A Psychoanalytic Analysis of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet using Kubler-Ross’ Five Stages of Grief, Focusing on Anger, Depression, and Acceptance
Within William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the Prince is depressed, having been summoned home to Denmark from school in Germany to attend his father's funeral, he is shocked to find his mother Gertrude already remarried, and to none other than his uncle Claudius. To Hamlet, the marriage is a phony and to make it worse Claudius is crowned King despite the fact that Hamlet was heir to the throne. Losing someone is always difficult to deal with especially when it is someone really close to you, such as a parent or a sibling. However, in Hamlet’s case, it’s the loss of his father and he is bereaved over it. Within this context, in the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare, he utilizes Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief, focusing on anger, depression, and acceptance to show how Hamlet deals with the death of his father and his mother’s quick remarry to his uncle Claudius.
Anger is a feeling that everyone goes through when dealing with the death of a loved one. Whether this person is an immediate family member …show more content…
Essentially, the prince is saying that to sleep is to dream, and if he kills himself he can sleep and dream instead of having to deal with the bad luck that life has given him. Hamlet wanting to kill himself is an important example of his depression. Hamlet wanted to put all the pain away once and for all then do the noble thing and fight against it every day. Not wanting to deal with everyday tasks and feelings is a sign of depression. Clearly, this proves that Hamlet is suffering from depression because he lost his father to murder and his mother has remarried a family