Hamlet As A Tragic Hero In Shakespeare's Hamlet

In the play Hamlet, Shakespeare presents Prince Hamlet as a tragic hero. The play Hamlet is about a prince whose father has been murdered by his own brother, Claudius in order to be the king. In Addition to that, Claudius marries his brother's wife. Later Hamlet sees the ghost of his father and tells him to get revenge for him by killing Claudius and as he tries to get his revenge it causes the death of the whole family. Hamlet can be interpreted as a tragic hero since he has a noble mind, fatal flaw and he is mentally wounded resulting in his own death.

Hamlet being a Noble person is one of the factors that contributed to him being a tragic hero as the audience feels pity for Hamlet due to his noble mind. Firstly, Hamlet is very philosophical

Firstly, due to all the machiavellianism he does not know whom to trust. For example, Claudius acts like a loving stepfather even though he does not like Hamlet he and wants to get rid of him. As Claudius is sending Hamlet off to England to get him killed he says “Thy loving father, Hamlet.”(4.3.l 54) He says this in order to manipulate Hamlet so that he would go and thus Claudius’ plans of killing him would be fulfilled. Furthermore Claudius is selfish and he uses people. As Polonius is killed first thing Claudius thinks about is “It had been so with us, had we been there.” (4.1.l.12) and Hamlet is “full of threats to all”(4.1.l.13). Similarly Claudius manipulates and turns Laertes against Hamlet so that he does the dirty deed of killing Hamlet. This again shows that he could easily manipulate people and he is unapologetically selfish. Secondly Hamlet is betrayed by the people whom he considered loyal. For example Ophelia, whom he loves is not loyal to him. She tells him things that she does not mean like “That I have longed long to redeliver. I pray now receive them.”(3.1.l.96-97) as she is forced by her father to stop seeing him. Furthermore, Hamlet knows about this and he feels betrayed by Ophelia as she is lying to him and she chose her father over Hamlet. Moreover she spies on Hamlet for the King and her dad, which again is a form of betrayal to Hamlet. In addition she knew it will hurt Hamlet but she does anyways, which makes it even worse. Lastly, Hamlet is mentally wounded as his mother marries his uncle, “Within a month, Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears”(1,2,l154-155). Therefore he thinks that his mother is fake and he lacks trust in her now, which leads him into isolation. Furthermore this could be interpreted as a reason for his madness. Likewise this is also one factor that causes Hamlet's inability to trust people.