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Hamlet and Religion

I have a thesis for an essay I am writing, and would appreciate
any comments/concerns/insults, etc...

Here is the thesis:

The story of Hamlet is a story that is full of many lessons of life. It is filled with the best that is in humans, and the worst. It covers all moods, all feelings, and all forms of expressing them. In no other play, modern or ancient, are so many of the facets of the human being covered. Hamlet is a joy to read, but it also has within its pages many lessons that can be taken from it and used, to improve the life of people, even today, 500 years after it was first penned. The characters in this play are what make it so special. Through their actions, (or lack thereof) eight people are killed. Most of the eight are swept up in an evil that engulfs Denmark, and clouds the minds and actions of those involved. This evil begins to seep into the play at the very beginning, with the poisoning of old Hamlet. From this point it grows, each new evil adding on to the previous, until the point that it is out of control, and unstoppable. As the Queen Gertrude says in her Aside in act IV:

[Aside] To my sick soul (as sin's true nature is)
Each toy seems prolouge to some great amiss;
so full of artless jealousy is guilt
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.

Rotteness, cankers, ‘things rank and gross in nature' greet us at every twist in the plot. All of this evilness and sin could have been avoided if the characters could have trusted in God and the ‘Heavens' enough to let go, and let God deal with the guilty, instead of taking fate into their own hand's. The inability of the characters to deal with, or even see, the moral and spiritual dilemmas that stared them in the face led to the cataclysmic ending in which two families were destroyed.

Posted by Aragorn on March 29, 1997 at 18:55:08


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Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries & Replies From Everyone Else 3.15.97: Top | Help