Thesis: In Hamlet, Shakespeare creates a narrative where loss is experienced in the form of death to show its universal occurrence, proving that there are many different ways of reacting, the arcs of which resonate in a plethora of art across varying media.
Explored over variety of artistic mediums, hope you enjoy!
In the broad scope of all art, the majority shares similarities with Greek mythology, and Hamlet is no different. Within the tragedy itself, the events surrounding the death of Polonius are reminiscent of that of Perseus and Medusa. The character archetypes and tropes of motivation are nearly identical: a mother with an absent husband is pursued by an unwholesome king, her son is not in favor of this man, the king sends the son away, and then the son kills a person and uses that death to shock the king. Both Perseus and Hamlet use the murder (Medusa and Polonius respectively) as a means to their end of seeking revenge upon this authoritarian figure which has wronged them. Although the king in Perseus’s narrative was literally turned to stone, the translation of the original Greek play reads, pertaining to the curse placed upon Medusa, "that she may alarm her surprised foes with terror"[11] which in turn means that whoever looks at her is so shocked that they become stone.
Perseus uses this shock as a tool against the king much like Hamlet uses the murder of Polonius to get to King Claudius as a way to mock him by teasing in a playground sort of way; when King Claudius asks where Polonius’s body is, Hamlet replies, “ At supper...Not where he eats, but where he is eaten”(A4.2.20&22). Hamlet uses mockeries like this as a defense mechanism to keep unwanted feelings and mannerisms at bay. This is the Freudian concept of reaction formation: acting in the exact opposite way that one feels. In Hamlet’s case, he is acting jovial and agreeable to mask his inner feelings of sadness, anger, and paranoia, yet he is still able to consciously manipulate the situation by using this attitude as a weapon of shock. In turning his unwanted feelings into means to harm and manipulate, he is also demonstrating the Freudian defense mechanism of displacement where one turns their painful feels into ammunition aimed at something else, and in Hamlet’s case, “The King is [the] thing”(A4.2.28). He takes out his feelings of anger by channeling them into his witty assertion of intellectual dominance over the king by taking something as alarming as a dead man and turning it into juvenile banter.
In Rodin’s sculpture of Perseus and Medusa shown above, Perseus is holding out Medusa’s head like a weapon while he stands atop her decapitated body, presenting it aggressively towards another, whether it be a king or another who has wronged Perseus, much akin to how Hamlet runs intellectual circles around those who have wronged him, dangling the unspeakable deeds he has committed over the heads of his victims.
Every single person that has ever lived has experienced the cruel harsh reality of death which takes away those beloved to us. In Act 5 of Hamlet, Hamlet grapples with the stark contrast between life and death in his soliloquy at the gravediggers’ site where he holds the skull of his beloved court jester, Yorick. He tries to ease his mind by painting an image of Yorick when he was alive: his bright jubilant demeanor, his comical, “flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar”(A5.1.197-198), but that makes the return to the reality that all that is left of that soul, which is so easy to remember in life with breath, is gone, naught but bones and dust, rotting in the ground. The juxtaposition between the bright, colorful person we can envision and the visual element of the iconic skull, drives home the void of death that will eventually consume all. In short, even if for the briefest of moments, Hamlet is in a state of denial, trying to resurrect the long dead spirit of a long deceased man. This is an attempt to soothe himself when the eventuality of death is staring him in the face, a sentiment that is reciprocated in another well known work of literature: Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a series filled with tropes of death, but one of the more interesting ones is that of the Resurrection Stone. One of the three Deathly Hallows, it has the power to bring people back to life, and Harry only uses it right before he walks to his death. It is used to bring back his parents, Sirius, and Lupin who give him comfort as he stares death in the face, symbolizing how we figuratively bring back our loved ones by remembering them when they were alive. This brings a sense of peace to the all-consuming power of death knowing that their memories will stay with [us]...until the very end”(Rowling, 700). Though the return to life after confronting the void of death is quite painful, we are able to carry on after coming to an understanding with those memories, allowing them to comfort us for the rest of the time we have left.
