At this point, this blog post is so late, it shouldn't even be given any credit. I'm just forcing myself to sit down and do it to clear my guilty conscience. Someone else suffering from a guilty conscience is my good friend Prince Hamlet. Hamlet knows all about the emotions that come with letting things go too late: regret, anxiety, and most powerful of all, guilt. Throughout the play, we see the prince assign himself the task of avenging his father's death. It seems pretty clear cut, but Hamlet struggles to accomplish his goal. It may be frustrating for modern teens reading the play to understand Hamlet's delay in acting. They simply get annoyed by his waffling and toss the book away in disgust, not wanting to "waste" their time reading Shakespeare, least of all Shakespeare in which "nothing happens". But if Hamlet's character was examined a bit more closely by my peers, I believe they'd find they have quite a bit in common with the gloomy prince.
First, let's talk about the regret aspect of Hamlet's character. What, exactly, does he regret? The death of his father, of course. But more than that, Hamlet regrets his own weakness. He regrets the fact that even though he knows (or believes he knows) what he has to do, he can't bring himself to do it. In his admittedly long-winded soliloquies, Hamlet expresses frustration and regret that he struggles to take action against Claudius, bemoaning the fact that a fictional character in a play can "force his soul to his own conceit" faster than he can. This leads in to the next emotion getting in our hero's way: anxiety. One would think that the young, well-liked heir to the throne of a powerful country wouldn't have too much to worry about, but this is a tragedy we're talking about here. Following Hamlet's regret at his plight comes the anxiety. Why hasn't he taken his revenge yet? Did he pass up the only chance he'd ever get to kill his uncle? Is he even capable of avenging his father's murder? Why would his father assign him this task if he couldn't follow through? Does that make him a worthless person, or worse, a worthless son? These are the types of questions I picture flying through Hamlet's head while he hems and haws and schemes and doesn't take action. After all, when something goes wrong, especially one's plans for revenge, we like to look for somebody to blame. And for every cynic who says we only blame others, there are two people like Hamlet who know from experience that the doubt and anxieties never truly leave your own shoulders. Completing Hamlet's vicious trifecta of crippling emotions is guilt. Despite his mandatory heroic flaws, I would argue that Hamlet really is a good prince and son. He recognizes that what Claudius and his mother have done is bad for both Denmark as a nation and the royal family. What child wouldn't be willing to come to the defense of their parent (or carry out a revenge killing in their honor, as the case may be)? That's where Hamlet stumbles into the wicked swamp that is guilt. As Shakespeare makes painfully obvious, Hamlet really wants to do his father's (ghost's) bidding. He wants so badly to kill his traitorous uncle and set things right in Denmark. And as we see, he does, eventually. But it takes him so long. And all along the way, he's hating himself for it. The responsibility placed upon his shoulders is a cut and dry deal, yet he cannot bring himself to do it, and that's when the guilt starts piling on. His father's well-being in the afterlife is riding on Hamlet, and he's failing. There could be no worse feeling for the poor prince, and to me, that's where the tragedy in this play truly lies: watching this young man fall apart, only receiving a Pyrrhic victory for his struggles.
So we've established that Hamlet is a pretty miserable guy. Understandably so. But what does that have to do with connecting modern youngsters to this 400 year old play? Everything. Because as much as we teenagers moping through English class don't want to admit, we are all Hamlet. People don't change; regret, anxiety, and guilt are all emotions to which those of us are accustomed. I'll use myself as an example. Without boasting, I am a very good student. I love my classes, and I want to do well in them; much like Hamlet was a good prince, who loved his father very much, and wanted to do right by him. Yet sometimes, the pressure I feel and the workload I am given causes me to make a mistake and miss assignments. Despite my best efforts, I often struggle to make them up due to intense feelings of guilt, shame, etc. One would think that feeling guilty would encourage one to redress the issue sooner, but for me at least, it just adds to the quagmire and slows everything down. My point that I'm attempting to make here is that everyone can relate to the tragic hero of Hamlet, because the emotions he feels and expresses throughout the play are ones that everyone, especially teens in high school, have felt before.
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