Internal And External Conflicts In William Shakespeare's Hamlet

One of William Shakespeare’s most famous plays was the tragedy of Hamlet. Hamlet is a revenge play with so many unanswered questions left to the people watching or reading. In this play almost every character has their own internal and external conflicts. Their internal conflicts deal with what’s going on inside their heads and the external conflicts are things that everyone can see going on. In Hamlet the characters like to talk about their internal conflicts rather than acting on them. Hamlet’s conflicts revolve around fear of taking action from what he thinks he needs to do and what is right to do in the end. Sometimes Hamlet cannot keep his internal conflicts from becoming his external conflicts and getting in the way of his revenge plan. …show more content…
It is one of the main external conflicts of the play and it makes the plot and the theme of all about getting revenge. The main internal conflict Hamlet has is not being able to make decisions and it is his worst downfall. His farther Old King Hamlet came to him as a ghost and told him he need to honor his death and kill Claudius, but that goes against everything Hamlet had always been taught. He questions himself on his religious beliefs and not being able to do what was told of him. His internal conflict leads him to thinking about committing suicide just to get away from everything. Hamlets soliloquy “To be or not to be” was his way of deciding what he was thinking and letting his internal conflicts out in the open. The whole scene was him not being able to decide if killing himself would solve anything at all. Hamlet then comes to the conclusion that suicide would not fix anything and he would end up going to hell like he had always grown up learning due to his religious beliefs. Suicided for most people is an internal conflict because it normally it is not something they go around talking about openly. Suicide for Hamlet was a way of him not acting on killing Claudius and just another way of postponing his …show more content…
Each one has something they need to work through or deal with. Ophelia deals with her love for Hamlet even though he keeps pushing her away. Ophelia had an internal conflict of her own wondering if she should disobey her father and love Hamlet or let him go. She eventually could not take it anymore and starts to go crazy after her dad Polonius was murdered by Hamlet and falls in the river and drowns. Even though it never comes right out and say what happened to her you can come to the conclusion that she most likely killed herself to get away from her hardships. Hamlet is fearful of making a move on his uncle Claudius because he does not know what it will do on his humanity and soul. He struggles with the fact that what he wants to do may not be what he should do. Hamlets internal drive to do what’s right or wrong comes out when he accidently kills the wrong man and after he knows there is no going back. Laertes is another character that is trying to get revenge for his own dad being killed too. He is more willing to jump to action about wanted to kill Hamlet and does not waste much time like Hamlet does. Laertes did not hesitate to do what he thought needed to be done because his father and sister were both dead he had nothing else to