Hamlet thinks too much and don’t act according to his plans of though, The Oedipus complex is one of the several reasons that cause Hamlet to delay his act of revenge against Claudius, hamlet acts insane and have signs of schizophrenia and lastly his religion thoughts would delay his act of revenge. Hamlet delays his revenge against Claudius because he thinks too much. There are several examples at the play that Hamlet over analyzed the situation but never putted to action. Hamlet argues to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern about the philosophy of what is “good” and “bad”. “Why, then, ’tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison.” (Act 2, scene 2).
If Hamlet were to have seen his father’s ghost by himself, there would be a greater argument for him being insane from the outset of the play. Hamlet also exerts control over his actions, which is the main reason why it could be argued that he is sane. He actively tries to convince Polonius that he has gone mad - mocking him when he would usually be respectful, acting cruelly towards Ophelia whom he was clearly affectionate to earlier in the play. He does this in the hope that Polonius will tell the court of his madness. Hamlet is often hesitant to do things, for example where he had the chance to kill Claudius in the chapel but couldn’t bring himself to do it, not because he would be killing another human but because he wanted Claudius to suffer and not go straight to Heaven.
I felt that he was just messing with you and your reputation. Curse dim-witted assumptions! Though it is normal for someone as old as me to feel as if I have a firm grip on the young ones, though I foolishly under estimate the craziness of the youth. Come lets, let’s find the king. We must tell him, it will cause more damage if we don’t tell him soon.
Therefore, to perform his grand scheme, he must change the way he acts in order to prefect the chance to avenge his father’s death, and he must act in such a way to discover and learn everything he needs to do so. Many different plays and dramas included the role of madness because with madness it was thought that a madman would have no plans or thoughts of revenge such as in Shakespeare’s own, King Lear in which the fool is allowed to play on the King as well as give advice through riddles and double-talk.
The struggle to act upon his father’s murder is a key factor in Hamlet’s disillusionment with the world. The Elizabethan period was a time that demanded revenge and this is even true in our present time to some extent. An eye for an eye approach was considered socially correct which Hamlet initially suggests ‘May sweep to my revenge’. Since Claudius has become the new king, he is considered a false king and imposter to the throne by Hamlet and this leads to the collapse of the natural hierachy that was in place. He states ‘tis an unweeded garden’ alluding to the fact that a false king leads to corruption which finally leads to the collapse of the hierarchy.
After King Hamlet's death, Laertes, along with Prince Hamlet return to Denmark for the funeral services. This is the first sign that Laertes will become a foil to Hamlet in the play. Hamlet is devastated but he only mopes around whereas when Laertes father Polonius is murdered he vows for revenge “to the blackest Devil!”(4.5.215) He thinks through his emotions, not with his brain like Hamlet. When Hamlet is trying to solve if Claudius killed his father he uses Gertrude asking, “I know not: is it the King?”(3.4.123) Spying through someone else is typical Hamlet not only keeping his feeling hush but also avoiding a confrontation with the king before he knows for sure if he killed his father. When Ophelia dies Laertes is Distraught and isn’t afraid to show this whereas Hamlet loved her but his lack emotion left him without a connection to her at the end of the play.
But he had not taken any action in proving the king’s guilt, rather he had simply made himself appear raving mad. When Osric comes to tell Hamlet that the king has agreed to a duel between Laertes and Hamlet; Hamlet has no other choice. He resists, and he gets arrested. He agrees, and he begins to enter the whirlpool, without his knowledge. But he still doesn’t make a decision about Claudius.
In my final paper, I plan to prove that the root of Hamlet’s problems is the patriarchal society he lives in. I believe that Hamlet’s hesitation is a result of his reluctance to participate in the patriarchal order. He is torn by his need to honor his father and take his rightful place in that society and his disdain for that very system. I will use the Characters of Ophelia and Gertrude, not as evidence of Shakespeare’s misogyny, but as deliberate devices that illustrate the consequences of patriarchy. Should he comply with the patriarchal order, he must either oppose his mother and take the throne, or dishonor his father by accepting his uncle as his mother’s husband.
Which everyone knows will lead to his downfall. To prove this is the reason, while analyzing the play, the points that come to mind are that Hamlet only acts when he does not think about the consequences of his actions, and when he accuses himself of over thinking, catching himself in the act, or even when Hamlet had a clear chance to kill Claudius but stop and thinks of all the things that will happen to him. From all these points it is clear that the reason Hamlet delays to avenge his father’s death is because he is in a deep state where he “over-thinks” or “over-philosophizes” which can suggest that he is in fact “thought-sick”. Wolfgang Von Goethe presents the point that the delay is a natural struggle, of a “lovely, pure and most sensitive nature, without the strength of
While they argue that Hamlet's problems cannot be simply reduced to the Oedipus complex, Barber and Wheeler state that an understanding of Hamlet "must be consistent with the presence of that complex, for the Freudian explanation clearly works." Emphasizing Hamlet's guilt, which is focused on his father, not his mother, the critics argue that this guilt refers to Hamlet's wish to kill his father, which he cannot do since Hamlet's father is already dead. The wish, Barber and Wheeler explain, is diverted from Hamlet's father to his uncle. Taking another approach to Hamlet's oedipal issues, Janet Adelman (1992) centers on the role of the mother. Adelman illustrates that