Thesis For Hamlet

Hamlet Paper Thesis “In madness, I thought I was the most important person in the world.” – John Forbes Nash. Jr. The brilliant mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. and the centuries old character Hamlet from the Shakespearian play, Hamlet, may seem like a very unlikely comparison. What could a contemporary math prodigy have in common with an ancient character of fiction? John Nash is famously known in the academic world for his development of “Game Theory” and to the rest of us, we may know Nash from book and movie A Beautiful Mind, the story of his life told by author Sylvia Nasar. Nash was a math genius and respected professor until his brilliance took a dark turn, when he developed Schizophrenia when he was 30. Many seem to

Nash was diagnosed with schizophrenia in May of the year 1959 when he was at the age of 30, which caused him to have to resign from his position at MIT. At the time Nash’s wife, Alicia happened to be pregnant which caused Nash a lot of stress. Nash is also said to have experienced anxiety because he believed that the most creative years in his life were over. “The most successful are the most vulnerable to the feeling that time is running out (Nassar 229).” Nash and Hamlet are both similar in this way, in the play Hamlet is also 30 years of age when his life is turned upside down due to a series of stressful events. Hamlet had not only had to go through the loss of his father, but he also had to watch his mother marry his uncle very shortly after the death of his father. Seeing the ghost of your father is enough to drive anyone mad and that is exactly what happened in Hamlet’s case. According to doctors Jerome and Irene S. Levine “The primary symptoms associated with schizophrenia fall into three broad categories: positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and cognitive symptoms” (Levine 38). Some of these symptoms may include repeating words or thoughts, making up their own words, and jumping from one topic to another (Levine 41). Hamlets symptoms seem to have begun after the first encounter with the ghost of his father. The first instance that Hamlet may have been suffering from schizophrenia is when he goes to Ophelia’s bedroom. Ophelia was very frightened when she went on to explain to Polonius how Hamlet had grabbed her by the wrists, shaken her, nodded his head three times, and then walked out of the room backwards staring at her with his head tilted. This is just the start to a line of odd behaviors conducted by