Essay on Indecision, Hesitation and Delay in...

Admonished by the ghost of his poisoned father, troubled by the stench of a kingdom in decline, outraged by his queen mothers incestuous liaison, why did Hamlet wait so long to act decisively? Theories abound. Hamlet had an Oedipus complex. Hamlet was mad rather than merely pretending to be. Hamlet was an intellectual pansy. Hamlet was an existentialist. Etc. T. S. Eliot went so far as to say that the play itself was flawed, Hamlets Problem actually the authors own, insoluble. I believe that the Problem is actually ours. Perhaps the real issue is not Hamlets hesitation, but our unwillingness to understand it. In an ironic maneuver, Shakespeare has Hamlet tell us about the self-destructive power of a tragic flaw: So,†¦show more content†¦He obviously refers to himself. The terrible shock of his fathers murder has gotten him thinking, probably for the first time in his young and (according to Ophelias description) idealistic life, about the irreversible reality of death. If nothing lasts and the good guys are mortal and the noblest minds and their brightest dreams can succumb to a dose of poison, what difference can anything make? What basis can there be for action? The composer of Prufrock and The Hollow Men should really have known better. Far from making it a mystery, Shakespeare uses scene after scene to drive home the link between Hamlets passivity and his preoccupation with death and decay, although Hamlet himself does not--and for purposes of tragedy cannot--grasp this connection until its too late. That Shakespeare thus enlightens us (or tries to) through his bewildered and introspective sufferer constitutes a supreme dramatic achievement. For instance: How stand I then, That have a father killd, a mother staind, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men, That, for aShow MoreRelated Indecision, Hesitation and Delay in Shakespeares Hamlet - Procrastination and Indecision1770 Words   |  8 PagesHamlet – the Hesitation and Indecision  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   Is there a plausible explanation for the hesitation by Hamlet in carrying out the ghost’s request in Shakespeare’s Hamlet?    Lawrence Danson in the essay â€Å"Tragic Alphabet† discusses the hesitation in action by the hero; this is related to his hesitation in speech:    To speak or act in a world where all speech and action are equivocal seeming is, for Hamlet, both perilous and demeaning, a kind of whoring. 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