Morality And Revenge In Hamlet By William Shakespeare

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Hamlet was written by William Shakespeare between 1955 and 1602, it is believed that he was inspired to write Hamlet after his son died from a mystery illness. The idea of revenge and trying to avenge the death of a loved one is the theme that moves the plot along and drive multiple characters in this story. There are many interpretations to what shakespeare wanted the moral of the story to be, but I believe shakespeare’s moral to this story parallels with the quote, “ an eye for an eye makes everyone blind.” Multiple characters in this story are driven by trying to avenge the death of someone they loved and in the end everyone ends up death, proving the point revenge leaves everyone a victim. I love reading my class discussions and everyone …show more content…
The story starts out with Hamlet dealing with the death of his father and wishing to seek revenge by killing Claudius. Then throughout the story when Hamlet accidentally kills Polonius, Laertes Focus his attentions on attaining revenge for his father 's death. Also Fortinbras is trying to wage war in order to gain land his father lost in order to justify his father 's death, which although is not revenge it follows along the same lines because he is still avenging his father 's death. Throughout the story these three characters are fueled by seeking revenge for their fathers, and everyone else just seems to be affected by their actions. I believe these characters are seeking revenge and thinking that it is justice. In short hand, I believe revenge is personal and justice is impersonal. Each of these characters were seeking bias revenge rather than unbiased legal justice. Therefore I don 't believe there actions are moral. The interesting thing about the way shakespeare wrote these characters, it that no character in this story attains a moral high ground, and everyone at the end of the story dies. I believe he was representing the moral ramifications of seeking revenge and how everyone ends up worse in the …show more content…
One being, “ Name someone in pop culture who, like Hamlet, does/did not have to pay for their actions due to their power, position, or popularity, “ An example of how this played out was in the OJ Simpson case. There were many people who said they couldn 't believe that OJ Simpson would murder his wife because he was so well liked by the public. When your going into the justice system and you already have many people who, “couldn 't even imagine you doing something that wrong,” you are coming in with a severe advantage. The advantage is even greater when you are dealing with a jury trial because some of the jury knows who you are and have already formed opinions. I think the reason Claudius did not want to prosecute Hamlet is because he would always be innocent in the court of public opinion. There is also an alternative possibility that Claudius just used his popularity as an excuse to not prosecute him because the real reason he didn 't want to do it because if he tried to send him to jail Hamlet would tell people what Claudius

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