Hamlet Rough Draft
Throughout the play, Hamlet shows many examples of being an indecisive person and being unable to do anything he wants to, as if something stops him. An example would be in act five, when he decides to confess his love for Ophelia on her grave. He took too long to tell Ophelia or anyone for the matter about his love for her. Another example would be his mother remarrying, and Hamlet not being able to confess his true feelings about King Claudius being his new father. In the first four acts, Hamlet goes on about his life being miserable and in some kind of melancholy mood.
He can’t find a way to deal with it, so he keeps all of his negative feelings to himself. This “depressed” funk he is in interferes with his will to act upon things that go on around him. However, he does manage the courage to finally step up and confront his feelings about King Claudius, which puts him in fear of Hamlet. Besides his mood affecting his will to act, how Hamlet over thinks his actions ruins his ability to do anything. For him, there is always something else that can go wrong, so he decides not to go with his original plan.
While we all go around looking for an excuse whether or not to do something, Hamlet seems to have no problem just saying never mind to everything and chickening out. He thinks about a plan to make, then decides against it. “Why” is what I have to ask? Why didn’t Hamlet do everything he wanted to? Maybe his life would have changes completely and he would be in such a rough state. Maybe his life wouldn’t have changed at all. In Act Five Scene 1, Hamlet finally confesses his true love for Ophelia, who has already committed suicide. As if saying this is going to bring her back to life, he fights with her brother Laertes about who loves her more. Forty thousand brothers/ Could not, with all their quantity of love,/ make up my sum. ” (V. i. ) The two literally jump into her grave and fight over her. Hamlet waits until Ophelia is dead to confess his love for her, while before, he had the chance to do so. (Claudius and Polonius set up a trap for Hamlet to see if he’s gone “mad” because of his love for Ophelia, or because he may actually be insane. )In this scene, Hamlet chooses to completely dis Ophelia and basically tell her he doesn’t love her at all. She was in on it the whole time, and was discouraged by his reaction.
This may be the reason she actually killed herself. It is ironic to see how scared he seems of confronting anyone about how he feels. “Frailty, thy name is woman! ” (I. ii. ) Hamlet is completely in awe and disbelief that his mother would marry her own brother. Especially since it’s her own flesh and blood she’s married to. Hamlet feels that it hasn’t been nearly long enough to remarry or get over their loss which they suffered. Yet, Hamlet still shows no sign of courage to confront the new king, even though he feels so strongly that this is so wrong.
Before he says that to his mother, he also said, “That it should come to this,” meaning that she could have married anyone or anything else, and it still wouldn’t have been as bad as her own brother. That it would have to come to this, thinking that you can’t trust anyone again besides your own family members. Hamlet also believes that because of this awkward marriage, there is just a series of streaks of bad luck to come to him and his family. Sharing this with his mother would be the best idea, but like many other times, hamlet doesn’t say a word and keeps to himself.
He hates his uncle being king, and wants so bad for it to change. This scares him though, thinking that saying something will just bring even more bad luck to him. Later on in the story, he does go and find his mother to tell him his trouble about this and what will happen if he doesn’t share this with her. Hamlet goes to his mother and finally shares what’s on his mind. He tells her things like, “don’t believe your husband that I/m crazy, because I’m really not,” or, “I’m only telling you this so Claudius doesn’t persuade you to think differently of me. He warns his mother to not go and “spread the compost on the weeds/ To make them ranker ” By saying this, he doesn’t want the compost to be like a catalyst, and spread corruption throughout her own mind because of Claudius telling her so. Although Hamlet shows himself as indecisive and insecure, towards the end of the story he does show some act of courage; enough to finally go and kill King Claudius. At first, he finds himself procrastinating at the matter, because he comes up behind King Claudius while he’s praying. He originally planned on killing him right then and there, but wait!
Hamlet stops and lets his inner coward win over yet again. After a series of deep thoughts, he does decide to kill his uncle, and realizes that he must go through with his plan quickly, before Hamlet himself is killed. ”Thus conscience does not make cowards of us all;/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;/ And enterprises of great pith and moment,/ With this regard, their currents turn away,/ And lose the name of action. ” Hamlet here combines some themes of this play: death and life, the connection between thought and ction. In act five scene five, he goes into Claudius’ room to kill him. Like the last time he went to kill him, he was on his knees praying. Why send him to Heaven when he should go to Hell? His father wasn’t given a chance to repent his sins before he was murdered, so why should King Claudius? Hamlet thinks about this for a minute, and decides to wait for a more reasonable time to go through with this murder. Maybe he will get lucky and catch the king drinking, angry, or being a lustful man. Then he feels it would be right to kill him.
When we do bad deeds, we feel bad about them sooner or later, or do we immediately regret doing them? This is something Hamlet does a lot throughout the entire play. One moment he is ready to confess his love for someone, and the minute they turn to look at him, he changes his mind. His indecisiveness seems to play a big part on his actions. If he wasn’t so afraid of the possible outcome, do you think he would go through with everything he says he will? Over the series of acts, Hamlet shows another emotion. Whether he’s happy, sad, angry, or in love, one mood will never seem to stay put.
When I first read this, I kept losing my train of thought because of the consistent change of emotion. Hamlet seems to be insecure with everything he thinks about, which leads him to a world of hurt in the future. Look at what happened with Ophelia: he waited too long to tell her he loved her, said all of the wrong things to her, and she killed herself over it all. When his mother married his uncle, he was confused and angry, but didn’t say anything because he was afraid of hurting his mother and bring bad luck to him. Hamlet also doesn’t tend to give any one thought of his a chance before completely shooting it down with disbelief.
I mean, leaving things to fall on their own makes sense to do, but not with every single problem or situation that comes around. For example, when we’re cold, do we go and get a blanket, turn the heat on, or even snuggle up on the couch? Or do we just wait until were so cold that were just numb? Of course we aren’t going to let ourselves freeze, so we go and do something about it without thinking about all of the negative repercussions. (Like being even more uncomfortable once we get up, or worse case scenario, tripping over something and breaking a limb. Hamlet needs to be more lenient on himself while making decisions, because he seems to be killing himself by doing this. He loses every chance he gets by not bothering with them in the first place. Shakespeare’s plays all have a theme based on the same basic thing: life and personal experience. Like a normal human being, he’s probably been through heartbreak, a loss of a loved one, and the experience of having to make a serious decision. Maybe he was the kind of author that makes his characters do everything he didn’t, and that’s what makes it so relatable to us as his audience.
