Hamlet: Character Analysis

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the main character Hamlet was out for revenge against the man who killed his father. In addition to his path of revenge Hamlet also deals with conflicting emotions towards a woman named Ophelia. During the play Hamlet’s love, desirability, and dismissal towards Ophelia made me wonder if he was really in love with Ophelia, and it shows that her significance was that she was his last piece of sanity and love. Hamlet’s true feelings for Ophelia come out when he hears about her death. He confessed that, “forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum(Act 5, Scene 1, Pg.12),” meaning if you could add the love of forty brothers it still wouldn’t match his love for her.

He was to the point where he thought it would just be easier to die than to live with all these struggles. Hamlet’s uncle Claudius killed his father which put a huge burden on his shoulders because he loved his father so much. What made it even worse was his mom, Gertrude, ended up marrying Claudius short after King Hamlet 's death. After the king was murdered, Hamlet saw his father’s “ghost” which told him that Claudius was in fact the one that killed him and that he wanted Hamlet to seek revenge for him by killing Claudius, but not to punish his mother for remarrying. He said it is not his place to do so and that heaven will judge her when it comes time.

Throughout the beginning of the short story, Antigone shows herself as a stubborn intuitive person towards the separate characters. First, Antigone does not fear King Creon at any point; Antigone only worries about her brother Polyneices. Proud, and strong, Antigone says, “Creon is not strong enough to stand in my way”. (Sophocles, Act 1). Determination basically describes Antigone as she will not let Creon stand in her way as she will bury her brother, Polyneices, even if Creon tries to stop her from doing so.

The play of Hamlet by William Shakespeare is full of many acts of betrayal. One such of these acts is when Hamlet goes against the wishes of his father’s ghost and debates on whether or not he should kill Claudius. Not only this but he also is extremely cruel to his mother and hurts her feelings which were also against the wishes of the ghost. He wanted Hamlet to avenge his death without hurting others along the way and almost everything Hamlet did in the play went against that. Hamlet’s first act of betrayal against the ghost of his father is one that stretches throughout the entire book.

In Hamlet there are many forces that motivate Prince Hamlet’s behavior to change and seek revenge. The leading force for Hamlet’s behavior to change is his mother marrying her dead husband’s brother two months later. In the play Hamlet states “O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason/ Would have mourned longer-married with my uncle,/ My father’s brother, but no more like my father” ( I.ii.150-152). This explains that Hamlet is frustrated because his mother moved on so fast and it seemed to him that she never really loved King Hamlet. Hamlet also claims that “Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,/That can denote me truly” ( I.ii.82-83 ).

In the famous play Hamlet, by Shakespeare, Hamlet devises various plans to avenge his father’s death. Throughout these several scenes, Hamlet causes the suffering, as well as, the death of many others, who do not have anything to do with King Hamlet’s murder. However the murderer of his father is killed, Hamlet was not justified in killing so many innocent people along the way. First of all, the ghost of Hamlet’s father, King Hamlet, tells Hamlet within his first appearance as a ghost to avenge his death by killing his murderer, Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, but to leave Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, out of it. He informs Hamlet that killing Claudius would be appropriate and with reason, considering the previous circumstances in which led to how King Hamlet ended up a ghost, but harming Gertrude would be unacceptable, as she is innocent and has not done any wrong, besides agreeing to engage in an incestuous marriage, that is.

Hamlet seeks revenge to avenge his father’s death, he starts to plot his plan into motion; for revenge is more powerful than everything else. Hamlet is not eager to kill his uncle thus he awaits until the mere end. Agamemnon is the complete opposite to Hamlet’s character as he murders Clytemnestra’s husband to marry her,

Jonathan S. Goldberg Spring 2016 English 130 Professor. Lewis Hamlet William Shakespeare Part 1 In Act 3 Scene 4, where Hamlet kills Polonius, several phrases are pivotal to the scene. When Hamlet asks why he has been summoned, his mother Queen Gertrude lets him know that it is because Hamlet has offended his father. This statement announces the beginning of the altercation between mother and son. Hamlet suspects his mother played a part in the death of King Hamlet and is filled with anger and vengeful thoughts.

The play Hamlet by William Shakespeare illustrates the tragedy of revenge between characters in different perceptions through their actions. In entire of the story, melancholic Hamlet tries to revenge for his father that has been kill by his uncle King Claudius. However, the situation changes when Hamlet killed Polonius by accident. At first, Hamlet may want to find evidence to prove whether Claudius is the one who kills his father or not because he wasn’t too sure about it. As it states that, GHOST.

William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, is a tragic story about the struggles of a prince named Hamlet who seeks to avenge his father’s death. Hamlet is so determined to sabotage his uncle, who has taken his father’s crown and is responsible for the crime, that Hamlet himself increasingly becomes insane. Family bonds and friendships are broken as death begins to claim their loved ones and vengeance becomes the primary mindset of the characters. As the play progresses, three prominent themes of death, revenge, and madness drive the plot to its wretched end. Death is the most obvious and reoccurring theme displayed in Hamlet beginning with the death of King Hamlet.