Thursday, November 17, 2011

Why I am basically Hamlet...

When reading the Introduction of our addition of Hamlet, one thing really struck a chord: Hamlet's tragic flaw. I think Hamlet and I may share the same one. The introduction states that it is commonly believed that Hamlet's downfall is procrastination. I can certainly relate to this. Hamlet reasons through every situation instead of acting purely on instinct. I do the same thing. I tend over-think and over-plan. Sometimes, things would be so much easier if I would just do what I ought to do in the moment instead of putting it off indefinitely. I'm sure Hamlet would agree.

5 comments:

Mallory said...

Today in class, we definitely saw an example of Hamlet's tragic flaw. Hamlet had the perfect opportunity to kill Claudius but didn't seize the moment. We discussed in class that in order to have complete revenge, Claudius must know who is killing him and why. If Hamlet had killed him while he was praying, he would have gone straight to heaven and not have suffered. But could Hamlet have just been to scared to kill Claudius so he uses that as an excuse?

ParkerC said...

I think Shakespeare try's to make his characters as real as possible, which is shown when Hamlet tells the players how to perform. I don't think Shakespeare characters are ever unrealistic.

alyb said...

I think Mallory brings up a really good point, maybe Hamlet was just scared. However i'm beginning to think that this was not the case because Hamlet easily killed Polonius(thinking he was the king) he did not seem to delay at all in this instance.

Ravin S said...

Yes I think after the first time that Hamlet could've killed Cladious changed his attitude. I haven't finished the play yet but after reading Hamlet's speech after seeing Fortinbras, I think the play is going to be very bloody now. A bunch of people will probably be killed and everything is going to go downhill from here.

sara pendleton said...

I think yall make a good point, maybe Hamlet was scared. The only problem I have with the idea that Hamlet was scared was how easily he got over killing Polonius; maybe it's like the handful of action movies I've seen always say, apparently it's hard to kill somebody if you've never killed anybody before (don't know if it's true but that's what the people who wrote those borne movies seemed to think.)
If Hamlet was scared, I think that killing Polonius would make him no-so-scared anymore and if the only think holding him back was fear, I think he would have dragged Polonius out and ran back to his uncle and ended the play early. I think his inablity to act is more than procratination, he's also kind of selfish. He might be a prince but not everything revovles around him. I think his inablity to act and self-centeredness kind of feed into one another makind Hamlet's procratination have some pretty serious consequences.