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Examples Of Selflessness In Hamlet

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Throughout the play of Hamlet there are many examples of character’s selfless and selfish love actions, but overall selfish desires of all the characters override their selflessness and this causes many of their deaths. Hamlet makes many decisions during the play out of selfish intentions, such as killing Polonius, acting out of violence, and his rude treatment of people because he can’t get over his mourning for his father’s death. However, Hamlet ends the play by the selfless actions of restoring his father’s name and, “Hamlet manifests this love of honor, order, and country by convincing his last friend in the world, Horatio, to speak to Fortinbras of what has transpired. He restores honor to his father's name and to Elsinore by passing …show more content…

It seems as if the speaker is fearful of not getting this chance at love which is why he emphasizes their limited time. In “To His Coy Mistress”, the speaker puts an emphasis on time because he is fearful of missing out on this love and his actions are driven by this fear. An example of this is when he addresses that if she doesn’t love him then the love will go to waste and, “worms shall try that long preserved virginity, and quaint honour turn to dust, and into ashes all my lust” (Marvell 27-30). This illustrates how the speaker is looking for something temporary to fulfill his emptiness because he is essentially trying to pressure the mistress into having intercourse with him. Furthermore the speaker expresses more of his immediate sexual desires by saying, “now let us sport us while we may/ and now, like amorous birds of prey/ rather at once our time devour” (Marvell 37-39). The absence or dissatisfaction of the long-standing love in the speaker’s life motivates these actions made purely out of sexual passion and urgency. Not only does the lack of love in the speaker’s life cause him to seek temporary satisfaction, but the absence of a fatherly love in Hamlet’s life leads to his

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Hamlet, also, could not get over the death of his father. He found out when his father’s ghost came back that his brother, and Hamlet’s uncle, murdered him. He then was willing to do anything possible to get revenge on Claudius, his uncle. Both of

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739 Words | 3 Pages

Words such as “fardels,” “ills,” and “calamity,” depict the pain Hamlet feels in living. The formalness of the diction reveals intelligence, the rhetorical questions help ponder philosophy, and metaphors prove literary knowledge. Hamlet appears to be inside his mind, discussing his options which is not the smartest idea, because he begins contemplating suicide, furthering the instability ideal. The assonance from “sleep” and “dreams, provides contrast for, “Ay, there’s the rub” (10). The words above pause the reader’s train of thought causing a deeper focus.

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873 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout the play, Hamlet is forced to make difficult decisions; as he is conflicted with almost every decision he makes, his uncertainty and unsophisticated thoughts will eventually lead to his downfall. Man vs. Self is a common theme in Shakespeare’s work, and Hamlet is no exception. The most distinct example of this sophisticated concept is Hamlet himself. When analyzed thoroughly, Hamlet is his greatest obstacle and enemy. The earliest of his internal conflicts is when his mother married his uncle, Claudius, in such a short window of time after his father’s death.

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628 Words | 3 Pages

Like many things, Hamlet is intelligent and honorable, but his indecisiveness is the cause of his tragic downfall. In the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare portrays that Hamlet is very incapable of finishing the task at hand. Throughout the drama Hamlet faces many trials and tribulations due to his late father Hamlet, who was murderously killed by Claudius. His inability to kill Claudius and himself is one grand flaw of an epic hero. After King Hamlets passing, Hamlet entered an unknown state of mind that not only feared others for his wellbeing, but also feared himself.

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1358 Words | 6 Pages

Although he wants to avenge his father’s death, he also does not see the act of killing as moral. As a result, his revenge no longer becomes a desire, but rather a burden that continues to stay with him until he is relieved of it at death. To relieve himself of his frustration. However, Hamlet is reminded several times to carry out his duty. For example, after seeing Prince Fortinbras’ army conquer land in Poland, he expresses, “When honour 's at the stake.

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1327 Words | 6 Pages

When betrayed, one usually has negative emotions towards the people who have betrayed them. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare this idea is well illustrated, it is shown that betrayal affects the actions of Hamlet towards his friends and family, which indicates that the pursuit of vengeance often can cause one to forget the value of life. The betrayals that Hamlet suffered at the hands of his close friends and family, revealed important parts of Hamlet’s character, such as his intelligence, he is a very meticulous thinker that looks at situations from all angles, he is cunning, he has the ability to manipulate everyone into believing that he is insane, and he is skeptical, he does not believe any information until he finds it out for

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1228 Words | 5 Pages

This cause all the other characters to be affected and created a chain effect of vengeances. For the play of Hamlet to be based around love is almost flawed by the most extensive reason: In this time period when Hamlet was performed/written it was very rare for males to show emotions so why would Shakespeare play be based off an emotion that played against society roles in that era. The fact that the major characters that establish and generate the play are males, makes it conspicuous that love had not affected them. This therfir shows that Hamlet is a play of revenge due to the characters actions and

