Hamlet I: Chasing Ghosts

     Shakespeare sets the stage in the first few acts of his play Hamlet. Hamlet the king has just died while his son the protagonist Hamlet was away at school, this Hamlet returns home in time for his father’s funeral, his mother’s marriage to his father’s brother Claudius, and for Claudius to be crowned king. This all happened within a month, creating a lot of suspicion, grief, anger, and a want to continue his studies, all within poor Hamlet.

     Within the first two acts, Hamlet sees his father’s ghost, who claims that Claudius killed him. At this point Hamlet seems to be going crazy to those around him. He’s a very smart guy, but he’s also a man in his thirties who is still more interested in his studies than anything else before the tragedy of his father.

William Shakespeare

     Ghosts represent many things within stories, and Hamlet is having a pretty rough time. Shakespeare used ghosts to portray Hamlet’s poor value system, and inability to chase after tangible things. Hamlet doesn’t have anything going for him other than his education, which is useful, but in real life things have to come after education, education itself isn’t the best aim in life. When tragedy comes along, if your highest aim gives you insufficient resources to deal with the tragedy, maybe that’s not the right highest aim.

     During a time of grief, people have a tendency to help themselves and others get through it, or turn the loss into a form of hell. Hamlet is a good and well-meaning guy, but he has no highest aim past being smart, so when his father dies and his mother strangely marries someone new within the same month, Hamlet can’t really do anything but be cynical, or at least that’s what he thinks from his perspective.

Hamlet & the Ghost

     Hamlet chases ghosts, acting on his own suspicions and subconscious belief that Claudius killed his father thinking doing something about that to be a useful way to get through his father’s death rather than searching for what is best in the long term. If you have to rationalize something, especially in a time of dissonance and tragedy where your parameters are askew rather than trying to rationalize away your actions, reflect on them and your thought process to re-direct your path to get to your ultimate aims, which is in this case getting past a time of grief.