Was Hamlet's Revenge Justified

The revenge that Hamlet sought out for the death of his father was not justified because it came at the price of too many lives. The tale of Hamlet by William Shakespeare is that of a young prince who comes home for the funeral of his father but finds out through his father's ghost that his father's death was a murder. The murderer of his father was Claudius, the king's brother. The ghost then says to Hamlet "Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder"(1.5.25). Hamlet then enacted a plan to avenge his father's death, but his father's spirit didn't tell him in what way his father wanted to be avenged. Naturally, as humans we tend to go straight for the most painful and aggressive form of revenge, which in this case was death. Hamlet would've …show more content…
One of these is that Hamlet decided to act as if he was insane, which was part of his revenge plot. The reason that this was unjustifiable was because he hurt the ones that loved him, for example Ophelia. Hamlet says, "You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not"(3.1.118-120). In these lines Hamlet is lying because later on in the book he admits that he loves her. He wanted his revenge so bad that he was willing to lose the girl that he loved. Revenge is only supposed to intended to inflect harm on those who inflected harm upon you. Revenge is not intended to inflect pain upon the ones that you love. Ophelia loved him and his lie to her caused a greater effect than he could've imagined, which leads me into my next reason as to why his revenge is unjustifiable. Consequently, Hamlet's revenge involved the death of many people within his kingdom. Most of these people were close to him and/or cared about him, yet he was the cause of many of their deaths. Hamlet killed Polonius, but acted as if it was Polonius who was the cause of his own demise. Then the lies that he told Ophelia possibly lead to her drowning herself. Later on, he inadvertently killed Laertes with a poisoned sword. He then goes and kills the king in the heat of the moment after his mother dies, and it is …show more content…
While the ghost of Hamlet's father did tell him to seek revenge for his death, he never told him to kill. Hamlet isn't wrong for trying to kill the king and carry out the wishes of his dead father; in fact, carrying out the wishes of your dead father is a noble act. The revenge is still mostly unjustified because of the result of his revenge, which was the death of many people who had weren't involved with his father's death. Revenge is a bloody and endless cycle that will keep going forever unless people learn how to