hamlet by a characteristic reaction towards the opposite
extreme had unknowingly been impelled to choose a woman who should least remind
him of his mother. A case might even be made out for the view that part of his
courtship originated not so much in direct attraction for Ophelia as in an
unconscious desire to play her off against his mother, just as a disappointed
and piqued lover so often has resort to the arms of a more willing rival. It
would not be easy otherwise to understand the readiness with which he later
throws himself into this part. When, for instance, in the play scene he replies
to his mother's request to sit by her with the words "No, good mother,
here's metal more attractive" and proceeds to lie at Ophelia's feet we
seem to have a direct indication of this attitude; and his coarse familiarity
and bandying of ambiguous jests with the woman he has recently so ruthlessly jilted
are hardly intelligible unless we bear in mind that they were carried out under
the heedful gaze of the Queen. It is as if his unconscious were trying to
convey to her the following thought: "You give yourself to other men whom
you prefer to me. Let me assure you that I can dispense with your favours and
even prefer those of a woman whom I no longer love." His extraordinary
outburst of bawdiness on this occasion, so unexpected in a man of obviously
fine feeling, points unequivocally to the sexual nature of the underlying
turmoil.
Now comes the father's death and the
mother's second marriage. The association of the idea of sexuality with his
mother, buried since infancy, can no longer be concealed from his
consciousness. . . . Feelings which once, in the infancy of long ago, were
pleasurable desires can now, because of his repressions, only fill him with
repulsion. The long "repressed" desire to take his father's place in
his mother's affection is stimulated to unconscious activity by the sight of
someone usurping this place exactly as he himself had once longed to do. More,
this someone was a member of the same family, so that the actual usurpation
further resembled the imaginary one in being incestuous. Without his being in
the least aware of it these ancient desires are ringing in his mind, are once
more struggling to find conscious expression, and need such an expenditure of
energy again to "repress" them that he is reduced to the deplorable
mental state he himself so vividly depicts.
There follows the
Ghost's announcement that the father's death was a willed one, was due to
murder. Hamlet, having at the moment his mind filled with natural indignation at
the news, answers normally enough with the cry (Act 1, Sc. 5):
Haste me to know't, that I with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.
[I. v. 29-31]
The momentous words
follow revealing who was the guilty person, namely a relative who had committed
the deed at the bidding of lust. Hamlet's second guilty wish had thus also been realized by his uncle,
namely to procure the fulfilment of the first—the possession of the mother—by a
personal deed, in fact by murder of the father. The two recent events, the
father's death and the mother's second marriage, seemed to the world to have no
inner causal relation to each other, but they represented ideas which in Hamlet's unconscious fantasy had always been closely associated.
These ideas now in a moment forced their way to conscious recognition in spite
of all "repressing forces", and found immediate expression in his
almost reflex cry: "O my prophetic soul! My uncle?". The frightful
truth his unconscious had already intuitively divined, his consciousness had
now to assimilate as best it could. For the rest of the interview Hamlet is stunned by the effect of the internal conflict thus
re-awakened, which from now on never ceases, and into the essential nature of
which he never penetrates. . . .
In the first place,
there is a complex reaction in regard to his mother. As was explained above,
the being forced to connect the thought of his mother with sensuality leads to
an intense sexual revulsion, one that is only temporarily broken down by the
coarse outburst discussed above. Combined with this is a fierce jealousy,
unconscious because of its forbidden origin, at the sight of her giving herself
to another man, a man whom he had no reason whatever either to love or to
respect. Consciously this is allowed to express itself, for instance after the
prayer scene, only in the form of extreme resentment and bitter reproaches
against her. His resentment against women is still further inflamed by the
hypocritical prudishness with which Ophelia follows her father and brother in
seeing evil in his natural affection, an attitude which poisons his love in
exactly the same way that the love of his childhood, like that of all children,
must have been poisoned. He can forgive a woman neither her rejection of his
sexual advances nor, still less, her alliance with another man. Most
intolerable of all to him, as Bradley well remarks, is the sight of sensuality
in a quarter from which he had trained himself ever since infancy rigorously to
exclude it. The total reaction culminates in the bitter misogyny of his
outburst against Ophelia, who is devastated at having to bear a reaction so
wholly out of proportion to her own offence and has no idea that in reviling
herHamlet is really expressing his bitter
resentment against his mother. . . .
The underlying theme
relates ultimately to the splitting of the mother image which the infantile
unconscious effects into two opposite pictures: one of a virginal Madonna, an
inaccessible saint towards whom all sensual approaches are unthinkable, and the
other of a sensual creature accessible to everyone. Indications of this
dichotomy between love and lust (Titian's Sacred and Profane Love) are to be
found later in most men's sexual experiences. When sexual repression is highly
pronounced, as with Hamlet, then both types of women are felt to be hostile: the pure one
out of resentment at her repulses, the sensual one out of the temptation she
offers to plunge into guiltiness. Misogyny, as in the play, is the inevitable
result. . . .
