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Indecisiveness In Shakespeare's Hamlet

461 Words2 Pages

Can indecisiveness cause one to make a devastating choice? The play Hamlet takes place in and around the castle in Denmark. Shortly after the King of Denmark is killed, his son comes home to mourn his death. Hamlet, the kings son, is greeted by the ghost of his father who tells him to avenge his death and kill the man who killed him, Claudius. The play is a timeline of events that leads up to the ultimate death of Hamlet and many others. A tragic hero is a character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction. A tragic hero always has a tragic flaw which is the problem that causes a character's downfall or death. Hamlet's tragic flaw is indecisiveness. Hamlet is one of the most typical examples of a tragic …show more content…

One example of how Hamlet shows being indecisive is when he is deciding whether to stay alive or to kill himself. "To be, or not to be, that is the question.Is it nobler in the mind to suffer. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Or to fight against a sea of troubles, And end them by fighting?" Hamlet questions which act is more noble. Is it more noble to suffer from wrong deeds that one has done to another, or, is it more noble to end the suffering by dying? Another way Hamlet shows indecisiveness is when he ponders the question of whether or not to kill Claudius. Hamlet wishes to avenge his father's death but is not sure how to go about the murder or when to do it. Hamlet is stressed over his own father's murder, but he has to plan the right way to murder his Uncle Claudius. At one point, he thought he had finally murdered Claudius but it turned out to be Polonius, the chief counselor to the king . This murder only complicated things for Hamlet and caused him to be more confused about what to do with the situation. Shakespeare decided to depict Hamlet in a way that shows his flaws because it creates drama in the play. Without Hamlet's indecisiveness, the story could have ended very quickly with Hamlet either killing himself, or killing Claudius. Because of this depiction of Hamlet, the readers get to have the feeling of suspense when figuring out which outcome Hamlet is going to

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