Hamlet: Just Your Average Teenager?

Hamlet is a play that reveals the mind behind the words. There is an array of characters who display different emotions of the human. Claudius is greed, Ophelia is innocence, Gertrude is sin, and Polonius is two-faced. All the different characteristics in the play combine into one human who has the needs and wants of anyone else, but the difference between them and others is their extreme nature. The character Hamlet is, yet again, the one who stands out. All on his own he embodies the characteristics of just one human who contemplates his wants, needs, and actions. He is a teenager who is put into a situation that most no one would encounter today. That is why he cannot be compared to teenagers of the modern society. Hamlet lived in a time of revenge where killing your uncle would restore the family name, but today that is something that would tarnish the family name. This leads to the idea of Hamlet as a young boy who cannot make up his mind, is depressed, or "mad". In context, Hamlet is all of those things and that is what people see him as and that is who he is. Who we are is bound by the way we make ourselves appear to others and how they perceive us. Hamlet let others influence who he was resulting in his obsession with revenge and giving himself something to distract the pain of loss. Therefore, Hamlet is a young boy who was everything people saw him as but with a twist: a young boy who was "mad", but the twist is that Hamlet's madness was his dying passion to do something for once.

Hamlet was just a teenager who experienced the death of essentially two parents. After his father died, his mother was "dead to him". He chose to shut everyone out along with his speech to hide his feelings. In reality, hiding his feelings wasn't going to make his situation better. When he stopped talking, he started listening; listening to his head, to his mother, to Claudius, and to Horatio. He forgot his own voice and let others tell him what to do. When his father appeared, Hamlet allowed someone who had already lived and made mistakes make his life and his duty. He lost sight of what he really wanted and by doing so he made himself insane. Constantly talking to yourself and contemplating killing someone is not the duty of a mourning teenager; it is that of someone who had nothing to live for. Hamlet's father was a man that was described as great and omnipotent, but as readers we only know of what the biased characters tell us. The indirect characterization of Hamlet's father is a man who wanted to finish what he started and if he couldn't he would destroy his son's life to do so. The unresolved family conflicts lead to Hamlet yet again being the target and the one that everyone leaves behind. Hamlet went mad with guilt, power, revenge, and the need to fulfill his lack-luster life. All the self analyzing and self doubt is the result of someone who is so determined to complete a goal that they become stiff and believe everything has to be perfect. Hamlet has nothing better to do than sit around and ponder his plan. That is not the life of a normal teenager who is just put in a bad situation. As Hamlet's journey progresses, readers see his transformation from a mortified teenager to that of an angry and dangerous soul.

In Deboer's paper, he comments on how Hamlet could not make real what was in his head and what was actual reality. He was so involved in his mind of his own reality of what he wanted to happen, that he couldn't compose himself. Hamlet uses his words and actions to deceive those around him as seen when he speaks to Ophelia before the play. He announces the play's summary and when Ophelia didn't react the way intended, Hamlet made inappropriate comments that didn't reflect the way he was. This further supports the concept that we are the people that others see us as. We soon start to believe what we get told and in Hamlet's case, he was told he was crazy and insane and that everyone was watching him; he then became those things. He was paranoid and always watching over his shoulder which contributed to his change in manners. Hamlet's passion for his plan developed into something that he couldn't control, himself. As the play progresses, Hamlet is becoming the person that he is trying to kill; a murderer who is killing for his own reasons and benefits. The habit of fulfillment is a path that others rain on us and it is up to those who are victimized to stop it.