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Epiphany In Hamlet

Decent Essays

So I had an epiphany. Actually, that’s not quite the right word. An epiphany is a moment of sudden clarity, but mine was anything but sudden. It rolled in slowly and started to unfold itself, like it was doing its morning stretch.

Yesterday, I was in London with my son. We decided to go ahead and catch the opening of Hamlet, at the Royal National Theatre. Written by William Shakespeare, the play illustrates the difficulties we’ll encounter in our lives. Shakespeare does this through the characters, soliloquies, and allusions to the theme of madness. Whilst we were watching the play, my son whispered in my ear, claiming that Hamlet reminded him of Tupac. At first I dismissed it as ridiculous, but then I thought about it. Perhaps he was right. Are these two seemingly different people somewhat related? …show more content…

Is Hamlet like Tupac? Tupac also saw this, and nothing proves this more than the song Changes. In this song, Tupac shows the themes of appearance vs reality, revenge and morality. Like Hamlet throughout the play, the song challenges the rules set by culture and works towards justice. These show how hard life is to be an underprivileged Black man in the United States, with a kindness on issues with police cruelty. This follows Hamlets theme of appearance vs reality as from the outside it may look as though racism is no longer a factor as laws have changed and the systemic oppression of minorities is no more. And I’m sure as you may have heard, we had a black president! Therefore everything is magically fixed. As the song develops, Tupac makes simple as people sometimes wish it could be, and that people must get used to these new environments. Similar to the motif of change seen in Hamlet. Tupac expresses how simple it is for people to buy weapons and kill other people. How in times of change we result to fighting and killing. Like Shakespeare, Tupac uses allusion to illustrate that madness is not a good way to find the meanings to an

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