Hamlet

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorHigh School, 12th grade February 2008

download word file, 3 pages 0.0

Downloaded 11 times

In William Shakespeare?s Hamlet, he uses many themes to demonstrate the insanity of Hamlet. Shakespeare?s Hamlet is a classic play about a young price who much ascertain the truth regarding his father?s death. Hamlet is faced with much pretext throughout his attempts to do so. Shakespeare?s usage of appearances, revenge, and deception proved Hamlet?s insanity.

As appearances play an important role in today?s society, they also play an important role in Hamlet. From the first scene to the last, Shakespeare elaborates on the theme of appearance versus reality through plot and character. The play?s plot is full of incidents and events that are not what they appear to be. Hamlet even is trapped in the fatal maze of appearances that is phenomenal in this world. Appearances can cause people to immediately jump to conclusions and fails to separate the seeming from the being. A perfect example of this, is when Hamlet comes to find Claudius ?atoning? for his wrongs.

The mind?s finitude is dramatized in this scene. Throughout the play, the fundamental theme of veiled reality is constant. They point that nearly nothing of their actual selves are visible. The labyrinth of deception is so twisted that only Hamlet alone, is aware of the truth, and only because the ghost of his father revealed it to him. Many are a part of this circle of deception, Revenge causes one to act blindly through anger, rather than through reason. It is based on the principle of an eye for an eye, but this principle is not always an intelligent one to live by. Acting on emotion can lead to the demise of a character, simply because of the fact that the future is not clearly examined. Certainly, one of the most critical themes in Hamlet is that of revenge. However,