Essay On Revenge In Hamlet

Hamlet has lived through plenty of ups and downs throughout his childhood. He has been lost and confused within himself, but knew he wanted one thing, which was revenge on his fathers killer, Claudius. His passion of hate developed for Claudius as he married Hamlets mother shortly after the king’s death. Hamlet could not decide on the perfect decision for himself, his mother and father as well as the best way to follow through with the best consequence for Claudius that would impress his father. His everyday life, along with his love life, left him with an empty heart, which slowed the process of the revenge down. Hamlet never expected to be captured and kidnapped by pirates, as he was sent overseas as a young man. His inside thoughts were attacking and overwhelming Him, leaving him depressed and anxious. Hamlet’s life has been leading him to negative thoughts that he cannot process or act accordingly to, due to the excessive amount of issues and options involved in his life at a young age, him being overwhelmed lead him to delaying the process of avenging his fathers killer.

Revenge is a dangerous downfall. Revenge has caused people to do incredibly stupid and recklessly acts. The worst part of revenge however, is how easily people can justify and rationalize their actions, an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth. Hamlet is no exception. Throughout Shakespeare’s Hamlet, revenge is an almost suffocating theme. Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet are all seeking retribution for the deaths of their fathers. However, while seeking such revenge, they rely on their emotions which drive them to make gambles. Gambles that in the end lead to death save one. Fortinbras father was slain by King Hamlet during battle as seen in the text, "...valiant Hamlet for so this side of our known world esteem'd him did slay this Fortinbras." Fortinbras son was so angered by his father's murder that he not only sought revenge against King Hamlet, but against all of Denmark. Young Fortinbras empowered by his rage planned to take back

When Hamlet hears a noise behind a curtain, and stabs at it wildly, assuming it is the man who killed his father, he finds out it is his friend Polonius, the father of Ophelia. After Ophelia learns of her father’s death, she loses touch with reality, and drowns. Once Hamlet decided to take action, he had no control over the actions of his revenge, which consequently led to his girlfriend’s death. Also, Laertes, the son of Polonius, after learning of his father’s murder by Hamlet, concocts a plot of his murder. He poisons a rapier to kill Hamlet, but Hamlet unknowingly uses that same poison against him. Laertes´ desire for revenge against Hamlet led to his own death from his own actions. After being poisoned in his duel with Hamlet, he says “I am justly killed with mine own treachery” (5.2.338). The characters who pursued these acts of vengeance expected satisfaction, but the opposite occurred. Thus, Hamlet, undermines the belief that revenge gives satisfaction and relief to the pursuer, especially because of Shakespeare’s acknowledgement of the drastic consequences. Finally, the play offers the idea that for both parties, revenge can be forgiven, which is more satisfactory than any other

Revenge is a recurring theme in Hamlet. Although Hamlet wants to avenge his father’s death, he is afraid of what would result from this. In the play Hamlet, Hamlet’s unwillingness to revenge appears throughout the text; Shakespeare exhibits this through Hamlet’s realization that revenge is not the right option, Hamlet‘s realization that revenge is the same as the crime which was already committed, and his understanding that to revenge is to become a “beast” and to not revenge is as well (Kastan 1).

In modern society humans stand up and fight for what they think is right and fair. Human beings have the desire to avenge what they think is wrong. The theme of revenge has a major effect in the play Hamlet and is a constant throughout the play, it underlies almost every scene. In the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare examines the theme of revenge through the erratic thoughts and actions of the characters Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras. The main revenge plots in the play is Hamlet’s aim to avenge his father, Hamlet Sr, Laertes’ aim to avenge the murder of his father, Polonius, and Fortinbras’ aim to avenge the death of his father, Fortinbras. Having lost their fathers, Hamlet, Laertes and Fortinbras take vengeance on the people that killed them. These plots play a major role in the play presenting the theme of revenge to the audience.

The play “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare is about a guy named Hamlet going through a hard time in life, after the death of his father, and the remarriage of his mother to his uncle. Throughout the play were are able to get a greater understanding of who Hamlet really is. The actions of Hamlet in Shakespeare's master piece “Hamlet” proves him to a revenge seeker, emotional, and crazy.

Revenge resembles taking action and justice for what is right. Shakespeare is familiar with this concept that is presented in his play, Hamlet. The characters Hamlet, Fortinbras, and Laertes show the willingness to seek revenge on others through the five assumptions of revenge play.

