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Is Blaming His Conscience In Hamlet

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“A man who desires revenge should dig two graves.” (Confucius) In the world renowned play, “Hamlet” by William Shakespeare, the main character, Hamlet, has to deal with the effects after his uncle,Claudius, kills his father and marries his mother Gertrude in order to ascend to the throne and become the King of Denmark. As the play goes on, Shakespeare’s main claim of revenge being detrimental to someone’s health can be interpreted through certain events that happen during the play such as, blaming his conscience on his inability to act against the people who wrong him, making a unreasonable decision, and deciding only to act on violent thoughts. Ultimately this reveals that the author's main claim is that revenge tends to lead harm to a person’s …show more content…

One particular action that Hamlet does that proves the main claim can be seen when Hamlet is blaming his conscience for his inability to take action against his uncle for killing his father. This also shows that Hamlet doesn’t value his ability to know what is wrong and what is right as much as he is suppose to. This is evidently shown in one of Hamlet’s soliloquies, when he states, “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution. Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought”. In short this conveys the idea that in order to be able to take revenge one has to abandon their morals and that the ability to just act is impulsively is prevented by our thought process.This implies that Shakespeare might be suggesting that revenge is causes harm to one’s mental state because Hamlet has to question morality in order take revenge against the people who wronged him. Although many people might believe the claim that Shakespeare is making is that revenge can hurt a person’s loved ones. However the truth is that Shakespeare might be making is that having the desire to get revenge is detrimental to one's

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