Research Analysis Over Hamlet
by This is my final exam for English 1102. It is a seven page research and presentation over Hamlet’s overall demise.
Works Cited
-Davis, Arthur G. Hamlet and the Eternal Problem of Man. NY: St. John’s UP, 1964.
-Lidz, Theodore. Hamlet’s Enemy: Madness and Myth in Hamlet. NY: Basic Books, 1975
-Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet and Revenge. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1967.
-Hughes, Geoffrey. “Conscience in Literature” English Studies; Oct76, Vol. 57 Issue5, p395, 15p. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 23 Apr. 2011
-Brucher, Richard T. “Revenger’s Tragedy” Studies in English Literature (Rice); Spring 81, Vol. 21 Issue 2, p257, 14p. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 23 Apr. 2011
-Fly, Richard. “Accommodating Death in Hamlet” Studies in English Literature (Rice); Spring 84, Vol. 24 Issue2, p257 18p. Academic Search Complete
Web. 23 Apr. 2011
-Kumamoto, Chikako. “Hamlet’s Revenge and the Abject” Journal of the Wooden O. Symposium; 2006 Vol.6 p48-64, 17p. Academic Search Complete
Web. 24 Apr. 2011
Nick Polk
English 1102
Professor Rogers
23 April 2011
Presentation Outline
I. Hamlet’s revenge ultimately leads to his demise.
A. Hamlet is defended in going for revenge by his culture moral ideas. Arthur Davis says in one of his books that “Hamlet is the product of a culture that knew a truth beyond all the confusions and diversities of life. It is certainly logical to look at him in terms of that truth. If it be insisted that we today are too far away from it, then we must be too far away from Hamlet as well, who would survive as a relic of the past and of nothing else” (Davis 3) In other words, Davis believes that Hamlet showed truth in his madness and our generation today would not go to the extent of which Hamlet did to avenge his family.
B. It is great that Hamlet is standing up for the morals of his era, but to what extent does revenge stop and when it does isn’t the damage already dealt?
Hamlet grows with evil throughout the play and some critics have an explanation of why. Geoffrey Hughes believes that the Ghost is just a tool of the Devil and manipulated Hamlet to act the way he does. “Elizabethan ghosts, we are told, could be good or evil / The moral ambivalence of the Ghost’s command is made quite explicit it admits that murder, which is what it seeks, is even in, the best, most foul,” (Hughes 257).
So as this influence of revenge fires up Hamlet, his plan of making the killing of Claudius sort of clean cut, changes. Instead of killing Claudius while he is praying when it would be so easy to do he decides to wait and kill Claudius when he is sinning that way, he would not go to heaven. Hamlet’s mistake of not killing Claudius here results in the killing of two more innocent people including himself, Polonius and Gertrude. Richard Brucher says “The revenge killing requires craft because it must equal the outrage of the original crime and satisfy the revenger’s intense feelings” (Brucher 257). He stabs Polonius behind the drapes and Gertrude mistakenly drinks the poison and Hamlet decides to drink the poison as well to get rid of the misery. So is revenge really worth chasing after? You never know when it’s going to end and when it does tragedy has already struck.
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