Hamlet Post

For my essay on the play Hamlet I am torn between focusing on the two characters Laertes and Hamlet and the similar situations that they experience or the difference between how Hamlet reacts to his father’s death and how Ophelia reacts to her father’s death.

I think that the comparison between Laertes and Hamlet would be interesting because the situations mirror each other.

Toward the end of the play, Hamlet, it becomes fairly apparent that Laertes and Hamlet are very similar. Both Laertes and Hamlet are put into situations that are very similar to each other. At the very beginning of the play Hamlet is faced with the horrible feeling that his father has been murdered. Hamlet is haunted by the ghost of his father and the ghost shows Hamlet the truth about his father’s death and Hamlet is encouraged to seek revenge for his father. The ghost shows him that his own uncle killed his father and Hamlet is constantly persuaded to kill his uncle.

After Hamlet kills Polonius, Laertes is overcome with grief and just like Hamlet he is encouraged to seek revenge from an outside source. The king brings Laertes into his chambers and he tells Laertes that his father deserves to be avenged and the king encourages Laertes to kill Hamlet.

However I also think that the comparison between Ophelia and Hamlet would be a good topic because there is the option to compare how women and men react to grief differently. Hamlet and Ophelia very obviously deal with the death of their fathers in very different ways, yet for both of them it is just how they deal with the grief of losing a loved one.