Hamlet Revenge Essay

Hamlet Revenge Theme Essay

Revenge is the downfall for many people; its consuming nature causes one to act through anger rather than reason. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Shakespeare presents the theme of revenge through the negative influences on characters. Foremost, there is psychological revenge, this is seen through the mental chaos in characters as guilt or an event that haunts their mind. Furthermore, revenge is portrayed through the physical, with the effects of planning to kill and/or killing another. Lastly, revenge is visible through a social lens, characters pan the removal from society and/or the removal of love for another character, and characters also dehumanize others. Ultimately, these revengeful plots have many negative effects on characters, this brings out the predominant theme in the play as well.
To begin, Shakespeare uses examples of psychological revenge through characters going into a chaotic state in their head, and through guilt and anxiousness eating away at their minds. Hamlet knows of his uncle’s evil deed, but wants to make sure of it while he tried to get King Claudius’ mind in a guilt conscious state. Hamlet wants to, “play something like the murder of [his] father”, where he will “catch the consciousness of the King” (2.7.582,592). Here, Hamlet wants to catch the consciousness of King Claudius to make sure he really did commit the evil deed. This can be interpreted as mental revenge since Hamlet eventually does catch the consciousness of the king, which entitles him full psychological control over the King’s thoughts, which later on in the play he does in order to make the King suffer and let him drown in his thoughts. To conclude, the effects of psychological revenge are detrimental to the way a character thinks because of how much power is carried with it.
Throughout the play, physical revenge remains the most predominant method of revenge because of how much harm comes with it. One of the acts of revenge evident...