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Was Hamlet's Actions Justified

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How far would you be willing to go if a loved one of yours got murdered and you knew the murderer? Well Hamlet himself was faced with this question and he went with the bloody way. On his quest to murder his uncle, several others accidentally died as well. So we ask ourselves were Hamlet’s actions justified? Was he in the right for murdering not only his uncle, but many other innocent people living in the Denmark Castle. Personally, I do not think that he was justified. The first reason I believe Hamlet’s actions were not justified is because his treatment of his mother Gertrude. Firstly, according to Document A (“If thou nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be a couch for luxury and damned incest. But, howsoever …show more content…

Firstly, he murdered her father, although it wasn’t on purpose, it still absolutely crushes her and she will never be the same. Also according to Document D (“ I did love you once. Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. You should not have believed me…. I loved you not; I was the more deceived. Get thee to a nunnery! Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners” Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where’s your father? At home, my lord. Get thee to a nunnery. Go, farewell. Or if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go; and quickly too. Farewell.”) He is basically calling her stupid and telling her that he never loved her and disrespecting her. He slept with her and he is calling her a whore and to go marry a stupid man and no smart man will ever love you. All this and her father’s death cause her to go absolutely insane and she eventually dies by ways of falling into a lake. When she dies Hamlet jumps into her deathbed to try and prove some sympathy over her, when in reality there is none. That too is definitely an unjustified …show more content…

According to Document A (“Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder…. Haste me to know’t, that I, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, O god! Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder may my revenge be sweep.”) Basically his father tells him that Claudius has murdered him. Then, Hamlet tells his father that he will avenge him quickly but he doesn’t do it. I think lying to his dead father is unjust. Also in Document B he says (“ Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I! Am I a coward? Oh, vengeance! Why what an ass am I! This is most brave, That I, the son of a dear father murdered Prompted to my revenge to by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words….”) He is calling himself a coward for not killing him quickly when he had a chance to kill him while he was kneeling. He thought that he was praying and if he killed him then he would go to heaven. In reality he wasn’t praying. He was calling himself a coward for not killing Claudius quickly. This is very

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Act 1, Scene 1: “Let us impart what we have seen tonight Unto young Hamlet, for, upon my life, This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him” (Crowther 16). I think this quote really sets up things for the next act, and the rest of the play. The ghost would not talk to them, so they decided to tell Hamlet about the ghost because they felt it would talk to him. This sets up Hamlet to discover the ghost who is his late father, and learn about his murder. Act 1, Scene 2: “Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly” (Crowther 24).

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Elizabeth Kirchner Guppies January 4, 2018 I believe that there is many reasons for Hamlet 's actions to be justified and not justified. But it depends on what you believe from the information you were given from the packet. I personally believe that he is both justified and not justified from just reading the book. But the packet helps you understand more than the book did.

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729 Words | 3 Pages

Hamlet, also, could not get over the death of his father. He found out when his father’s ghost came back that his brother, and Hamlet’s uncle, murdered him. He then was willing to do anything possible to get revenge on Claudius, his uncle. Both of

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801 Words | 4 Pages

Were Hamlets Actions Justified? Were his actions justified, that is the question. Hamlet’s father (King Hamlet) died. In less than 2 months Hamlet’s mother (Gertrude) married his uncle (Claudius). Hamlet’s friend came to him telling him that he saw the ghost of his dad.

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701 Words | 3 Pages

Where hamlets actions justified? Did he really avenge is father? Well I don’t think so. Because of him Gertrude was treated very poorly and because of the got her killed, the treatment to Ophelia was not justified and it made her go crazy, he delayed the killing of the king which caused a lot of bad stuff to happen, but the killing of Claudius was justified because he avenged his father. So, the question are his actions justified?

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809 Words | 4 Pages

The big question is “Are Hamlet’s actions justified.” Well Hamlet was both justified and not justified. Some things he did were for a reason others were just possibly because he was pretending to have gone insane. Examples of this are the way Hamlet treated his own mother, Gertrude, and the way he treated his love Ophelia, one thing he is not justified in is delaying the murder of his uncle and his mother’s new husband Claudius. But the thing that is justified is actually killing Claudius.

