Hamlet's 'Candide': A Short Story

In this paper I will be analyzing and discussing how these four soliloquies reflect changes in Hamlet’s mental state; his

Hamlet is as much a story of emotional conflict, paranoia, and self-doubt as it is one of revenge and tragedy. The protagonist, Prince Hamlet of Denmark, is instructed by his slain father’s ghost to enact vengeance upon his uncle Claudius, whose treacherous murder of Hamlet’s father gave way to his rise to power. Overcome by anguish and obligation to avenge his father’s death, Hamlet ultimately commits a number of killings throughout the story. However, we are not to view the character Hamlet as a sick individual, but rather one who has been victimized by his own circumstances.

Voltaire’s Candide portrays an exaggerated image of human cruelty and suffering in the world. Specifically, Voltaire criticizes people’s lack of willingness to prevent suffering, and their tendency to accept the idea that there is nothing anyone can do about human outcomes. He upholds his belief that practical ways of solving problems generate improvement. He believes that human indifference and inaction cause suffering to carry on. Voltaire’s believes that naïve optimism, absolute pessimism, cruel indifference, and lack of reason hinder positive and constructive change.

Hamlet, the eponymous hero of Shakespeare’s greatest work, descends swiftly into madness and paranoia after the murder of his father and the realization of his mother’s true, morally reprehensible, nature. As a result of these new responsibilities and extreme circumstances, Hamlet diverges from his usual, logical thinking into paranoia and over analysis, a condition that prevents him from trusting anyone. Hamlet, having been born a prince, is, for the first time, forced to make his own decisions after he learns of the true means of his father’s death. Another contributing factor to his madness is the constant probing of others into Hamlet’s sanity. These factors all contribute to Hamlets delay, and that delay contributes to the tragic

    Candide on the surface is a witty story. However when inspected deeper it is a philippic writing against people of an uneducated status. Candide is an archetype of these idiocracies, for he lacks reason and has optimism that is truly irking, believing that this is the best of all possible worlds. Thus Voltaire uses a witty, bantering tale on the surface, but in depth a cruel bombast against the ignoramuses of his times.

Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, begins with the appearance of a ghost, an apparition, possibly a hallucination. Thus, from the beginning, Shakespeare presents the air of uncertainty, of the unnatural, which drives the action of the play and develops in the protagonist as a struggle to clarify what only seems to be absolute and what is actually reality. Hamlet's mind, therefore, becomes the central force of the play, choosing the direction of the conflict by his decisions regarding his revenge and defining the outcome.

Candide is a reflection of the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Voltaire’s novel is a satire of the Old Regime ideologies in which he critiques the political, social, and religious ideals of his time.

     “Everything happens for the best, in this the best of all possible worlds.” This is a statement that can be found many times within Voltaire’s Candide. Voltaire rejected Lebitizian Optimism, using Candide as a means for satirizing what was wrong with the world, and showing that, in reality, this is not the best of all possible worlds.

It is this mourning that becomes the foundation of conflicts to come. After an encounter with his father’s ghost, Hamlet learns of his uncle’s treachery and is at first filled with rage, “Haste me to know’t, that I with wings as swift, as meditation or the thoughts of love, may sweep to my revenge.” (Hamlet aside, Act I, Scene V, p.1651), but it is Hamlet’s struggle with himself that leads to not act upon his words as fast as he had clamed to.

One of the best known pieces of literature throughout the world, Hamlet is also granted a position of excellence as a work of art. One of the elements which makes this play one of such prestige is the manner in which the story unfolds. Throughout time, Shakespeare has been renowned for writing excellent superlative opening scenes for his plays. By reviewing Act 1, Scene 1 of Hamlet, the reader is able to establish a clear understanding of events to come. This scene effectively sets a strong mood for the events to come, gives important background information, and introduces the main characters. With the use of this information, it is simple to see how Shakespeare manages to create stories with such everlasting appeal.

world is the world of a prince, a place where no-one would ever make a

Having to be the first writer to become the symbol of his age –to his age, Voltaire is one of the immortal souls of the world because of his literary works. One of his famous, Enlightenment influenced works is Candide, or Optimisim, which remains to be one of the first works listed under his name. Candide is a book named after its main optimistic character. A character whose name means naïve and simple in French, thus suggesting ignorance, but also meaning candid and honest, thus suggesting integrity. This epic novella finely displays some of Voltaire’s thoughts on controversial ideas that include optimism, religion, and the uselessness on the basis of philosophy. It is a reflective on his outlook on life at that time. In it, the round character of Candide sets off on an adventure to seek his happiness, only to learn a lesson that is portrayed as one of Voltaire’s philosophical thoughts in the end.

The story opens in the cold and dark of a winter night in Denmark, while the guard is being changed on the battlements of the royal castle of Elsinore. For two nights in succession, just as the bell strikes the hour of one, a ghost has appeared on the battlements, a figure dressed in complete armor and with a face like that of the dead king of Denmark, Hamlet’s father. A young man named Horatio, who is a school friend of Hamlet, has been told of the apparition and cannot believe it, and one of the officers has brought him there in the night so that he can see it for himself.

Earlier this week, in the Elsinore Castle in the country of Denmark there had been whispers throughout the town that Prince Hamlet had received a visit from the deceased King Hamlet. A spooked pair of watchmen were the first reported to have encountered the haunting spirit. Those close to the grieving prince have been very weary of what this spirit may be suggesting to a distraught Prince Hamlet.

According to James Schmidt's article "Civility, Enlightenment, and Society: Conceptual Confessions of Kantian Remedies," "The Enlightenment is routinely characterized as embracing a conception of reason that is held to be insufficiently sensitive to its own limits" (Schmidt 421). The term enlighten means to clarify or clear things up, most of the time a person would give a reason to enlighten a situation. The Enlightenment period was all about reasoning and this is why it was also known as the Age of Reason. The name of the Enlightenment period is misleading, a person may think that it was times of happiness, joy, and understanding, but in truth, it was the opposite. Voltaire wrote one of his greatest stories based on the Enlightenment period. The story is " Candide" and there are a lot of signs of the Enlightenment in the story like, religion, power, and gender roles but there are also aspects that are pretty benighted. Even though the characters in Candide go through really hard and unlikely times, they are very optimistic about their outcome at the end of their journey.