Moana Poyer

IB HL English

Mrs. Casady

5/23/19

Hamlet Essay

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare is a narrative of a

prince who has recently lost his father, who contemplates the course of revenge to take against

the betrayal from a family member. Shakespeare utilizes the parallelism and allusion throughout

the novel to portray the corruption in humanity and that manipulation will not always obtain the

result you want.

Act 2 consists of Hamlet devising a plan to “catch the conscience of the King” (2.622.73)

in the murder of his father, which is evident in Hamlet’s soliloquy “O, What a Rogue”. The

Mousetrap scene is a play within a play used to portray a parallel between two stories both used

to expose some sort of a corruption within their walls. When Hamlet sees the guilt on his uncles

face which sets Hamlet on an even more determined path of revenge now that he knows for sure

of the part that his uncle played in his father's death. This revelation gave him the means for

revenge and a person to place blame on but not enough for the rest of the kingdom to be

convinced or even his own mother, so instead of his plan exposing Claudius as a murderer , he

more so exposed himself to the kingdom as a delusional, crazed being. In Hamlet's attempts to

unmask his uncles bad intentions he lost the trust of his loves father, Polonius, resulting in the

loss of his love, Ophelia. In his crazed and outrageous mission he kills Polonius, resulting in the
enemy and disappointment of his mother, Gertrude, and Laertes. Leaving Hamlet with no friends

or family to rely on because everyone who surrounded him had some type of ulterior motives,

leaving every character untrustworthy and corrupt, with the exception of Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were the only characters to not manipulate anyone ,

be untruthful or to put on an act for anyone and they end up being the only main characters to

survive in the end.

Ophelia was a character who was used to represent the embodiment of passiveness and

innocence. Because of the fact she was a young woman, Ophelia was already suppressed by

those closest to her, but another trait that resulted in her downfall was her inability to discern

who to trust. Though Hamlet was the main focus and up to the reader's interpretation of going

insane, Ophelia was the one losing her sanity, but in the background and isn’t acknowledged

until her death. By pushing her mental illness to the side to focus on Hamlet and pushing her life

to the side to focus on the men around her, Shakespeare uses this subordinance of Ophelia to

emphasize the detrimental effects of superficial dominance men feel they hold over women. Her

innocence was a representation of the good of the world and when she died it showed how the

truly pure goodness of the world was lost due to the corrupt ideals of humanity that lead to the

submission of women.

Another character who manipulated those around them to fulfill their needs would be

Claudius. Claudius killed his own brother, married his sister-in-law, and tried to get rid of his

step son in law to assume the throne and live his best life despite what happens to those around

him. Claudius betrayed the only family he had, and through the novel Shakespeare emphasized

the importance of family and family bonds, which Claudius already broke and destroyed, yet

Claudius remains King until the end of the novel, which goes to to show that the good don’t
always win. Though in the final scene of the novel Claudius, Hamlet, Gertrude and Laertes all

died because they all manipulated and took advantage of another character intentional or not, as

well as Ophelia who died at the hands of suicide, to show no matter what type of life you lead

submissive, dominant, manipulated or manipulative, everyone has weakness and despite how

society perceives someone, everyone can fall as quickly as they rose.

As a result of the characters in Hamlet resulting to manipulative means to achieve their

selfish needs as a result of society’s perception, they all ended up losing themselves, their

purpose and ultimately their lives in the end. With the exception of the honest characters

portraying Shakespeare's theme that manipulation and corruption can't always get you want.
 Reflection

In the original essay I summarized a lot of the information from the book as opposed to

actually analyzing it. Since the time I initially wrote this essay, the idea of not only what but how

and why has been heavily emphasized in our English writing skills, so I tried to incorporate more

personal knowledge and information as opposed to information we were previously taught or

specifically told. A smaller detail I didn’t pay attention to before this year and still have trouble

imploring is consistent use of tenses. So when I went back to revise, I tried to add and edit all the

terms to be in the same tense of past tense. An additional small detail not really focused on

before, was the correct syntax of titles as opposed to names, for example the italicization of the

title of the novel. I also was very surprised at the fact that the essay was about 2-3 paragraphs

long, so I added more paragraphs to make it an actual essay and get more points across to

strengthen the thesis.