Madness Vs Madness In Hamlet

Madness resides within each and every individual, it rests within the deepest part of humanity, waiting to be unleashed by traumatic events. Madness causes a person to tarnish their original morality and embody the essence of the irreconcilable product of their sanity: otherwise known as insanity. As a result, those afflicted will begin to indulge in many acts that their former selves would consider to be taboo. In the Shakespearean tragedy, the title character Hamlet is seeking to avenge his father Old hamlet by taking King Claudius 's life. Unfortunately, as Hamlet embarks on his conquest for revenge, he encounters a vast spectrum of hardships ranging from betrayal to solitude. The human mind is a fragile system, thus, by being trapped in

Subsequently, he equips an artificial mask of madness at the beginning of the play in order to fulfill his father 's wishes. However, as the plot continues Hamlet is overcome by the grief sparked by the heinous events that allow Claudius hold the throne, the bloodthirsty task that faces him, and the reemergence of his Oedipal desires. Thus, Hamlet succumbs to a mental state of decay spearheaded by his artificial madness as he embodies the essence of insanity.

Don Nardo delves into two critical layers of “truths” with regards to the title character Hamlet: the corrupted world, and solitude. These layers symbolize the walls that must be breached in order to invoke madness. Nardo claims that Hamlet crosses the threshold of sanity and embarks into insanity as he deconstructs these “walls” of morality. For instance, when analyzing Hamlet’s corruption Nardo states that, “In the play, Shakespeare paints a vivid picture of a royal

In order to evaluate Hamlet’s madness, Rahman’s Psychoanalytic criticism of Hamlet analyzes the mental state of boys that undergo the Oedipal phase. Rahman illustrates a solid claim as he argues that all boys “go through a phase in their childhood when they desire to kill their fathers and marry their mothers” (Rahman 81). Rahman believes that there is a direct correlation between how the Oedipal phase is settled at youth and the mental health of the boy in the future. In most cases, that desire is safely suppressed and the boy will see their father as a role model as opposed to a rival. However, repressed desires do not simply dissipate, they fall deep down into the subconscious layer of the mind strongly chained to the core of his unknown cravings. Although, it is possible for these Oedipal desires to resurface with a sufficient “shock” or “trigger”. For instance, in Hamlet’s case, the shock that is responsible for resurfacing his Oedipal desires is seeing the ghost of his father for the first time when he “hears from the ghost the news that his father has been murdered. This realization of his earliest childhood wish (to kill his father), had been repressed so thoroughly, suddenly revives in him Oedipal ‘thoughts’ of incest and patricide” (Rahman 82). Rahman’s claim is clearly prominent in the play and it is imperative that readers consider the Oedipal phase in order to justify Hamlet 's sanity. The Oedipal desire creates a severe complex within his mind as the