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Indecisiveness In Shakespeare's Hamlet

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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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He has a choice to make, so he has to decide if living is worth living and if it is how he will deal with the situation that he has. Hamlet was conflicted he didn 't understand the value of his life in that exact moment. In Hamlets soliloquy the was thinking about the pro and cons of wether to end his life or deal with the problem that his dead father brought to him. He was starting to come to a decision when he’s thoughts were interrupted. This soliloquy brought to light the peoples that most people go through or think about.

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Throughout the play, Hamlet is forced to make difficult decisions; as he is conflicted with almost every decision he makes, his uncertainty and unsophisticated thoughts will eventually lead to his downfall. Man vs. Self is a common theme in Shakespeare’s work, and Hamlet is no exception. The most distinct example of this sophisticated concept is Hamlet himself. When analyzed thoroughly, Hamlet is his greatest obstacle and enemy. The earliest of his internal conflicts is when his mother married his uncle, Claudius, in such a short window of time after his father’s death.

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The main character of William Shakespeare’s tragedy is actually a confused person that’s stuck between two choices. Some may argue that he feels guilty for his father’s death and so it’s his duty to avenge it. While others may disagree and conclude that he is just a maniac who is both violent and dangerous. Hamlet passes through the lane of hesitancy, where he hesitates to kill King Claudius. As a matter of fact, the main conflict of Hamlet is that he feels both the need to solve the crime and punish the responsible.

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Like many things, Hamlet is intelligent and honorable, but his indecisiveness is the cause of his tragic downfall. In the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare portrays that Hamlet is very incapable of finishing the task at hand. Throughout the drama Hamlet faces many trials and tribulations due to his late father Hamlet, who was murderously killed by Claudius. His inability to kill Claudius and himself is one grand flaw of an epic hero. After King Hamlets passing, Hamlet entered an unknown state of mind that not only feared others for his wellbeing, but also feared himself.

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The drive to discover who one truly is and to understand the meaning of life has driven human actions and inspired stories for thousands of years. From the tragedies of Greece to modern literary works, characters combat the same challenges that many readers face in everyday life. Hamlet, Gregor, Arthur, White Fang, and Antigone all struggle to find who they are and their purpose in life throughout their adventures. Some, like Gregor in Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, are never able to truly discover who they are, while others, like Antigone in the play “Antigone” by Sophocles, know what they value most. Possessing a knowledge of the aspects of life that one values and staying true to those values leads to the understanding of what it truly means to be alive.

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Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, centers around Hamlet’s contemplation of killing his uncle in order to avenge his father’s death. His decisions and values determine his fate. However, Hamlet’s intended action to avenge his father’s death is continuously postponed due to his moral dilemma. However, this moral dilemma causes him to make the decisions he does, and therefore, demonstrates the theme of his uncertainty versus his faith. Not only does faith stop him from taking alternative routes to achieve his goal, but his uncertainty causes him to either delay his revenge or make the wrong decisions.

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Hamlet's overthinking and inaction led to several unnecessary murders. Hamlet knew that Claudius is guilty, yet he still wants to make sure, therefore Hamlet made a play that played out the exact way that Claudius had killed King Hamlet. Hamlet had done this in order to watch how Claudius reacts to make sure that Claudius is the one who murdered his father, “I’ll observe his looks, if he do blench, I know my course” (Ham.2.2.583-585) “Now might I do it pat, now’a is a-praying. And now I’ll do’t” ( Ham.

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He is firm in his actions and knows that though he could go to hell for murdering Hamlet, it’s still what he wants to do. He more or less “sees red” in the face of anger and is driven to act no matter what the consequences may be. His agreeance to partake in the fencing fight with Hamlet proves this. He is so sure in his decision that before the battle, he dips his sword in poison to ensure that if Hamlet does not drink the poison he will still be killed indefinitely. At the end of the play, his indecisiveness leads to his own death as well, but he also gets what he wants because Hamlet is still murdered.

