Hamlet's Murder Of Polonius

Hamlet’s murder of Polonius was a direct result of Hamlet’s narcissistic, un-empathetic actions. According to PsychologyToday, Narcissistic personality disorder is “a mental disorder where people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of ultra confidence lays a conflicted individual, vulnerable to the slightest criticism” (PsychologyToday). Hamlet does not care to verify whether the person he was stabbing is Claudius or not and does not care that he just killed the father of Ophelia, someone he claims to love. Hamlet appears to feel justified in his killing of Polonius referring to it as a mistake because he thought Polonius was Claudius, “I took thee for thy better.” (3.4 38-39) Since

The murder of her father, leads to the only parental figure in her life being absent. The absence of her father leaves Ophelia lonely and emotionally dependant on Hamlet. Hamlet’s spontaneous rejection intensifies her loneliness, which eventually leads to her madness and suicide. In addition, Ophelia’s character is super clingy to Hamlet; she was emotionally dependant on his love. So when Hamlets bipolarity manifested into his spontaneous rejection of her by shouting “I did love you once. You should not have believ’d me, for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stick but we shall relish it. I lov’d you not” (3.1.114) Ophelia went crazy and then commits suicide. Ironically, Laertes had previously warned Ophelia that Hamlets love was like perfume, strong but then slowly fades away but she protested and refused to listen. However exactly what Laertes warned Ophelia of came to be. Hamlet disregarded Ophelia’s feelings, by telling her that he loved her only to change his mind later on. Therefore, Hamlet’s bipolarity was a factor in the death of Ophelia, proving that his madness caused a major event in the

Gertrude has endured a lot during Hamlet’s descent into madness. Gertrude acknowledges in Act 2, scene 2 that she thinks her marriage may be the cause of Hamlet’s lunacy. Gertrude states that “doubt it is no other but the main, His father’s death, and our o’erhasty marriage.” (2.2.154), which is the cause of Hamlet’s madness. When Claudius verifies and asks her, “Do you think ’tis this?” she replies, “It may be, very like.”(2.2.160) Mental illness is something that could be triggered, but is ultimately a chemical imbalance in the brain; so to blames one self for Hamlet’s madness, would result in Gertrude’s depression. The Queen evidently would like to think that she is partly responsible for her son’s apparent madness, which eventually led to her suicide at the end of the play. Gertrude kills herself by drinking a poisoned wine in the final act, after Hamlet dies. As she goes to drink; Claudius tells her not to, and she says: “I will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me” (5.2.318). One can argue whether she is asking to be pardoned because she is attempting to take control of her own destiny, which for an Elizabethan woman is a rarity. If Gertrude drinks the wine on purpose, then she is the self-sacrificing mother Hamlet has always wanted her to be. Therefore, Hamlet’s madness and death resulted in Gertrude’s