I was chosen to read Hamlet by William Shakespeare for my British Literature class, not by choice. At first, I couldn’t understand a wink of the book, the old English was really hard to understand. But as I read the story, it’s generally about a man who wants to avenge his father’s murder. (Act 1 Scene 2) By doing this he picks up little tiny hints that could try and lead him to his father’s murderer. Like the ghost scene where his DEAD FATHER pops up and he tells Hamlet that his death was no accident, it was a murder. (Act 1 Scene 5) And that ONE SENTENCE leads to Hamlet wanting to get revenge like no other, like seeing red type of angry. After hearing that, he starts to really notice Claudius’ actions, it made It seem like he was victorious of something, but what? His reign short lived after Hamlet catches him praying, it wasn’t going to get him anywhere anyway. He’s damned. But if Hamlet would’ve killed him as he was praying, Claudius’ soul would’ve gone to heaven. But if it weren’t from that, Hamlet wouldn’t have had a second thought about it. He wanted him to suffer for his unruly sins. (Act 3 Scene 3)
Anyway. First, Hamlets father dies. Ow. But this causes Hamlet to be overcome by grief and depression, not a good combination... But when his mother and Claudius basically say, “Father’s die all the time, get over it” he gets suspicious. Like who even says that to their kid? Afterwards, he tries to dig deeper into his father’s death. Now we fast forward to the ghost of hamlets dead dad. His dad tells Hamlet that his death was no accident or natural cause, it was a –murder-. Like shouldn’t Gertrude, Hamlets mom, still be grieving over the loss of her husband?
Now Hamlets looking around and his eyes lock -smack dab- onto Claudius and Gertrude. After noticing the happiness his NON-GRIEVING mother is radiating with his uncle. Anyway, Hamlet goes to a play with them called, “The Mousetrap.” After showing Claudius this play, he acted out and this was game point to Hamlet. Get it? It’s called the Mousetrap. And Claudius is the mouse. Sneaky clever coincidence? I think NOT. (Act 3 Scene 2)
My personal connections to Hamlet involving death and revenge connects to separate parts of life. I chose them because I knew I would be able to connect it to myself personally or someone else. My connection to Hamlets issues are I had lost my uncle a few years back due to his ex-wife. And for revenge is that I know people who are murdered, afterwards their family wants nothing more than to get revenge on the person that murdered them, but in the real world, they can’t.
My message is to anyone interested in William Shakespeare. I made 2 real connections to people who had endured what happened to Hamlets father. It was so creepy. One is that a father of 2, had died from what he had thought was just an ear infection. But come to find out it was a strange type of ear poisoning. I connected that with how Hamlets father died since poison was poured into his ear, and it had killed him. Another connection was with Khaled Meshaal, he had poison sprayed into his ear, as an act of assassination.
The purpose of my letter is to have people acknowledge what Hamlet had to have been going through to be able to overcome his depression and such, to be able to catch Claudius in his lying little scheme about not knowing what happened to his brother, calling it an accident or natural cause, to be able to obtain power, wealth, and Gertrude.
At the end of the book, I was able to understand how badly Hamlet wanted to finally be able to achieve the revenge of his father. I could almost feel his pain. He had many things standing in the way of him and finally letting his father’s soul rest in peace. He had tried anything and everything to have Claudius fess up to his crimes so he could avenge his father’s soul. And I feel a great deal of sorrow for him. But afterwards, seeing everything he did. It was worth it.
