Hamlet: A Tragic Hero

Hamlet: A Tragic Hero

Relationships and the Journey to Purpose

Horatio

- “If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair

hither and say you are not fit” (V.ii.202-203)

Parents

-Strong, solid relationship for Hamlet

- Traits: trusting, endearing

Ophelia

- Honour and duty

- Traits: determined,

reverential

- Existence of love

- View of women

-" Here, Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows./ The queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet."

(V. II. 279-280)

- Traits: resentful,

sensitive

- “Rashly—and praised be rashness for it: let us know our indiscretion sometimes serves us well when our deep plots do pall, and that should teach us” (V.ii.6-10)

- Traits: passionate, unforgiving

- "I have heard of your paintings well enough. God hath given you one face and you make yourselves another” (III.i.142-143)

- “I lov’d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers

could not with all their quantity of love

make up my sum” (V.i.255-257)

- Traits: caring, passionate

Purpose

Horatio: “If your mind dislike anything, obey it. I will forestall their repair hither and say you are not fit.”

Hamlet: “Not a whit. We defy augury. There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man, of aught he leaves, knows aught, what is’t to leave betime? Let be.”

(V.ii.202-208)

Thesis Statement

Hamlet’s revelation of his purpose is a result of his life experiences acquired through his relationships with parental figures, Ophelia, and Horatio. The lessons learned through his interactions with these characters lead him to a state of surrendering his efforts and accepting providence in his life. Hamlet learns he does not have control over the outcomes of his life, but can only be prepared for the possible results.

Horatio

• “To put an antic disposition on” (I.v.180)

• "He that hath killed my king and whored my mother,/ Popped in between th' election and my hopes" (V.ii.64-65)

Parents

Old Hamlet

Gertrude

Claudius

• “On Fortinbras. He has my dying voice. So tell him, with th’occurrents more and less which have solicited—the rest is silent” (V.ii.349-351)

"No, by the rood, not so./ You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife, /And, would it were not so, you are my mother." (III. iv. 13-15)

Gertrude

 " Why, she would hang on him/ As if increases of appetite had grown/ By what it fed on; and yet within a month-/ Let me not think on't - Frailty, thy name is woman." (I. ii. 143-146)

Old Hamlet

Claudius

• “Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records…And thy command all alone shall live” (I.i.97-102)

• “My father’s brother—but no more like my father than I to Hercules”(I.ii.152-153)

• "Honour thy father and thy mother"

• “And that his soul may be damn’d and black as hell, whereto it go” (III.iii.94-95)

" Mother, good night indeed. This counsellor/ Is now most still, most secret, and most grave,/ Who was in life a foolish prating knave./ Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you./ Good night, mother."

Ophelia

• “ To a nunnery, go” (III.i.149)
• "We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us" (III.i.128-129)
• "I say we will have no mo marriage."

(III.i.146-147)

By: Christine, Jean, Nicole, Roann, Sheryl