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How Is Hamlet Selfish

995 Words4 Pages

When you are guilty of a crime, it makes you act in odd ways and say things you wouldn't normally say. In the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare Claudius has stolen King Hamlet's throne and married his sister in law. King Hamlet's son Hamlet, is determined to get revenge on Claudius. Claudius has always been rude to Hamlet and would tell him he is not being manly by grieving over his father's death for so long. To take down Hamlet, Claudius had various people looking over him to find out what he was thinking or planning. Ophelia was Hamlet's girlfriend who he loved very much, but she was ordered to ignore Hamlet. Hamlet was very upset and when he met with Ophelia he was very rude. Claudius spied on this conversation and decided that Hamlet must have been mad about something else. Claudius’ …show more content…

Claudius does not see a problem with what is going on in Hamlet's life and constantly tells him, “Your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his and the survivor bound” (Shakespeare 10). Claudius is unable to relate to Hamlet and understand why he is so upset. This is a major sign that Claudius is the bad guy who does not care about how Hamlet is taking all these recent changes. This is a sign that Claudius is changing how he feels about Hamlet. Claudius is becoming scared that his place in the throne will be taken away by loss of innocence. Claudius seems to only care about himself and his place as a king, he is shown to be selfish when he tells Hamlet to get over his father's death. Claudius starts to have a stricter mood towards Hamlet and how he controls things around the castle. Both Claudius and Hamlet show that they hate each other, but that is not shown publicly until Claudius hired spies to watch Hamlet and report back on what he is doing. When the spies don't report back to Claudius on what Hamlet has been doing, Claudius takes it into his own

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