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799 Words | 4 Pages

Hamlet had no other thoughts in this matter, he chose to act as a crazy mad person and lose his honor and certainty from those who were around him to gain his dad’s name back and so the Old Hamlet kind would rest in peace. Hamlet know he will go through not an easy bath, which by that lead him to hastition in his decision, he still toke on the role of a mad person but not sure what to do, even though he know who did it, Hamlet was not certain that losing his honor which lead to losing the trust of many who were around, including his lover Ophelia. Hamlet goes back and forth, how about my honor, and my mom’s honor that has been lost from the time she thought of marrying, her husband’s brother. The action which have token at this point was i am going to bring her honor so that I could be able to start the revange. The struggle that hamlet went through is all because he knew and understand the meaning of an honorable king and hero been betrayed and killed by the person who spend the life with.

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887 Words | 4 Pages

This amorality stems from his desire to avenge the “rank and gross[ly]” (Shakespeare, 29) cruel actions of his uncle, the King Claudius. In the end however, both Hamlet and Claudius die with little pomp, victims of each other in a cyclical stream of karma. Shakespeare uses this eventuality to denounce the use of cruelty as a means to an end, for it brings nought but meaningless death. The fact that Hamlet becomes so cruel specifically because of Claudius’ treachery is a testament to the relationship between oppressor and oppressed. As Hamlet becomes that which he once hated, Shakespeare emphasizes the fact that the line between victim and oppressor is often more blurred than defined.

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272 Words | 2 Pages

In the final scene of Hamlet, Hamlet says “Being thus be-netted round with villainies, -- Ere I could make a prologue to my brains, they had begun the play” (Shakespeare 131). Hamlet ironically thinks to himself as a character in a play because he is so melodramatically self-conscious. By adding this sense of paradoxical exposure, Shakespeare shows his effort to foreground the fact that the audience is watching a play within the play. Since Hamlet is such a rich character, Shakespeare’s work shows how he has something within him goes beyond what a play is capable of representing.

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1854 Words | 8 Pages

This aids the reader in analyzing the motives for each of the intricate characters and how every action has a motive that can tie back to Hamlet’s grand scheme which is to get revenge for the kingdom overtaken by an authority figure who did not earn that title, honor his father’s legacy that is taken from him in the crossfire of jealousy, and for the good of Denmark. Between the murder of King Hamlet and Polonius, Ophelia’s death, and the disloyalty of many characters, we enable ourselves to see the mood of confusion

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1844 Words | 8 Pages

Hamlet is William Shakespeare 's renowned tale of mystery, intrigue, and murder, centered on a young misguided prince who can only trust himself. Some may say that the actions of Prince Hamlet throughout the play are weak and fearful, displaying a tendency to procrastinate and showing an apathetic nature towards his family and peers. Others spin a tale of a noble young scholar, driven mad by the cold-blooded murder of his father by his uncle. In truth, I believe Hamlet is neither of these things. Hamlet is a sort of amalgamation of the two, a bundle of contradictions thrown together into one conflicting but very human mess of a character.

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932 Words | 4 Pages

Due to Hamlet dismissing all of his moral behavior and not caring about what is right or wrong changes the whole direction of Hamlet’s character. This leads to the entire demise of the royal family who is left slain on the floor dead by the end of the play. Although Hamlet’s behavior ends up killing multiple people who were not even meant to die, discourages readers from identifying him as purely evil or purely good--which is the true definition of an ambiguous character. Hamlet was not trying to be purely evil, he was only trying to seek revenge for his beloved father. Furthermore, Hamlet ends up dying in the end of the play after fighting and killing Laetres and Claudius, who had created a plan to slay Hamlet.

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1673 Words | 7 Pages

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” (I.v.90). Hamlet is about a young prince who is mourning the loss of his father. He then tries to seek revenge on his uncle Claudius because he poisoned his father. Throughout the play Hamlet’s behavior starts to change which causes him to become mad. The theory about all this is a Psychological Approach.

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880 Words | 4 Pages

Through the entirety of the play “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare, the characters were overcome with the need for revenge as the outcome of many deaths. Therefore, no one was happy through “Hamlet” and it resulted in a tragedy. The character Hamlet played a big role in turning towards revenge and never would classify himself as being happy. Hamlet displays positive and negative behavior throughout the play. Hamlet exhibits strengths and weaknesses as well, although his weaknesses of over-thinking, bitterness, and his inability to accept the death of his father overshadow his strengths.

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