Hamlet's attitude towards his uncle-father is
far more complex than is generally supposed. He of course detests him, but it
is the jealous detestation of one evil-doer towards his successful fellow. Much
as he hates him, he can never denounce him with the ardent indignation that
boils straight from his blood when he reproaches his mother, for the more
vigorously he denounces his uncle the more powerfully does he stimulate to
activity his own unconscious and "repressed" complexes. He is
therefore in a dilemma between on the one hand allowing his natural detestation
of his uncle to have free play, a consummation which would stir still further
his own horrible wishes, and on the other hand ignoring the imperative call for
the vengeance that his obvious duty demands. His own "evil" prevents
him from completely denouncing his uncle's, and in continuing to
"repress" the former he must strive to ignore, to condone, and if
possible even to forget the latter;his moral fate is bound up with his
uncle's for good or ill. In reality his uncle incorporates the deepest
and most buried part of his own personality, so that he cannot kill him without
also killing himself. This solution, one closely akin to what Freud has shown
to be the motive of suicide in melancholia, is actually the one thatHamlet finally adopts. The course of alternate action and
inaction that he embarks on, and the provocations he gives to his suspicious
uncle can lead to no other end than to his own ruin and, incidentally, to that
of his uncle. Only when he has made the final sacrifice and brought himself to
the door of death is he free to fulfil his duty, to avenge his father, and to
slay his other self—his uncle. . . .
The call of duty to
kill his stepfather cannot be obeyed because it links itself with the
unconscious call of his nature to kill his mother's husband, whether this is
the first or the second; the absolute "repression" of the former
impulse involves the inner prohibition of the latter also. It is no chance
that Hamlet says of himself that he is
prompted to his revenge "by heaven and hell".
In this discussion of
the motives that move or restrain Hamlet we have purposely depreciated the subsidiary ones—such as
his exclusion from the throne where Claudius has blocked the normal solution of
the Oedipus complex (to succeed the father in due course)—which also play a
part, so as to bring out in greater relief the deeper and effective ones that
are of preponderating importance. These, as we have seen, spring from sources
of which he is quite unaware, and we might summarize the internal conflict of
which he is the victim as consisting in a struggle of the "repressed"
mental processes to become conscious. The call of duty, which automatically
arouses to activity these unconscious processes, conflicts with the necessity
of "repressing" them still more strongly—for the more urgent is the
need for external action the greater is the effort demanded of the
"repressing" forces. It is his moral duty, to which his fatherexhorts
him, to put an end to the incestuous activities of his mother (by killing
Claudius), but his unconscious does not want to put an end to them (he being
identified with Claudius in the situation), and so he cannot. His lashings of
self-reproach and remorse are ultimately because of this very failure, i.e. the
refusal of his guilty wishes to undo the sin. By refusing to abandon his own
incestuous wishes he perpetuates the sin and so must endure the stings of
torturing conscience. And yet killing his mother's husband would be equivalent
to committing the original sin himself, which would if anything be even more
guilty. So of the two impossible alternatives he adopts the passive solution of
letting the incest continue vicariously, but at the same time provoking
destruction at the King's hand. Was ever a tragic figure so torn and tortured!
Action is paralysed
at its very inception, and there is thus produced the picture of apparently
causeless inhibition which is so inexplicable both to Hamlet and to readers of the play. This paralysis arises,
however, not from physical or moral cowardice, but from that intellectual
cowardice, that reluctance to dare the exploration of his inmost soul,
which Hamlet shares with the rest of the human
race. "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."
Source Citation:
Jones, Ernest. "Hamlet and Oedipus." EXPLORING
Shakespeare. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Discovering
Collection. Gale. Independent School District 191. 26 Dec.
2012 <http://find.galegroup.com/srcx/infomark.do?&source=gale&srcprod=DISC&userGroupName=mnkburnsv&prodId=DC&tabID=T001&docId=EJ2115503769&type=retrieve&contentSet=GSRC&version=1.0>.
We both analyzed the same document, and I agree with your opinion. I do believe that Ophelia and Hamlet's relationship was affected by Gertrude's actions. We both also disagreed that Gertrude and Hamlet did not have sexual feeling or relations, but Hamlet wanted to have his mother to be there for him. Overall I think this is well written, and I like how you added about comparing Ophelia and Gertrude. If it weren't for Gertrude's actions, Hamlet wouldn't think very negativity about Ophelia.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Gertrude influenced Hamlet and Ophelia's relationship. Her actions made Hamlet believe that women are not trustworthy in faithfulness, which isn't true. I don't believe Hamlet has sexual feelings for his mother either, but rather over-protective. He just wanted her support.
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