Monday, July 3, 2017

Using direct evidence from the text, explain Hamlet's attitude towards his father's ghost. What is his response to the ghost's accusations? How does he feel about it overall?

Hamlet is deeply troubled by the ghost's accusations. Initially, he promises the ghost he will quickly avenge his death, saying:

Haste me to know ’t, that I, with wings as swift
As meditation or the thoughts of love,
May sweep to my revenge.

But upon reflection, he questions the motivations of the ghost. He wonders if this really is the ghost of his father, telling him a true story about being murdered or if it is a creature that has been sent by Satan to tempt Hamlet into the sin of killing an innocent man. Hamlet spends the first part of the play wrestling with this question, until the mousetrap play provides him with independent evidence of his uncle's guilt.
Hamlet was already depressed by his father's death, which was attributed to a snake bite, but finding out that his uncle possibly murdered his father sends him into a tailspin so profound that Hamlet weighs whether or not to commit suicide. As he puts it in a famous soliloquy:

To be, or not to be—that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?

In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...