Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Preston Bateman
ENGL 1302 – PW
Prof. Wheeler
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
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,
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
for that, /I, his sole son, do this same villain send/To heaven.” (3.3.79-83). He
Bateman 2
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
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
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.
Bateman 3
At times during the tragedy, the conflict between reason and emotion can
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
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