Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Hamlet's First Soliloquy

In response to the reading, I get the feeling that Hamlet is struggling with a severe form of depression. He is wishing that he were dead and that his physical self could just melt if only suicide was not forbidden by God. Hamlet is in despair and has lost faith in all those who is related to and all he wants is to die. I think that Hamlet is going to loose faith in women after seeing that his mother married his uncle so soon after his father's death. I think that how he is feeling is very believable because, though I have never experienced a loss like my parents, I know people who have. And the amount of suffering they dealt with is so hard to imagine anyone going through. You hear stories about people committing suicide and nobody ever really knows how that person felt while they were considering it, but Hamlet is giving one of the closest interpretations I've seen about getting into the mind of one who is suffering. This is the first real look into Hamlets character and I am very interested to see where is goes from here.

1 comment:

  1. "I think that Hamlet is going to lose faith in women after seeing that his mother married his uncle so soon after his father's death." Interesting that you see this- it will play out in this story in various ways, and it speaks to the (often incorrect) generalities we make in our judgments in life, doesn't it? Your comments on Shakespeare's presentation of depression and the inner workings of the mind of one close to "self-slaughter" would make the author happy- that light into the mind of Hamlet is what he was shooting for, I believe.

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