Every time I sit and take notes about your Socratic Seminars, I have a great day. Why? Because you guys say GREAT THINGS! Check out the highlights from your Hamlet discussion, below:
Tragic flaw:
Hamlet’s tragic flaw is: “an inability to correctly assess situations, especially their consequences. ... ‘I’m going to act mad and take the throne.’ He’s unable to see that this...isn’t going to work.”
“All of his other problems come from a deeper inability to accept loss.”
“I don’t think there IS a right way to deal with loss.”
“While I agree that there is no right way to deal with loss, I think the huge thing he has for revenge is very wrong.”
(Not until Yorick does he realize that) “when people die, they’re gone. Which doesn’t make any sense, because the whole play started because of the death of his father.”
“I think his tragic flaw is self-obsession. Because he spends the entire play espousing this philosophy that people are bad, and earthly things are bad, and...I’m still talking! And he says these things to Ophelia, when he has...so much power over her. She is not in a powerful position in the play. And he tells her...to be like ice...to be pure as ice. And she takes his words to heart, she kills herself, she becomes water, she drowns herself. And I don’t think it’s until the graveyard scene that he realizes the value of humanity. Because when Yorick is a skull, he’s a human being in his truest form.” (Hamlet expected to find water, to find purity, and instead he found a dead body.) “All artifice has been stripped away.”
“It may just be that he’s an immature college student who doesn’t really understand the consequences of his actions, and he thinks he’s the center of the universe because he’s young. And he says things without thinking, and all he thinks about is, ‘how could they do this to ME?’ And I think a lot of versions of Hamlet make it look like he’s crazy and he’s a jerk...and in a way that’s totally true! But how many of us have not thought about ourselves as the center of the universe? I know I’ve called myself on that.”
“Before he stabs Polonius he asks,’is that the king?’ but he just came from the king who was praying, so it’s likely that he knows it wasn’t the king. It’s more like someone interrupted his plan so he’s just going to shank the guy.”
“A lot of people think that Ophelia and Gertrude are very easily influenced, but I would argue that Hamlet is also very easily influenced by the people around him.”
(Olivier calls this) “the tragedy of someone who couldn’t make up his mind,’ right? And I think if anything it might be the opposite. With other characters—like Claudius—he’s able to hold two contradictory ideas in his mind at the same time. Like when he’s praying and he feels guilty, but he’s not willing to give up the things he got. Those are two ideas at the same time. And with Gertrude, as well... I think it’s reasonable that she suspects something of Claudius. And we see a little of that in the scene in her bedroom. Whereas with Hamlet...it’s that single-mindedness that destroys him.”
“Claudius actually thought things through and was organized, where Hamlet...whoa!”
“We see an example of his success when he stops the war with Norway. And we know he’s willing to see other people’s perspectives” (i.e. even if he seems to care only for his own gain).
“I don’t think Claudius is necessarily good in the sense that he does what’s good for his country and his people, but he’s good in the sense that he’s...effiicient. He gets what needs to be done done.” (He is aware of the threats against his country and his throne)
“He has the ability to persuade the people around him, whereas Hamlet doesn’t seem to have this ability.”
“A lot of his priorities are selfishly motivated, but they happen to lead to doing good for the country.”
“At least Claudius can admit to his mistakes [even if he doesn’t care]. But I don’t think Hamlet can do that, which would make him a much worse leader.”
“Hamlet never once regrets his actions. He says, ‘That was crazy Hamlet, not me, who did all that stuff.’ Claudius takes responsibility for what he’s done wrong. Hamlet never once does that.”
“I think that if we look at the geopolitical aspects... apparently Fortinbras is coming to invade...POLAND. Because that’s what we do at the time, I guess. And Claudius doesn’t do anything. He doesn’t even mention that Fortinbras, who is Denmark’s enemy, is coming. And you’d think he would. So you can interpret this two ways: He’s not very paranoid, or he’s kind of apathetic.”
“Hamlet would not be a great king, either. He’s really paranoid.”
“Claudius is actually a pretty good ruler relative to Hamlet. With all the scenes in court, he handled that pretty quickly. When he was planning to kill Hamlet he thought about the kingdom, too—oh, they all like Hamlet—he was thinking about keeping the kingdom calm.” Whereas Hamlet, “is both too impulsive AND overthinks things too much. Somehow.”
“He also lets Fortinbras march through his land. Like, I wouldn’t do that personally.”
“He’s a good ruler in terms of political finesse. But I don’t think he’s a good ruler in terms of what’s actually good for the country. He just cares about his own personal gain.”
Seeming vs. Being:
“Everyone in the play has a fraction of the big picture. ...No one else really knows that Hamlet’s only acting insane. ...No one really knows except for Hamlet that Claudius killed the king. And there never really is a reveal.”
“It’s so hard to be an audience member in this play. WE have more information than any one of the characters. But Hamlet himself is not completely reliable. We’re used to having soliloquys be these reliable sources of information, but Hamlet’s (potential madness) means that we can’t even trust those.”
“I think at the end the play goes out of its way to highlight this weird duality (difference between seeming and being) by having Hamlet receive a military funeral from Fortinbras like a hero, despite his lunacy and the fact that he’s gone out of his way to destroy all the (nobility) of Denmark.”