In his play Hamlet, William Shakespeare frequently utilizes the word “revenge” and images associated with this word in order to illustrate the idea that the pursuit of revenge has caused the downfall of many people. He builds up the idea that revenge causes people to act recklessly through anger rather than reason. In Hamlet, Fortinbras, Laertes and Hamlet all seek to avenge the deaths of their fathers. Hamlet and Laertes manage to avenge their father’s deaths and in doing so, both rely more on their emotions rather than their reasoning, which eventually leads to their downfalls at the end of Hamlet.

"But I am very sorry, good Horatio, /That to Laertes I forgot myself; /For, by the image of my cause, I see/The portraiture of his" (V.2). In seeking to revenge, Hamlet accidentally stabs Polonius, the king's advisor, thus killing the father of Laertes. Hamlet acknowledges, with his sense of higher justice and objectivity, that Laertes has a reason for hating him, given that he is also a parricide. There is a sharp, circular irony to this cycle of revenge. Similarly, Ophelia is driven mad by the death of her father and kills herself. Hamlet, while much of his madness is assumed, is also driven to a state of emotional distress. Laertes, Hamlet, and Ophelia all act irrationally in ways that bring about their death because of the extremity of their grief.

Ophelia, ever since her introduction, has been introduced to be a sweet and sympathetic person, providing the play with emotional moments, but her death was used as a bait and switch by Shakespeare towards audience members who had expected her to change the play’s somber mood to more hopeful one, which in turn makes the play even more tragic. After she had been visited by an apparently crazed Hamlet, she tells Polonius about the visit, prompting him to believe that the young prince is crazy in love, and goes out to tell the king. After it was explained to Claudius, and Hamlet’s former friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern failed to find the underlying cause of his madness, Polonius makes Ophelia approach Hamlet while he and the king hide and monitor his behavior.

Many scholars classify William Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark as a revenge tragedy, a genre popular during the Elizabethan era (Gainor 41). Shakespeare's tragedy focuses on three sons–Hamlet, Laertes, and Fortinbras–seeking retribution for the unfortunate death of their fathers– King Hamlet, Polonius, and King Fortinbras respectively. In the play, the father-son relationship is the primary motivator for each son's revenge. Because Elizabethan society places a strong emphasis on the relationship between father and son, each son feels obligated to right his father's wrongs. According to Fredric B. Tromly, author of Fathers and Sons in Shakespeare: The Debt Never Promised, “A defining . . . feature of Shakespeare’s

In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses revenge as a major theme present throughout the work. Revenge plays a crucial role in the development of Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and Laertes, son of Polonius. All three men seek revenge for the murder of their fathers. Revenge can be interpreted as a separate character in Hamlet. Revenge is set to overcome anyone who seeks it. Initially, after each of the murders, every son had a definite course of action to obtain vengeance. Or in Hamlet's case the choice was to seek no vengeance. As the play unfolds, each young man approaches the desire for revenge and chooses a different path towards gaining it based on the guidance of another character in

Ophelia experiences alienation throughout Hamlet, although she ends her life with suicide, unlike Hamlet. The queen places blame on Ophelia for Hamlet's madness and states: "...for your part, Ophelia, I do wish that your good beauties be the happy cause for Hamlet's madness..." (Shakespeare 140). The queen lightens her feelings of guilt for the murder and places the guilt upon Ophelia. Gertrude, the queen, knows that she has committed something wrong with the plot of killing Old Hamlet and therefore finds an outlet through Ophelia. Also, to try to discover Hamlet's cause of insanity, Claudius and Polonius use Ophelia to get closer to him and find out that perhaps they could conclude that his

Self- knowledge is when a person gain understanding of their selves. It is when they recognize their goals and abilities. Hamlet was bitter in the beginning of the play, due to his father’s death. He was disgusted with his mother, and he had hatred for his uncle Claudius. Hamlet felt this way because his father had just died and his mother had already re- married and to his uncle, which made him become his father. Hamlet’s goal was to avenge his father’s death, but he first needed to gain the strength and right plan to do so. Othello on the other hand was looked upon as a noble man, a hero in the beginning of the play. But by him being naïve he was tricked into believing that his love, Desdemona, betrayed him. This caused Othello to try to

“While seeking revenge, dig two graves - one for yourself”, as is what happens to those who take revenge, buried in their own unforgiveness. Francis Bacon’s idea of revenge attempts to bypass this problem of unforgiveness, with the forgiveness of the perpetrator. But not all revenge can be simply forgiven, which is the case in Hamlet; Francis Bacon also knows about this problem, but describes it in his own words with “The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then let a man take heed the revenge be such as there is no law to punish”(Francis Bacon 15). Sir Francis Bacon’s idea of revenge relates to Hamlet in how revenge is handled, the repercussions of acting in revenge, and its ability to change a person's thought process.