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Firstly, Hamlet is a play of a man by the name of Hamlet, whose father was murdered by Claudius, his uncle. Claudius murdered the king by pouring poison in his ear to claim the throne for himself. Hamlet is then told by a ghost to murder Claudius for revenge, and he struggles within himself for the length of play whether to do it or not. When Hamlet begins to hesitate it does more damage than good and causes a chain reaction of tragic events, and makes the readers question whether Hamlet is truly sane or not. Claudius’s corruptness begins to show when he uses his authority to order those around him to rid of Hamlet.

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IOC Commentaries -Hamlet- The extract given befits in Act III, scene 1 of the tragedy “Hamlet” written by William Shakespeare. This extract shows an important moment in the play, when Hamlet, the protagonist, contemplates whether or not to kill himself because his mother married his uncle, after his father’s death. Throughout the soliloquy he is depicted as a complex character who seeks the profound meaning of life, yet he is followed by an inexplicable feeling of not being able to proceed with putting an end to it. Shakespeare uses a great deal of stylistic and literary devices to underscore the main themes of this extract: life versus death and action versus inaction, which, I will be discussing in the following analysis.

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Throughout Hamlet, Prince Hamlet is faced against many situations that question his mental stability and ability to make decisions. His indecisiveness comes from the way he reacts to the situations he is put in and the way his mind presents these situations to him. The most important indecisive moments are Hamlet’s suicidal thoughts, his father’s ghost, and his vengeance to Claudius. When Hamlet is told by a ghost that has a resemblance of his father that Claudius had killed him, he vows to take vengeance and revenge his father’s death.

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Due to Hamlet dismissing all of his moral behavior and not caring about what is right or wrong changes the whole direction of Hamlet’s character. This leads to the entire demise of the royal family who is left slain on the floor dead by the end of the play. Although Hamlet’s behavior ends up killing multiple people who were not even meant to die, discourages readers from identifying him as purely evil or purely good--which is the true definition of an ambiguous character. Hamlet was not trying to be purely evil, he was only trying to seek revenge for his beloved father. Furthermore, Hamlet ends up dying in the end of the play after fighting and killing Laetres and Claudius, who had created a plan to slay Hamlet.

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Though Hamlet is aware of what things may come under the rule of his uncle, he is slow to action, which some might contribute to his"extreme sensitive nature" (Knight 3); however, deep down Hamlet harbors a need to be completely sure of the facts surrounding his father's death before he can convince himself to take action. Hamlet's own insecurities about whether or not he should take action severely halts his efforts at canceling fate, and it may be argued that his insecurities even made it stronger. On the other hand, it can be argued that Hamlet is simply enacting his free will in the way that he chooses to wait and be sure, rather than to take action against Claudius right away as his father's ghost wants him to. This brings about an internal conflict for Hamlet because outwardly, one is able to see that he is nervous of Denmark's fate, comparing it to "an unweeded garden that grows to seed" (Shakespeare 1.2.135-136) under Claudius' reign. Perhaps if Hamlet did not wait so long to take action, he might have been able to save many lives and rule the kingdom himself, thus changing the country's fate.

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Deliberation Brief – Julie Le Hamlet coming back home after long days ahead in school without any updates from his family and walking through the doors of his home full of excitement to meet his family but to find out that his father had passed away and his mother, Gertrude is now married to his father’s brother, King Claudius. I believe he was quite insane for a little bit due to the unexpected tragedy of his father and overwhelming thoughts rushing through his brain by his mother’s actions. The chose he has to decide for a split second is either to let the insanity take over his mind and be taken advantage of with more dangerous thoughts coming from his now so call enemies such as King Claudius and anybody in that house or, to actually act

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Due to himself being too idealistic and restrained, he does not take decisive actions even after using the planned play to test the Claudius's conscience that could possibly expose himself and left himself in unfavorable circumstances. Hamlet’s inability to act is caused by his overanalysis of the situations that further render him from not carrying out actions in response. If Hamlet is not indecisive, he would not be uncertain about the evidence regarding to his uncle’s crime, he would not be delaying his revenge, he would not be having emotional breakdowns and become a tragic figure. Hamlet’s personality ‘borns’ and develops under his royal position and the growing

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