Monday, February 13, 2012

Diagnosing the characters of Hamlet

It seems that every single person in Hamlet has something mentally wrong with them. They are either crazy or they don't understand right from wrong. In AP Psych I am learning about anxiety disorders but I have also learned about other disorders and personality types as well. Hamlet is diagnosed by the characters in the play as being crazy or mad. In Shakespeare's time this may have been accepted and even considered a thorough diagnosis. However, today in the 21st century, no one actually goes with simply "he must be mad" as an explanation for someone's behavior. First I look at Hamlet. I believe he has some qualities that go with many different disorders. First, I think he is a passive aggressive type. This is not a disorder exactly, its just the way he is. Hamlet prefers to hold his emotions inside and then let them all bubble over in an irrational moment rather than letting out emotions as they come. An example of this is when Hamlet has held in his anger while hearing Claudius confess and then he lets his anger come out when he rashly stabs Polonius to death. Hamlet may also be experiencing hallucinations. He sees the ghost while he is talking to his mother but his mother does not see the ghost. This is read as a possible hallucination because in the first scene at the beginning of the play the ghost was visible by everyone. This time, only Hamlet can see the ghost. Claudius is in my opinion slightly psychopathic. He kills his own brother in cold blood and uses another person to kill Hamlet more than once. He attempts to use the king of England to kill Hamlet and when that doesn't work Claudius does not show remorse he simply goes about using Laertes to kill Hamlet. The only time Claudius shows anything related to remorse is when he is confessing. However, even while confessing, Claudius is not truly remorseful because he keeps what he got from his sins (the crown). Also, Claudius doesn't change after confessing, he continues to attempt to kill Hamlet. Ophelia has simply gone "mad" according to the characters in Hamlet however, I think that she is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Her father has been murdered, Hamlet does not love her, and her brother is no where near her to help her. Thus she can not find any outlet for her stress and after such a tragic death and loss of love, she can not bear her life and thus become what everyone else in the play describes as "mad".

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