Examples Of Greed In Hamlet

One thing that exists omnipresently in all of history and will almost certainly remain forever is greed. A theme that manifests in Hamlet through various people related to the royal family, albeit in different ways, is greed. Greed presents itself as something that exists all throughout the upper echelons of Victorian society. By the end of the play, greed ended up causing the end of an entire royal lineage and that of a separate noble family. Among the characters in Hamlet, there are none more surrounded by corrupt people than Hamlet.

One example is Claudius. This is the most obvious example as his treachery is the main factor that drives the plot forward and he is the main antagonist of the story. Claudius is a man who, though enormously

Though she does not commit such violent acts as Claudius, she nonetheless showed herself to be completely careless regarding the recent death of her husband. This is shown with how she had seemingly completely moves on and married king Hamlet’s brother under two months after her husbands death, even telling her grieving son that he needs to get over it and start looking happier. After being confronted with the actual cause of her first husband’s death, she doesn’t seek justice for the murderer at all, rather she hurries off immediately to the man who killed her husband to snitch on her own son’s actions. In the whole play, she does not show a single bit of remorse for the king’s death. What she decides to do was avoid anything that would put her own comfort in jeopardy because, after all, that is really all she cares about. In a way, she is a lot like Daisy from The Great Gatsby. That is because just as Daisy may have liked Gatsby more, she was not willing to accept anything below the high class of lifestyle that Tom could provide her, and didn’t seem to particularly care when Gatsby died for her, deciding to rather go away on a trip and not even attend his funeral.This is not completely dissimilar to how Gertrude is completely willing to get over the death of her husband instantly and then replace him with his own brother, who she later finds out killed the king. What Gertrude shows is that, like Daisy, all she really values is the comfort and stability offered to her by her high class life of