Hamlet, By William Shakespeare - 1184 Words

Hamlet is one of the most enigmatic characters in literary history, and for decades many people have asked many questions about who he is, what his motives were, and what he thought of the situation he was in. Hamlet has many different viewpoints and is much more complex than your average character. So for a character like this to be so complex, there must be a point. But what did Shakespeare intend for us to see once we saw through the shroud of complexity? There could be any number of possibilities, but since Shakespeare is the only one who knew, the ultimate truth has been lost to history. However, by examining this play, we can see that Hamlet struggles with taking action and isn’t used to the enormous responsibility he has†¦show more content†¦Hamlet has a lot of responsibility suddenly thrust onto him, so when the time comes to deal with many of the major actions, such as killing Claudius, he fails to take initiative since part of him isn ready to take the respo nsibility for his actions. Hamlet procrastinates on the murder, planning it out but never going through with it until it’s too late and he is poisoned. His ultimate demise was his inability to go through with his decisions, and Shakespeare easily could have made this intentional. Shakespeare was trying to show us what Hamlet did wrong and how we can learn from it; you shouldn’t keep telling yourself that you’ll do something but never live up to that. We are just leading ourselves down a similar path as Hamlet, where even if we get what we want it will come at a price. Hamlet often shows that he is a conniving and ruthless trickster, however he often doesn’t think his decisions through. Throughout the play, Hamlet successfully deceives many people, causing the death of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and causing Ophelia to go insane. Hamlet is so deceptive, that he actually manages to fool the audience themselves into thinking that he might be mad. Hamlet w as an expert at mimicking what it would be like to be crazy, however he shows us throughout the play that he is not. While he seems incredibly convincing in his act, he puts it down whenever he s around someone he trusts, such as Horatio. Also, when Polonius said â€Å"Though