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Preston Bateman

ENGL 1302 – PW

Prof. Wheeler

March 26, 2010

Hamlet’s Struggle between Thought and Action

Prince Hamlet of Denmark is a character of many faces, and he is also one of

the most argued over characters in Shakespearian literature because of his

irrational actions and internal struggles. Throughout the course of the play, Hamlet

struggles between using reason to get through situations and letting his emotions

influence his actions. This constant battle between thought and action ultimately

leads to his downfall, and also to the demise of the rest of the characters in the final

lines of the play.

At many instances during the play, Hamlet must make a decision to do what

he thinks is right, or make a selfish choice. This is evident when Hamlet has the

opportunity to finally seek revenge on Claudius. Claudius pleads, “O limed soul, that,

struggling to be free,/Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!/Bow, stubborn

knees; and, heart with strings of steel,/Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!”

(3.3.71-75). Claudius here, recognizes his faults and pleads to God to be forgiven.

Hamlet then analyzes this situation, “And now I'll do't. And so he goes to

heaven;/And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:/A villain kills my father; and

for that, /I, his sole son, do this same villain send/To heaven.” (3.3.79-83). He
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figures out that if he kills Claudius while he is praying, he will go to Heaven and

Hamlet will not get the revenge that he wants. His struggle of whether or not to kill

Claudius eventually backfires when Claudius influences Laertes to poison Hamlet

with his sword and kill him.

Hamlet’s famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy also illustrates this internal

struggle between reason and acting on emotions. Hamlet thinks that if he commits

suicide then, “we have shuffled off this mortal coil”, meaning that he will detach

himself from his flesh, and let go of all the turmoil of his affairs (3.1.64). When

Hamlet thinks about his emotional pain, this ironically leads to a risk of losing

rationality and ultimately losing control. The emotional pain then turns into a

downward spiral going deeper and deeper as he gets lost in these thoughts, and

then they coerce Hamlet into making irrational decisions.

An example of this is in the scene where Hamlet talks with Gertrude in their

closet. Hamlet exclaims, “How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!” (3.4.29). Hamlet

suspects that King Claudius is under the curtain and acts upon this whim and takes

an irrational stab at it. It turns out that it is Polonius and he is not even fazed by his

action. After Gertrude tells hamlet what a bloody deed he just committed, Hamlet

counters, “A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother,/ As kill a king, and marry

with his brother” (3.4.34-35). Hamlet is so focused on avenging his father that he

will take care of anything that gets in his way. He is stuck in a “prison” of thought

and he has no escape (2.2.249-251). His entrapment within this prison starts a path

to revenge that eventually leads to the downfalls of the rest of the main characters.
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At times during the tragedy, the conflict between reason and emotion can

have a paradoxical relationship. On one hand, his extreme emotion influences

Hamlet to do make the most irrationally violent decisions. On the other hand, he is

so afraid of his emotion that he uses reason as a detour. Hamlet says that “[His]

thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth” (4.4.66). He sees the point of his thoughts

as either to ‘go big or go home.’ Throughout the play, his enragement has caused

him to go mad. Violent and irrational thoughts swirl through his mind while hoping

to avenge his father. This is also present when Hamlet challenges Laertes at

Ophelia’s burial. After Hamlet and Laertes grapple hamlet adds, “Why I will fight

with him upon this theme/Until my eyelids will no longer wag!” (5.1.282-283) Then

he explains that the theme is his love for Ophelia. His madness is caused by his

emotional brokenness with Ophelia, which in turn, he either has to act upon this

emotion or reason with it. Both ‘solutions’ to his problems get him nowhere.

Near the end of the tragedy, Hamlet challenges Laertes to a duel where he

gets stabbed by his poisoned sword. Levy writes in his analysis, "Thus animals

before some pleasant object, cannot help desiring it, since they are not masters of

their inclinations, and so we say with St. John Damascene, that they do not act, but

are being acted upon"(Levy, Gilson, Philosophy 286). Hamlet acts in this way; rather

than controlling his emotions, he lets them control him, and in turn, his actions. A

rational being is one that is defined as to whether he can control his emotions

enough to “yield to the passionate impulses of the sensitive apetite” (Levy). Hamlet

lets his revenge act as a catalyst in the final lines of the play and eventually leads

him to his failure.


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Through the course of the play, Hamlet constantly wavers between thought

and action. He never finds the right balance to make his decisions and ends up

making the wrong ones. This poor decision ultimately leads to his downfall and to

the demise of the rest of the characters.

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