5 Stages Of Grief In Hamlet

When a person is going through a tough situation, for example a time of loss or grief, not many other things are on his or her mind. They cannot help but to focus on the single thing that is consuming his or her thoughts, day in and day out, which is probably why they don't understand or realize that their feelings of grief are coming in many stages. In 1969, a Swiss author by the name of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, came out with a book called On Death and Dying. This book had the first appearance of the 5 stages of grief. Hamlet is a perfect example of how the five stages of grief can be just as relevant back in the day, just as it is in our modern world. The beginning stages of grief starts with denial and isolation. Since the body is in complete shock of the pain, your mind puts you into denial to try to cover up the reality of the situation. In all honesty, who wants to feel all of the …show more content…
The angry and confused emotions start to shine through as the feelings of denial and isolation start to wear off, making the body more vulnerable to the pain. Because of all of these feelings piling up at once, we lean towards investing our anger somewhere else because we do not know how to handle it. Often times we tend to “blame” the person that we lost for putting us through this pain, or making us feel this way, when in reality we know it is not his or her fault. This happens because of the fact that we do not know where else to put our emotions. Anger causes people to do very crazy things on impulse, even Hamlet. For example, he kills Polonius. Hamlet is talking to his mother, Gertrude, and is very angry with her because she has moved on so quickly from the death of her husband, King Hamlet. When Polonius enters the room that Hamlet and Gertrude are in, Hamlet stabs Polonius to death, thinking that he was killing Claudius. This is a prime example, maybe also an extreme example, of how anger can take control of