Hamlet Literary Devices Essay

Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy Hamlet uses three literary devices the effectively, and not so effectively, strengthen the main ideas of death, the genre of a revenge tragedy, revenge, and the rebalance in a corrupt society. The first of these literary devices is the imagery of death, which is primarily portrayed by Hamlet. Hamlet brings around the image of death throughout the play, with his father, uncle, mother, and close friends, who along with himself, all end up dead. The genre of the play is a revenge tragedy, which follows the elements of a generic revenge tragedy, and is run by Hamlet’s incapableness of completing his task of avenging his father. The ending of the play is an important literary device, as it shows Hamlet’s ineffectiveness

The idea of revenge is very prominent throughout the whole play, but the actual partaking of revenge does not happen until the very last scene of Hamlet. Hamlet’s revenge, to kill his Uncle who had murdered Hamlet’s father, though it is achieved, was achieved at a very high cost, it cost him his own life, as well as the lives of the people close to him. Hamlet, knowing he is about to die, tells Horatio how his reputation is now damaged forever, and how no one will ever know the truth of why he had killed those people, “O God, Horatio, what a wounded name/Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!” (Shakespeare, 5.2.324-325). Hamlet leaves his reputation broken, along with his family and friends dead, all apart from Horatio, whom he leaves to tell the story of what has happened to the kingdom. This is where the idea of the rebalance of a corrupt society comes in. Horatio, back in the very first scene of Act One, talked about how Fortinbras would, “recover of us by strong hand/And terms compulsatory those foresaid lands” (Shakespeare, 1.1.102-103). Fortinbras planed on conquering Denmark because Old King Hamlet had slain his father. Even though the majority of the court did not want Fortinbras to conquer Denmark, Hamlet seemed to respect Fortinbras as a ruler, as Hamlet’s final words before he died were, “but I do prophesy th’election lights/On Fortinbras; he has my dying voice” (Shakespeare, 5.2.335-336). Hamlet tells Horatio that Fortinbras will be the next king of Denmark. This is seen as a positive situation, as it gives Denmark a fresh start. Fortinbras will be valuable for Denmark, as Seth Tomko