Ophelia, similarly to Hamlet, loses her father and falls into a depression; however, instead of displacing her anguish as Hamlet does, she regresses, falling back onto childlike tendencies. This Freudian defense mechanism entails returning to a child-like state in times of exceptional stress, including times of intense grief. Regressing is used as a form of escape from certain realities that one does not want to deal with, but it is not a long term solution. In the famous debate about whether or not Ophelia killed herself it can be argued that, “she may not have meant to fall from the tree” which follows suit of regressing to a childish state where she is unaware of the dangers that could arise from participating in such an activity, and that once she hit the water, she found an easy way to escape, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”(A3.1.66). She might have not tried, “to save herself” from her watery grave, and instead decided, “to die, to sleep -- to sleep, perchance to dream'' away from the pain and grief over losing her father, or, as the Gravedigger says, “she drowned herself in her own defense”(A5.1.6-7). Ophelia’s lack of self awareness and human consciousness due to her regressed state, caused her to not care in the manner that Hamlet does in his Act 3 soliloquy; she does not have the instinctive defense mechanism of self preservation to save herself from death.
Ophelia’s regressed state of blissful unknowing is captured in Rodin’s “Crouching Woman” where the woman’s face is peaceful although her body is contorted in a way that mimics self-soothing techniques. The figure’s body is twisted into an uncomfortable position that would be painful to hold, mirroring Ophelia’s suffering resulting from her father’s death, but the position is reminiscent of the fetal position, one of the most comfortable positions for a human. This combination of the two shows that although Ophelia has assumed a state that should bring peace to her, she is still in agony. Regression is a temporary solution to pain and misery and if not moved past can become debilitating, solidifying the dismal spiral of depression.
When something or someone precious is taken from us, we aspire to right the situation within our psyches, whether that is by regaining this loss or equalizing the situation, an ‘eye for an eye’ sentiment. We seek to regain the psychological balance that we once had because when major changes in our lives occur, we seek some form of outlet, and depending on the severity of pain, it can affect almost anything. In Hamlet, when Hamlet’s father has been murdered by his uncle, his solution to preserve balance is to take his uncle’s metaphorical eye: his life. Similarly, in the classic film, Die Hard, John McClane finds the balance in rescuing his wife from the thieves posing as terrorists and he kills any man who gets in his way. Needless to say, they both had a messier time than once thought, each with an impressive killing spree, and believed themselves to be morally correct in their actions, keeping the scales of justice at an equilibrium. The heavy burdens of stress that they were under gave them the freedom to act as they saw fit via the “spillover effect”. This psychological concept refers to how emotions from one event overflow into how we react to the subsequent event. In John McClane’s case, his emotions of anxiety over seeing his separated wife and of residual love and longing for her feed into his single-handed takedown of the thieves, motivated by his overwhelming desire to see her again. Waves of grief, on the other hand, wash over Hamlet one right after the other, not allowing him time to process them each individually, causing the “spillover effect” where his grief compounds, explaining his willingness to accept the advice of a sketchy specter to murder his uncle. He was desperate for an outlet for his grief, and the most available option was displacing his pain onto his uncle, who was the instigator for Hamlet’s pain. Although this is not a supported method of coping, it is the only one for him, and above all else, he has a need to alleviate his misery just like we all do. To grieve is to be human as is the desire to move onward and not dwell there.
When we lose someone or encounter especially dismal circumstances, it causes a lot of pain, and in those times of hopelessness, the idea that we can choose to end our own suffering can fleet across the mind. Why should one, “suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” when it would be quite a lot easier to not deal with the pain? Hamlet’s Act 3 soliloquy is a well recognized example of the existential struggle with suicide that is used to demarcate the presence of an existential crisis of characters within the context of a narrative.
