Breon Ebanks
Ms. Masciantonio
AP English Literature
23 February 2012

Hamlet Analysis Essay “It’s is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane”. (Philip K Dick). Hamlet is always questioning himself about his father’s murder, his mother’s guilt and his life. His obsession causes his insanity. Hamlet is depressed, confused, and paranoid the traumatizing events on his life. Hamlet is depressed at his mother’s lustful behavior towards his uncle, so he’s taking his anger out on Ophelia. In doing so, Hamlet was saying mean things that made her feel bad about her especially when he told her “Get thee to a nunnery, why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me,” (3.1. 123-126). Hamlet shows a strange way of loving Ophelia because one minute he loves her the next minute he’s rude to her. These actions prove his instability. Normal people do not love someone one minute and curse her the next because that is just unrealistic. Lidz said, “Perhaps he seeks to hide the meaning of his embittered and melancholic behavior under the guise of being depressed over Ophelia’s withdrawal of her affection, but it seems a cruel and deceitful way to treat his beloved” (Lidz, Theodore). Hamlet is depressed because of Ophelia’s withdrawal even though he is just being manipulative to her. Hamlet is confused and disorientated. He considers killing himself to end his troubles. In act 3, scene 1, lines 61-63, Hamlet says “And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep No more and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks”. Hamlet talks as though he wants to just end his life because all his mental problems that he is having would die out. Hamlet talk as if dying is the only way to end his suffering. No logical or rational person would want to kill him or herself. “The terms schizophrenia and paranoia are most useful in attempting some assessment of poetic madness that shapes the colossally obsessed and disturbed Hamlet” (Aldus, P.J). Clearly, Hamlet is not in his right mind. Hamlet sees the ghost of his father and that is what drives him to see these paranoid visions. Hamlet was already acting strange with wearing nothing but black and moping everyday, but now he is just plain insane because he talks to ghost. In act 1, scene 5, lines 170-177 “How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself (As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on), That you at such times seeing me, never shall with arms encumbered thus.” This is when Hamlet is paranoid because he just saw a ghost that claims to be his father and now this will probably dive into hamlet’s madness, and Aldus argues “The possibilities for reflections, images, shadows from all sides, are infinitely enhanced by sophisticated use of the art of illusion, add to it an extension of the ordinary concept of madness” (Aldus, P.J). In a way, this is what change Hamlet and therefore made him insane. Finally, we are coming to the final moment of Hamlet so the question remains, Is Hamlet really insane, and the answer are yes. Hamlet is depressed, confused, and paranoid because he is still grieving over the fact that his father is gone. In addition, his unstable love of Ophelia, and dislike for his mother and dysfunction with the idea that Claudius is King of Denmark, adds to his in mental instability. Hamlet was losing mind throughout the story because of all the things he was going through at that time. Hamlet was not in the right mind; I mean besides the clothes he was wearing his whole attitude is what changes his perspective and moods. Hamlet was never pretending to be insane because he was insane. As I read Hamlet, I had to really say that he was very paranoid by the rude things he said about Ophelia and his mother and Polonius. We really saw that Hamlet was confused, dysfunction, and depressed.