Issue Of Revenge in Hamlet By Shakespeare

According to Oxford Living Dictionaries, revenge is the action of hurting or harming someone in return for an injury or wrong suffered at their hands. In other words, it is to repay and take vengeance. People need to calm down after being offended to give themselves time to create a plan or even just think about what is going to come out of their mouth in order to not hurt someone else. Forgiveness is a big key when it comes to revenge. You don’t necessarily have to take vengeance to be happy, you can quite simply forgive and let it go and you will feel free right after doing it.

In Hamlet by Shakespeare, we find major characters and also minor ones. Hamlet is one of the major characters in the play, he is the Prince of Denmark and also considered as the protagonist of the play. He is Queen Gertrude’s son and the king’s, Claudius, nephew. We can totally see the hate that hamlet shows toward Claudius since he killed his father in order to marry his mother. Hamlet is very hesitant and indecisive and always contradicting others, but he is sometimes very aggressive and takes impulsive decisions without thinking. Now, our second major antagonist character is Claudius. He is always using his power to attend his goals. In act four, Claudius shows some unworthy and disrespectful traits such as greed and corruption. He manipulates people by his selfishness and evil desires. For example, later on in the play, using his own way of language, he gets Laertes to finally agree on killing Hamlet.

One of the important minor characters is Laertes. During Act four, he hears about his father’s death so he immediately returns to Denmark to see what’s going on there. His anger is explaining how he wanted to punish Claudius and become King himself, but as we know everything about Claudius now, he is convinced that it was Hamlet who caused his father’s death when it’s not. Another minor character is Fortinbras. He is considered as a minor one because he doesn’t react nor speak to anything. Throughout the play, we can see how he impacts Hamlet’s view on his plan to take revenge. In act four, the action is taking place, we see Hamlet’s reflect on his own actions against Fortinbras’ actions. Even though Fortinbras’ actions gave him the idea to take immediate revenge, he still thinks about his actions and mostly the consequences.

To conclude, being selfish and evil just like Claudius doesn’t buy happiness but pain and suffering. In the following quote foolishly clever Claudius tries to kill the rightful king it shows how the rightful people are the innocent ones and that no matter what happens to them, they are going to inherit a better afterlife and a much happier life as well. Here is one of my favorite genius quotes Weak people revenge, Strong people forgive, intelligent people ignore. Revenge is not the solution, always think and overthink your thoughts and actions.