The Internal State of the Character Hamlet Essay - 1869 Words

The Internal State of Hamlet Abstract: This essay uses psychoanalytic, new historicism, and deconstructive methods of criticism to expore the scene in which Hamlet stands before Claudius and Gertrude after he has killed Polonius. The oblective is to provide a better understanding of how Shakespeare uses the events in the play as a means of shaping or changing Hamlets actions or emotions Hamlet is a character with emotions that are so complex and intriguing that we, as readers or viewers, are drawn into this story until Hamlets situations, actions, and feelings become things we can understand, and relate to, as if his emotions were as human as our own. This genuineness Hamlet holds creates for this play an audience who†¦show more content†¦Hamlet later says he has left Poloniuss body in the hall and he is placid as he says these things and through this riddle-like speech we see Hamlet as a character whose actions are open to different interpretations. To see this scene through a psychoanalytic lens is to first examine Hamlets mental state and to see the actions of Hamlet in this scene as different from those we have viewed earlier in the play. Up until this general point in the play we have seen a Hamlet who is struggling to remain rational. Prince Hamlet seeks to be sure that Claudius is in fact guilty, he expresses his thoughts and anger to his mother in her bedroom, and he internally fights to do what is right. The knowledge of Claudiuss guilt and the murder of Polonius has cast a solemn shadow over Hamlet by this time in the play, though. The Hamlet in this scene is one who has reached a proverbial breaking point and he is now a man who has wrongly killed someone and a man who knows he must kill again. Psychoanalytically Hamlets internal stress could be causing a breakdown of his superego. Ross C. Murfin describes the superego as something outside the self, making moral judgments, telling us to make sacrifices for the good causes... (242). Hamlet does not seem to be acting under the influences of his superego. The part of his brain that once urged him to operate morally, to express his anger or feelings, and to act within theShow MoreRelatedCharacters Influenced by Traumatic Internal Events: Hamlet, and Death of a Salesman1018 Words   |  5 Pageshuman actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.† Demonstrating a link between internal thoughts and external action, characters in both William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman harness Aristotle’s philosophical ideology. In both plays, a main character becomes so overwhelmed by mental or psychological events t hat their actions become reflective of them. 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