Search For Stability: A Comparison Of Hamlet And Ordinary People

A Search for Stability Does the era in which a play or book was written really matter? Nowadays, many students and even adults, argue that there is no benefit behind studying publications dating back to the mid-1500s, because life during the time they were written, is nothing as they know it. However, if life was so different at the time the pieces were written, then what make pieces such as Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet so popular? The reason why certain literary works continue to be popular and so frequently studied, hundreds of years after they were written, is due to the presence of timeless themes that carry over centuries. Two excellent examples of literary pieces that share many themes in common, as well as a time difference of almost

Mental health is presented in a similar manner in Hamlet and Ordinary People, because both Hamlet and Conrad, are devastated, and thrown into a spiral of depression, by the loss of a family member, and the deterioration of their families. Hamlet falls into his hole of depression when his father is murdered and he finds out that his mother is guilty of incest with his own uncle. When Hamlet says, “A little month, or ere those shoes were old / With which she followed my poor father’s body, / Like Niobe, all tears-why she, even she…married my uncle, / My father’s brother,” (Shakespeare, I, II, 147-153), we see that he is extremely disappointed in his mother for not only remarrying so quickly, but, marrying her own brother-in-law, and he is upset at the loss of his father. In Ordinary People, Conrad sinks into depression after his older brother, Buck, drowns in a lake accident, and he falls deeper into depression when he realizes that his parents’ marriage is deteriorating slowly. For instance, Conrad expresses how he feels without his brother when he says, “It is like the hole in your mouth where a tooth was and you cannot keep your tongue from playing with it” (Guest 24). This quote demonstrates that Conrad feels hollow and unsatisfied without his brother, both of which are symptoms of depression. However, the

Hamlet and Ordinary People are similar because in both stories, the families begin to corrode after the death of an important family member and by the end, both families are completely torn apart. In Hamlet, his family is ruined by the death of King Hamlet and the incest within his family. When Hamlet says, “She married. O, most wicked speed, to post / with such dexterity to incestuous sheets! / It is not, nor it cannot come to good. / But break my heart…” (Shakespeare, I, II, 161-164), Hamlet demonstrates his disgust and consternation at how quickly his mother remarried to his own uncle, and, he immediately predicts that it will not end well for his family. In a like manner, in Ordinary People, Conrad’s family falls apart at the lack of each other’s support. An exceptional example which demonstrates this is, “We are a family aren’t we? And a family turns inward toward itself in grief, it does not go in separate directions, pulling itself apart” (Guest 127). This citation is noteworthy because it displays Conrad’s realization that when he and his father require support the most, his mother, Beth, distances herself from the family, which in turn, ends up tearing them apart. On the other hand, there are pronounced discrepancies between the presentation of the theme of a sense of belonging through family