“If you see the ghost as real, this can be a further argument that the ghost is real, because they don’t always have aligning ideas. But it could also be that (Hamlet’s affection for his mother keeps him from wanting to attack her) and the ghost is a part of Hamlet’s mind. So here’s another way Shakepeare plays with the ambiguity of what’s happening.”
Re: Ophelia: I think he honestly doesn’t KNOW if he likes her or not.
“When Polonius is telling everyone that Hamlet Is crazy for love of Ophelia, she’s like ‘what about the death of his father and our marriage? Couldn’t that be the issue?’ But the second she gets shot down by the men in the room, she kind of steps back and then she never says that again.”
“It was probably way more Claudius wanting to get married than Gertrude waniting to get married, and so to put all the weight of that on her so soon after her husband’s death... I feel like, like Ophelia, she’s probably oppressed by the wants of the men in her life.”
“They’re distant in the play. Usually we see that as Gertrude’s fault. Hamlet attributes that to her. But I think he’s actually the one distancing himself.”
“I don’t think there’s anything deeper to it. I don’t think she knew it was poison or anything. I think she just...drank it...because...she was thirsty.”
“She doesn’t really treat Hamlet like he can have his own, real feelings.”
“Hamlet paints her as this very weak person who can’t control herself and gravitates towards Claudius. And Shakespeare doesn’t do a lot to contradict that. At least in Hamlet, the women can’t function without the men. And this raises a lot of strange questions for me—who are the women supposed to be?”
“You know how when like your dog dies your mom tries to sugar coat it and says it went to like ‘the farm’ or something... I think that’s what Gertrude does at the beginning of the play, where she tries to give Hamlet advice but she doesn’t really know what to do herself so it’s this sugar-coated, bad advice. ...Later in the play, when she and Claudius are talking, she says exactly what’s going on with Hamlet. She just doesn’t know how to talk to him about it.”
“I don’t think Gertrude is spineless. I think she’s just terrified of the people around her. And rightly so—they keep killing each other everywhere. ...I think she does want to help him, she’s just terrified that Claudius is going to hurt her, or Hamlet is going to hurt her, or...Laertes is going to hurt her.”
“I also think Gertrude has done a lot to protect Hamlet. Because if you look at it when the king dies, we have a widow and her son, and the uncle is coming to power. And if you look at it, they’re without protection. But when Claudius offers to marry her, this is a way to protect herself and Hamlet, so that Claudius won’t come after them. And it works—he doesn’t go after Hamlet until Hamlet shows clearly (that he’s coming after Claudius).”
“I think her redeeming moment is when she drinks the poison that’s meant for Hamlet, and then alerts him to the scheme. So she saves him, but by mistake. That reflects badly on all the women throughout the play.”
“We only have two women. One is arguably a criminal, and one is so weak that she goes insane when all the men in her life leave.”
“My impression is honestly that as soon as King Hamlet was dead Claudius went to Gertrude and said ‘you’re going to come quietly.’” If she had tried to rule by herself...first of all, she’s a widowed queen and we don’t know if she would have been taken seriously. And then when King Hamlet was alive, (the little evidence we have indicates) that she was very dependent on him. And then Claudius would have probably tried to wrest the throne from her. I feel like there was no other option she had but to marry Claudius.”
By marrying Claudius, “Gertrude still secures Hamlet’s place on the throne and Claudius is willing to give that up after he dies. But I feel like Hamlet doesn’t really pick up on the fact that if Gertrude DOESN’T do this then they’re both kind of screwed.”
“S. Actually made Ophelia’s craziness...defendable? I mean, it didn’t seem out of the blue. She’s a teenage girl who’s treated terribly by everyone around her, and it makes sense that she’d go crazy.”
“The first impression you get of her is that she’s kind of a snitch. Because she has no obligation to divulge all the details of her relationship to her father. But whatever, she was raised that way. But then she takes it a step further and actually gives Polonius Hamlet’s letter.”
“I don’t think her death was purposeful suicide. I think she just accepted what had happened when she fell into the water and didn’t care enough to get back out.”
“Something we see as a trope in a lot of literature, and you can definitely see this in Hamlet, is that women are pointed to to be the moral compass, and that men expect women to take care of things, even their consciences. A tendency you see is that women have to take on (responsibility for) the faults of other people. And when we read the thing online about how Ophelia makes everyone realize that they screwed up and drove this girl to madness... she doesn’t have power in that moment! She looks like she does, but she’s insane, and any power that you see comes from the literal destruction of her person.”
“When you feel like you don’t have power, you go insane. Things just start going terrible.”
Ophelia’s death is really similar to Hamlet. And...I think it’s a commentary on abusive parents and what they do to children.”
“When Ophelia passes out flower and stuff...that’s the only time we see a woman speak her own mind. The only time she has freedom is when she’s mad.”
Why Hamlet? Why today?
“It’s sort of a messed up coming of age story in that it’s about a young person...well, a LOT of young people...trying to figure out what to do with this messed up situation.”
(Re: the “whole fake news thing”): “When you really think about it, Hamlet is a play about deception. ..It’s kind of reflective in that people will react to what information they’re given, and the information they’re given isn’t always correct.” (In relation to the Ghost.)
“When you get really emotionally heated, you know what you’re doing is wrong, but you don’t care, because you feel like the other person has it coming for being a jerk.”