Hamlet

We are now reading Hamlet. I find it interesting that Hamlet is pretending to be crazy, because I don't think that would hide his behavior or make Claudius confess to murdering Hamlet's father. I guess I just don't understand the advantages of pretending to be crazy. I would think that it would make people watch Hamlet more, making it harder for him to get revenge for his fathers murder.

I also think that Hamlet is a good moral play in the fact that it shows what can happen if you seek revenge. Hamlet's intentions were sort of honorable in the beginning, being that he want the man who murdered his father to be punished. Yet Hamlet takes it too far. He has the chance to kill Claudius, but doesn't because he thinks Claudius is praying and doesn't want him to have a good afterlife. Hamlet not only wants to punish Claudius on earth but in the afterlife as well. I think the play also shows how revenge can get out of hand. Hamlet only wanted Claudius to suffer and in the end everyone involved dies. Beacuse of his thurst for revenge Hamlet is ultimately responsible for the deaths of Ophelia, Claudius, his mother, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Polonius, and Laertes.

The play also shows what happens when people become involved in plots to kill others. The king plots to kill Hamlet because he thinks that Hamlet is crazy and must be gotten rid of. He involves Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in getting Hamlet to England where he will be beheaded, but Hamlet discovers the plan and Guildenstern and Rosencrantz end up dead. Then the king allows Laertes to challenge Hamlet to a duel with a poisoned sword. During the duel Hamlet is wounded with the poisoned sword, but so is Laertes. The king also has a drink that is poisoned, which I think he has just in case Hamlet was to win the duel. The problem with the poisoned drink is that Gertrude, the Queen, drinks it and dies. When Hamlet sees that his mother is dead and learns that he and Laertes are also going to die, he stabs Claudius. Even though Hamlet did get his revenge in the end, everyone he loved, including himself, had to die for it.