It could be that he has damaged himself so that he is unable to feel empathy for others - or that the evil is innate. Macbeth displays some very evil characteristics - selfishness, coldness, obsession and cold-blooded murder. Shakespeare explores the degree to which he alone is responsible, and how far others contribute to Macbeth is perhaps Shakespeare's greatest exploration of the problem of evil. Evil is positioned both within and without. The witches are objective figures but Macbeth's first utterance in act 1, scene 3 suggests that he shares a similar thought with the witches.
In Hamlet, his prominent character trait of indecisiveness and other traits are revealed and better seen when compared and contrasted to the rest of the cast. Jamil 2 One of these foils is the character of Laertes. Laertes and Hamlet both share a common goal, revenge for the murder of their father. However, the way they go about this is different. Unlike Hamlet, Laertes is ablaze with motivation and action, and says that he will throw “conscience and grace to the profoundest pit” (4.5.
‘The White Devil is nothing more than a demonstration of imaginative ways to commit murder’ How do you comment on this judgement? In the White Devil, murderous plots and deadly scheming dominate the play, with the story revolving around the various motives and actions towards the murder of husbands, wives and brothers. However, to see the play as merely a vehicle for Webster’s fatal imaginings would be overly simplistic, and would overlook vast swathes of a play that, behind the murders, pivots on desire, love and intrigue, rather than plain bloodlust. The fact that the characters in the play are not designed to be consumed by murderous desires is apparent when Cornelia questions, ‘What? Because we are poor, shall we be vicious?’, illustrating clearly her belief that murder or violence is not the correct or dignified way of conducting oneself.
Iago not only attempts to seek out his own personal revenge, but he manipulates several other characters in order to help him reach his own goal. He plays on the other characters’ weaknesses and personal tragedies to help him reach his own ultimate revenge. As is proven by the end of the play, Shakespeare is clearly stating his personal belief that revenge is improper. This can be seen through the ultimate downfall of Iago and all those involved. In his play Othello, Shakespeare uses the plot, characters, and ultimate destructive ending to all to show the reader his opinion that all revenge is improper.
Hamlet’s slaying of Polonius only leads Hamlet to believe that it was a heaven-sent tool of vengeance to punish Polonius’s sins and to stain his own soul with blood. Shakespeare’s use of dramatic irony exposes the deeper meaning and function of Hamlet’s actions. Hamlet denounces Ophelia in order to break all emotional connections with her, although this gets him no closer to revenge with Claudius. Hamlet expresses the same prejudice and hate in his outburst towards Ophelia that he does when he is thinking aloud to himself. Hamlet’s ingenious scheme to write a play in order to trigger a guilty reaction from Claudius is not typical of a madman.
Double standards resonate deeply in “The Scarlet Letter.” Nathaniel Hawthorne uses specific characters to represent many different evils in society. One of these evils, hypocrisy, exists as one of the most important themes in the novel. At very specific and timely points in the book Hawthorne and the Narrator are able to portray fraudulence as the root of why the world seems to fall apart for Dimmesdale. Because of his hypocritical tendencies, Dimmesdale pains the people closest to him; including himself. Even though Pearl was willing to have a relationship with her father, Dimmesdale's heart was not strong enough to fully reveal himself to his own daughter until much too late.
Who Watches the Watchmen? Society's Deviance and Control in Watchmen Despite traditional portrayals of deviance and violence as unacceptable and anathema to the good of society, recent modern media does much to glorify these behaviors. Often times this deviant behavior is portrayed as being a ‘necessary evil’ to overcome deviance of a greater and more pressing type, as is the case in portrayals of vigilante justice. The 2009 film Watchmen is an excellent example of this, depicting the struggles of a group of vigilante masked heroes who take it upon themselves to accomplish what traditional justice cannot. Despite the fact that the film – and the graphic novel upon which it is based – challenge the traditional view of superhero fantasy with a more cold and nihilistic outlook, specifically within the characters of Rorschach and The Comedian, it also glorifies the deviant vigilante modus operandi to a certain degree.
Hamlet and Claudius contradict one another in a variety of ways making them enemies throughout the play. Prince Hamlet is perceived as the protagonist in the play for many reasons, one of them being because he displays an elegant intensity in everything he does, making him very amiable to the audience. When Hamlet is truly indecisive, brutal, revengeful, and hateful. When Hamlet speaks to others, his words are thought out to be hurtful to whomever he is speaking to. “You should not have believ'd me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it.
Nothing good can come out of torture. For example, torturing terrorist suspects is a cruel thing to do. The torture is ineffective because the information obtained is unreliable. “Subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence, because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop.” Said senator John McCain, survivor detainee from World War two. Torturing instigates hate, and a revenge cycle is born.
Hamlet supports and defies the traditional ‘tragic hero’ outlined by Aristotle, is a character with a high moral standing and is of noble stature that is compromised by a tragic flaw, which then results in tragedy. Shakespeare creates Hamlet with an inherent problem within himself that mirrors that in the play itself that causes a sense of chaos immediately, one of the first pieces of dialogue is ‘Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart’ this first use of pathetic fallacy describing the cold to be ‘bitter’ displaying the undertone of the entire play, and of how Hamlets character feels from the very opening of the play. This ‘bitter’ feeling is sparked by the ghost and sets his desire for revenge in motion which eventually compromises his nobility. This overall quote also sets the tone of something wrong, harsh and ‘sick’ infecting something needed, that is central to our survival, being ‘at heart’. Another indication that Shakespeare gives very early on in the play is ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.’ The word ‘rotten’ has connotations of being beyond repair of something that once was good.