Jealousy And Evil In Hamlet

Words: 886
Pages: 4

When people experience a mental or physical breakdown, they tend to frantically search for ways to distract themselves from their feelings. They try to shift their focus to other things in order to dull the pain they are feeling and often times, being unfriendly and cruel can come as a result. However, cruelty only provokes insanity in both the culprit and the victim. When an individual commits a cruel act, they commonly have a guilty conscious and feel paranoid. On the other hand, when a person feels the effects of cruelty, they may become insecure, unstable or ill. When a person is wronged in a way that causes them to break, one of the most common concepts they fall back on is revenge. Although revenge may sound like a good idea at the …show more content…
Even though Hamlet’s cruelty was used as fuel to plan the murder of Claudius, he harmed more people than just his traitorous uncle. One person in particular that got in the way of Hamlet’s cruelty was Ophelia, his former lover. He linked her into the ignominy by making everybody think that she was the source of his madness and cruelty. Ophelia convinced herself that this was indeed true and she blamed herself for all of his horrible deeds. He purposefully embarrassed her multiple times by making comments about her virginity, or lack of, knowing her father and Claudius were listening. In addition to all of this chaos, Hamlet also killed Ophelia’s father, Polonius in an attempt to murder king Claudius. Hamlet played this ‘accident’ up to madness, a madness that Ophelia thought she had caused. Hamlet continually abused Ophelia emotionally until she broke from all of the pressure placed on her. All of this stress eventually led to her killing herself after she couldn’t handle the guilt put upon her. Not only was Hamlet able to carry out all of these acts without a second thought, but even after he discovers Ophelia’s watery fate he wasn’t able to change his cruel ways. By this point his morality is replaced by thoughts and actions of the evil and …show more content…
Claudius was a vile and evil man, and his death matched that perfectly. Instead of seeking his death in a just or plain way, Hamlet stabbed him with a sword and forced him to drink the same poison meant to kill him. Meanwhile, he accidentally murdered his own mother, the Queen, by letting her drink the poison. Claudius’ death was brutal, and no one with a shred of humanity would be able to do such an awful deed to a person and seemingly enjoy it, as Hamlet did. This deed was the cruelest, in terms of the plan, the execution, and the