Huy Nguyen. A great man once said “Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing”- Abraham Lincoln. Although William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet and the novel 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup seem like a very dissimilar texts, both texts develop the theme of appearance vs. reality, particularly through suspense in which order to convey the message to the reader that people are not who they seem to be. In the play Hamlet , Claudius seem like a gentle, loving person on the outside who seems to know nothing and innocent but it is what he seem like that make him dangerous. He uses his gentle, calming behavior to betray his own brother and cold blooded poison his to death.