Essay Hamlet Theme Family

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Grace 1

Kayla Grace
October 29, 2012
Unit 2: Family
797 words
Hamlet: Family Relationships The theme, family, in The Tragedy of Hamlet is major theme with lots of major points. This play is notorious for how it dwells on the issue of incest. In Shakespeare’s time, incest was a sin against God and the state. Queen Elizabeth I asked the Church of England to come up with a list of rules about marriage, basically a list of relatives who couldn’t marry, including in-laws. Also another focus is how politics can impact the dynamics of family. The values brought on by a parent are vital in developing a characters values and sense of purpose. Although Hamlet shows all distress about his mother’s marriage is Claudius, his relationship …show more content…
In addition, the ghost of King Hamlet informs him Claudius murdered him. When Claudius begins to receive a hint that Hamlet knew the crime he committed, he began finding ways to get rid of him. While those plans failed, he mentions to Laertes, “Requite [Hamlet] for your father”. (IV.vii.138) In the end, everyone’s hate for everyone ends in tragedy. Following the loss of their fathers, Hamlet, Laertes, and Ophelia lose motivation and stability that they once had provided to them, which eventually leads to their death. Throughout Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, fathers can’t always be trusted to care for their children. As we know, Hamlet idolized his father, King Hamlet and frequently compares him to Hercules or Hyperion. But a question asked is if old King Hamlet were still alive, would he be better than CLaudius or Polonius? Parents and their children suffer from unhealthy relationships. Though
Grace 4
Hamlet’s relationships with his mother and father are not awful, the other parent-child relationships are just horrific. These frictions lead to the pain of others in the story. But because the story is a tragedy, without these flaws, there would be a totally different ending to this story. Point blank of the importance of the theme “family” in Hamlet, family matters, like incest, carry huge political and religious implications in 16th century England and also in the
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