hamlet

1. Hamlet’s relationships with the other characters in the play are complicated. Choose three relationships; analyze how Hamlet is impacted by each (three quotations – one for each relationship). 60 points

Ophelia- Hamlet and Ophelia started out as they were dating and seemed very much in love. Ophelia's dad thought that Hamlet did not love her and was just being a player. Many people start to tell her that she should not be with him. She decides to listen to all of them and not stay with Hamlet. At first he didn't know what was going on because her dad wanted her to be able to spy on Hamlet and tell him what was going on. Hamlet begins to understand what is going on and this makes him go crazy. I think he really was in love with her. When Claudius and Polonius decide to trick Hamlet into being alone with Ophelia he tell hers how he doesn't think that you shouldn't have to live a life that you do not want to. Also he believes that all women are selfish whores. When Polonius dies this send Ophelia into a downward spiral and she no longer knows what to do with her life. She ends up singing a song to the queen that makes her sound like she has lost her mind. "He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone; At his head a grass-green turf, At his heels a stone" (4.5.34-370). She is very upset about her father death and she ends up drowning and no one knows if she committed suicide or not. Now that she is gone Hamlet loses his mind ever more. He can't decide if he wants to be alive or not. He gets angry that she is not allowed to have a proper burial because they don't know if she had confessed her sins before she died. Altogether she had a large effect on him, he went from liking her, to loving her, to being angry with her, and than wanting to die because of her not being alive.

Horatio- He is Hamlet's very close friend and he is known to be very trustworthy. When Horatio and Hamlet have conversations is when you get to know best what Hamlet is really thinking. Horatio and Hamlet are very different from each other; Horatio is very calm and and rational where Hamlet is very over the top with everything. Horatio seems to bring Hamlet back to reality most of the time. Hamlet wishes that he could be like Horatio. "Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man As e'er my conversation coped withal" (3.2.56-570). Horatio very much loved Hamlet and when he was dying he was planning on committing suicide so he didn't have to live with out his friend. In the end Hamlet was able to become a little more like Horatio by accepting the fact that all men have some evil in them. (http://www.shakespeare-online.com/playanalysis/horatiochar.html) Horatio was a very good influence for Hamlet and he kept him grounded and made him realize that he didn't have to over react to all of the little things.

Gertrude- she is Hamlets mother who is now married to Claudius. Hamlet is not happy with his mother since his fathers death because she married Claudius (her fathers brother) very shortly after he had died. She is a very questionable person because she seems to want to keep her social standards up and stay queen which could be why she would marry Claudius. Also when we find out it was Claudius who had killed his own brother you never find out if she had known what was going on. Hamlet had to love and respect her though because she was his mother. She ended up thinking he was insane because of all the things Polonius had told her. She was very graceful when she was around many people a knew how to play the crowd. When hamlet talked to his mother he is really hurt by her because she married his uncle and thinks that she knew about his fathers death. " A bloody deed-- almost as bad, good mother, as kill a king and marry his brother." (3.4.34-35). He was talking to her after Polonius's death. He just wished that his mother would be back to normal. (http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/canalysis.html)


2. Revenge, redemption, loyalty, indecision, love, appearance vs. reality, and betrayal are significant themes in the play. Choose three of these and explain how each theme affects the characters and the outcome of the play (three quotations – one for each theme). 60 points

Redemption- It is turning your wrongs into rights and being forgiven. Hamlet and his family believed that to go to heaven you had to confess of your sins before you died. His father did not have a chance to do this since he was killed so quickly by his brother. This is how he came back as a ghost because he was stuck in purgatory until god was able to judge him. Hamlet is able to talk to his father when he is a ghost and this is how he finds out how he was killed. "I am thy father's spirit, Doomed for a certain term to walk the night and for the day confined to fast in fires till the foul crimes done in my days of nature are burnt and purged away." (1.5.14-18). Since he wasn't able to confess he was stuck paying off his sins until he could get to heaven. Another case of this was when Ophelia drowned/killed herself in the water. She was not allowed to have a proper burial because they did not know if she was able to confess her sins or not. I think she would of had time to confess if she knew she was going to kill herself. I don't think anyone would want to purposely send themselves to hell. Her not able to have a prober burial also made Hamlet very angry with the people digging the grave because they were not acting sad about it at all.