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1234 Words | 5 Pages

Not all people respond with hate and revenge, some people let themselves get walked over but not hamlet. Hamlet does not respond to injustice too kindly. He wants revenge for his father's death, wants to set things right, help out whoever is in charge of people receiving karma by taking things into his own hands. His main goal in the novel is to seek revenge on his father's death, this started when he was visited by the ghost of the old king. The ghost said to him “revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” the ghost of the old king wanted Hamlet to seek revenge on claudius for his ‘unnatural” murder of the kind.

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1228 Words | 5 Pages

This cause all the other characters to be affected and created a chain effect of vengeances. For the play of Hamlet to be based around love is almost flawed by the most extensive reason: In this time period when Hamlet was performed/written it was very rare for males to show emotions so why would Shakespeare play be based off an emotion that played against society roles in that era. The fact that the major characters that establish and generate the play are males, makes it conspicuous that love had not affected them. This therfir shows that Hamlet is a play of revenge due to the characters actions and

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His suicidal thought and his erratic behavior cause for the king, queen, Ophelia and his friends to begin to spy on him just pushes him over the edge. His action cause concern for King Claudius who shows in ways that he is not trusting of Hamlet because of this the King begins to plot with Laertes to kill hamlet in fencing dual. During this dual Hamlet is stabbed and dies from the poison that was on the blade. Gertrude is seems to be a shallow woman in some ways yet King Hamlet, Hamlet and King Claudius are all devoted to her.

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285 Words | 2 Pages

Learning his father's death was murder instead of the proclaimed accidental death, causes Hamlet to see no other way than to approve the request of his father to reap revenge. As seen is his speech, Hamlet reveals he has the motivation from his father to murder the man responsible for his death. Within the lines “Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do ’t.”, Hamlet refers to his dead father’s last request to have him seek revenge on Claudius for his murder as sheer motivation. Further, throughout the entire play, it is evident that Hamlet looks at his father as the most gracious man to have ever walked the earth. That being said, after hearing from the ghost of his father of the crime against him, Hamlet immediately sets out

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504 Words | 3 Pages

Conscience does not make cowards of us all. Hamlet shows many examples of this throughout the play. Hamlet provides how people can go crazy and lose their minds and he shows many examples of losing conscience but he also does not let his conscience make him a coward. A better statement would be conscience makes a lot/most people cowards but definitely not of all people. A great example of hamlet not being a coward would be when he goes to talk to his mom and he ends up killing polonius.

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203 Words | 1 Pages

First off, Hamlet was set during the Elizabethan era. That time the punishment was severe torture. Heads and limbs were cut off, people were whipped, it was so different from today. Even the Catholic Church at that time used torture to make people confess. Given that the play’s characters were Christian believers and monarchs was believed to be appointed by God Himself by Elizabethans, there is no other way to serve justice for what Claudius did except to kill him.

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1467 Words | 6 Pages

We first encounter the character of Hamlet in Act 1 Scene 2 when he enters the court along with Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Laertes and Ophelia. He is dressed all in black. He is described as being gloomy, morose and still grieving the death of his father, who had died two months before. In Hamlet the casual viewer will identify Claudius as the villain and while it is true that he is a villainous character, Hamlet himself is the villain.

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1844 Words | 8 Pages

Hamlet is William Shakespeare 's renowned tale of mystery, intrigue, and murder, centered on a young misguided prince who can only trust himself. Some may say that the actions of Prince Hamlet throughout the play are weak and fearful, displaying a tendency to procrastinate and showing an apathetic nature towards his family and peers. Others spin a tale of a noble young scholar, driven mad by the cold-blooded murder of his father by his uncle. In truth, I believe Hamlet is neither of these things. Hamlet is a sort of amalgamation of the two, a bundle of contradictions thrown together into one conflicting but very human mess of a character.

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932 Words | 4 Pages

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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