What kind of person is Hamlet - Essay Example

“Hamlet is Essentially the Victim of his own Deception A Critical Approach In Shakespeare’s play, “Hamlet” ‘deception’ is a dominant theme that also shapes the central character Hamlet. Shakespeare’s protagonist hates deception, and longs for truth about the murder of his father, as Ian Johnston says, “Hamlet cannot accept a world of deceit, compromise, and short-term power grabs” (2). Yet ironically Hamlet himself appears to be a skillful deceiver who takes the help of deceptions and lies in order to find out the truth about the regicide.

Ultimately he finds himself trapped in his own deception. But Hamlet’s deception cannot be viewed as a crime. Rather on Hamlet’s part it is more of a strategy than a deliberate crime. Indeed Hamlet’s deception can be justified from a Machiavellian perspective. It is Hamlet’s circumstance that forces him to choose deception as a strategy, which finally leads him to the ultimate truth about the regicide. Indeed Hamlet appears to the victim of circumstances that compels him to play those deceptive roles “in order to survive, in order to protect himself from the general rottenness, while he tries to sort out how he is to act in a world which he finds so morally unacceptable” (2).

His deceptions and lies also turn his nearest ones into his enemies. For an instance he grows animosity with Laertes; his friend and the brother of his beloved Ophelia, with Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, his former school fellow and friend but present enemies. Indeed Hamlet succeeds in overcoming his foes but only at a dreadful cost.Literally Hamlet becomes trapped by his own deception. His deceptive role compels him to refrain from Ophelia’s love, to murder the innocent Polonius by accident, and eventually to loss Ophelia.

Since his semi-maniacal behaviors grow suspicion among Claudius and other people of authority, he can be held responsible for the accidental killing of Polonius who attempts to spy on him. For the same reason, he is responsible for making Laertes his enemy and for his own death at Laertes’s hand. To Hamlet, Claudius is a smiling dammed villain, a seducer and a usurper of his right to Denmark’s throne; he is one against whom he has to take revenge. If the supernatural presence of the king’s ghost is expunged from the drama, Hamlet will simply appear to be a skillful deceiver, before the audience, who attempts to find out his father’s killer just because he wants to repair his ego bruised by his mother, Gertrude’s marriage with Claudius.

Regarding Hamlet’s morality, Ian Jonston comments that Hamlet is so often “brutal, in language and deed, especially to those who love him, he is so deceitful and vacillating, that again and again I find myself questioning his moral sensitivity” (3).But a deeper understanding of Hamlet’s psychology to avenge his father’s killing essentially reveals that Hamlet is a self-deceived deceiver who commits crimes one after another under his aggrandized self as a justified avenger. Hamlet himself is always “acting, deceiving, lying, shielding himself from people and using people to promote his own ends” (1).

Works CitedJohnston, Ian. “Introductory Lecture on Shakespeare’s Hamlet” March 21, 2012. available at Shakespeare, William, Hamlet. London: Jeremy Publishers, 2003.