Hamlet is Only Acting Insane Essay

Throughout Shakespeares play, Hamlet, the main character, is faced with the responsibility of having revenge for his fathers murder. He decides to pretend Crazy as part of his plan to gain the opportunity to kill Claudius. As the play progresses, his plan of a madman becomes believable, and the people around him react accordingly. However, through his inner thoughts and the apparent reasons for his actions, it is clear that he is not really mad and is simply an actor acting out his craziness in order to fulfill his duty to his father.

Hamlet was incredibly smart. He concocted all of these plans for the avenging of his father's death, and sometimes he overlooked that the other characters weren't quite as brilliant as he was. (Like when he wrote the secret message to Ophelia in his letter that he was going to fake acting mad, but she didn't understand and thought he really was crazy.) However, he focused his life so completely on killing Claudius that he sometimes lost focus and acting so out of character that he seems to be crazy. I don't think Hamlet is crazy so much that he is so normally a calm and composed person and when his adrenaline kicks in he gets a little wired.

For example, Hamlet did not kill the King when the opportunity arose because Hamlet believed that if he killed the King while he was praying, the King would go to heaven. He felt that this would defeat the whole purpose of seeking revenge which is said by Hamlet, "Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, And that his soul may be as damned and black As hell, whereto it goes" (III, iii, 93-95)

However, when he stabbed Polonius, and screamed "Is it the king?" he honestly thinking that he had killed Claudius, but he had just seen Claudius repenting his sins in the corridor. He also ran into the room screaming at his mother and even after he killed Polonius, the father of the woman he loved, he continued bashing her as if nothing had happened. He also often talks about suicide, most famously in the "To be or not to be" speech.

But I think that Hamlet is not crazy at all, he is just pretending. He knew what he was trying to do and it got a little out of hand and stubble into some big and major situations that infected his mothers death and his very one death which was is downfall. This is what I believe and hamlet is not crazy, someone like hamlet, acting crazy is sign of a genius in the very good book. I loved it.