Hamlet- Shakespeare
…And then everyone except for Horatio dies. But of course Hamlet can’t
go out without a bang, so he brings everything to a close with an entire
audience to see the violent and passionate end of his revenge. However,
innocent causalities aside, Hamlet is very successful in obtaining what he
wanted. When Hamlet is presented with the opportunity to kill Claudius before, he
hesitates to go through with the act, deciding instead to kill him in the
middle of “some act that has no relish of salvation in ‘t,” hoping that he’ll
be able to guarantee Claudius’s imprisonment in hill. Given that Claudius had
just created a plan with the evil intentions of killing Hamlet, a plan that
also dragged in the deaths of Laertes and Gertrude, adding to the blood already
on Claudius’s hands, Hamlet couldn’t have picked a better moment to force
Claudius to bare his sins to be judged. To complete his revenge, Hamlet lets
the whole world know of his uncle’s deeds, using Horatio as his mouthpiece to
tell the world the truth as he knew it. However, even in his dying moments,
Hamlet does not forget the destruction he has caused and attempts, to some
extent, to repair it. His kingdom, which
would have most likely otherwise been torn by chaos at the sudden change in
leader, is more smoothly delivered to Fortinbras with Hamlet’s support at his
side.
Oddly enough, the last few minutes of Hamlet’s life are quite
productive, a contrast to the Hamlet that can be seen in earlier acts. Hamlet
tears himself in two trying to decide whether or not he should go through with
his revenge and how he should complete the task. He even gives up an
opportunity to kill his uncle earlier. However, in his last minutes, he kills
Laertes, forgives Laertes, kills Claudius, assigns Horatio the tasking of
telling Hamlet’s story, and secures a future for his kingdom in Fortinbras’s
leadership.
Hamlet notes earlier that the “pale cast of thought” causes great plans
to “lose the name of action.” By thinking too much, one loses the motivation
and drive to go through with the task, a perfect description of Hamlet’s treatment
of his revenge mission. Because he wasn’t sure whether he could trust the ghost
and didn’t know how he should go about killing his uncle, he began to think and
reason to the point that his almost religious passion and determination to live
only by his father’s “commandment” was watered down to an uncertainty about the
vest course of action. However, right before Hamlet begins his fight with
Laertes, he tells Horatio, “Let be.” In this seemingly simple command, Hamlet
expresses his desire to put an end to his overthinking. Instead, he plans to
allow what happens to happen without questioning. It is with this mindset that
Hamlet is able to accomplish everything that he avoided during the rest of the
play within the span of a few minutes.
Nonetheless, what Hamlet left behind is nothing short of destruction,
causing the death of Polonius’ entire family as well as ridding Denmark of both
King and Queen and bringing about the deaths of his friends using the hands of
the English while he was at it. The confusion and disorder these actions will
cause among the people of Denmark and the surrounding countries is undeniable. The
one beam of hope that Hamlet leaves behind is Horatio, the only one standing,
left to guide everyone else through the chaos.
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