Betrayal- Through most of the story Hamlet is feeling betrayed. Mostly he feels this from his mother and Ophelia. First his mother betrays him by not seeming to care about the death of his father and her husband. She gets married very shortly after the death. This really upsets Hamlet and he gets very upset about it. "That is should come to this but two months dead-- nay, not so much, not two. So excellent a king, that was to this hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughtly (1.2.141-145). He knows that his father was a great husband to her and can't believe that she was able to let him go that eaisly. He never really gets any peace with subject through out the story, and ends up blaming himself for not doing anything about it. Secondly was Ophelia. He thought that she was in love with him and would want to stay with him, but because her father and other people said that he was just playing her she listend to all of them and decided to not be with him. She was also apart of tricking him into talking to her while Claudius and Polonius where listing to their conversation. She impacted him once she died because that made him want to die all the more. He had been thinking about suicide and this just made that all the more apparent in his thoughts.

Revenge- This story was filled with revenge. It all became most apparent in the end of the book when all of the tenstion between everyone finally turns into fighting. Laertes is very mad about the death of his father, Polonius, so him and Claudius set up a plan to kill Hamlet. They tried to trick him into fencing with Laertes while Laertes would have a poisoned sword. Hamlet had an idea as to what was going on because he wasn't dumb. They also tried to get him to drink out of a poisned drink but he did not want to drink while he was in the match. His mother ended up taking a drink not knowing what was in it and died from the poison. Once Hamlet is able to get the sword from Laertes he cuts him with it and Laertes says, "I am justly kill’d with my own treachery”(5.2.318). He knows that he desierved his death because he tricked Hamlet. Hamlet also makes Claudius drink the poisoned wine, threating him with the sword. Since Hamlet got cut from the sword he died too, but before him or Laertes died they made peace. Which was easy for them to do because they were both going to die and wanted to be able to go to heaven and be forgiven for their sins. Everyone got what they wanted, and also what they didn't want which was themselves dying.

3. Has Hamlet changed?
You may compare the soliloquies from
1.2.133-164
2.2.575-636
3.1.63-99
4.4.33-69
or you may use other textual evidence that you have prepared to answer this question (three quotations – beginning, “middle,” and end). 60 points

In the beginning Hamlet seemed very sad because his father was dead. He felt like his mother had betrayed him and he became more angry sounding because she was married less than a month after his father had died. "She married. O, most wicked speed, to post with such dexterity to incestuous sheets? It is not, nor it cannot come to good. But break, my heart, for i must hold my tongue." (1.2.161-164). He knows that he has to stay loyal to her because she is his mother, but he is really disappointed with the choices she made. In act 2 he is much more angry than he was before. He has now seen the ghost of his father and he knows who killed him. He calls Claudius a remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindles villain. He than starts to doubt himself and wonders is the ghost was the devil sent to trick him and he is very confused as to what is going on. In act three he is feeling very sad and confused. He isn't angry anymore and is sad that everyone who was once a big part of his life now seems to not be there for him. This is when he asks the famous question. " To be or not to be-- that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind of stuffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.(3.1.64-68). He doesn't know if he wants to be alive any longer because he feels like no one cares about him and everyone turns against him. In act four he is most angry and himself rather than others. He thinks he needs to take more action against Claudius since he killed his father. "How stand i, then, that have a father killed, a mother stained, excitements of my reason and my blood, and let all sleep"(4.4..59-62). He is ashamed of himself for not doing anything about his fathers death. This is how he changes the most. In the beginning he was angry with his mother for moving on so fast, than he was even more angry with claudius. He has seemed to mellow down and realized he cannot control other people but now wants to take responsibility for what he can do.

Work Cited
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Folger Shakespeare Library Edition.
Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine, Eds. NY: Washington Square Press, 1992.

Websites:

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/playanalysis/horatiochar.html
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/hamlet/canalysis.html