Saturday, December 5, 2015
Hamlets Delay vs. overphilosophising
Throughout Candide, the characters in the story analyze how the events coincide with their personal philosophies rather than dealing with the situation and focusing on what to do next. Pangloss is constantly blowing things off as the best thing that could have happened as if it doesn't really affect him, instead of taking action to improve the circumstances - this reminded me a lot of Hamlet and the issue of Hamlet's delay- Hamlet would overthink all of his decisions until he talked himself out of them. The only real difference is that hamlet overthinks while Pangloss overphilosophises. I'm sure that both stories would have wrapped up a lot more quickly if those things were taken out of the stories. I think it's interesting that both stories deal with the human condition and how we deal with situations based on action versus thought and what is the perfect balance between the two?
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I never thought of it that way, Cheyenne. The comparison between Hamlet and Candide is actually very apparent now that you bring it up though. Hamlet is constantly making excuses as to why he shouldn't kill Claudius. That in a way is the whole point of the story and yet he delays doing it for pretty much the entire story. I feel as though Candide eventually realizes the ways of the world and that the philosophy is just an excuse. Once he realizes that the idea of "the best of all possible worlds" is not realistic, I believe that he starts to work toward a better life moving away from philosophy. He has an epiphany of sorts and eventually ends the book with the notion that they need to be active about their problems instead of philosophizing about them. Although Candide has his realization much earlier, I think you could argue that Hamlet has this epiphany that he needs to stop making excuses towards the end as well.
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