Arrogance In Hamlet

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William Shakespeare’s Hamlet lead the protagonist down a never ending spiral for revenge on his father’s murderer, which ultimately lead to his own death and six others. I will uncover how Hamlet’s quest for revenge and his own personal arrogance and pride made him mentally unstable which lead to his own demise.
Act I, Scene II Hamlets father has been dead for two month and Hamlet is revealed wearing all black and mourning the death of his father. He is confronted by the reality at court in the kingdom that people have moved on from the mourning of his father and are celebrating the marriage of King Claudius and his mother Gertrude the Queen. These gestures make Hamlet depressed, uneasy and suspicious of everyone’s happiness. The Queen tells …show more content…

With this he involves Horatio and as he predicted this made the King furious. This just added to Hamlets madness and anger for revenge and to his arrogance. With these actions the king is now alerted that Hamlet knows of his guilt in killing his father which puts the king on guard. Hamlet enters where he thinks the King is praying and has a chance to take his revenge and kill the King, but doesn’t. Hamlet looking upon the king, “Now might I do it pat, now’a is a-praying, and now will I do’t-and so ‘a goes to heaven, and so am I revenged. That would be scanned” (Mays). With this statement Hamlet feels the king is praying for forgiveness which will allow the king to go to heaven. Since Hamlet is so consumed in vengeance for his father it is really unclear why he didn’t kill the King at this moment or at least wait until he was done praying. “Some critics believe that Hamlet vacillates yet again in yet another self-deception of word play. In fact, this moment represents the pivotal point in the play--the moment of truth. Hamlet seems confused, terrified, conflicted; he imprisons himself more deeply in words and avoids having to kill Claudius.” (Uddin). This is the peak of Hamlets madness and show how unstable his thoughts really

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