Hamlet Essay, Research Paper

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross developed a theory based on what she perceived to be the stages of acceptance of death. Her theory has been taken further by psychologists and therapists to explain the stages of grief in general. Kubler-Ross identified five stages: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, as happening in that order. In William Shakespeare s Hamlet, Hamlet exhibits all five stages of grief, we can assume in relation to the recent death of his father, but not necessarily in this order, and in fact the five seem to overlap in many parts of the play.

Instead of denial and isolation, which is the first stage according to Kubler-Ross, Hamlet dwells in a state of depression. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Department of Psychiatry states Depression occurs as a reaction to the changed way of life created by the loss. The bereaved person feels intensely sad, hopeless, drained and helpless (www.uams.edu). Hamlet s depression is revealed in his fourth soliloquy. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer/ Or take arms against a sea of troubles,/ And by opposing them? To die, to sleep; (Shakespeare III.i.57-60) Meditative and weary Hamlet gives up on any hope for the future. He contemplates suicide making obvious his profound state of despair. Hamlet s thoughts of suicide continue in this painful speech, His canon gainst self-slaughter! Oh God! God!/ How weary, stale flat and unprofitable,/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!/ Fie on t! Ah fie! tis an unweeded garden (I.ii.132-135) Here are a sickness of life, and even a longing for death, that strengthens Hamlet s intense depression.

While Hamlet may still be feeling depressed Hamlet moves into the stage of denial and isolation. Hamlet feels the effects of denial and isolation mostly due to his love, Ophelia. Both Hamlet s grief and his task constrain him from realizing this love, but Ophelia s own behavior clearly intensifies his frustration and anguish. By keeping the worldly and disbelieving advice of her brother and father as watchmen to her heart (I.iii.46), she denies the heart s affection not only in Hamlet, but in herself; and both denials add immeasurably to Hamlet s sense of loneliness and loss and anger. Her rejection of him echoes his mother s inconstancy and denies him the possibility even of imagining the experience of loving and being loved by a woman at a time when he obviously needs such love most profoundly.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern both intensify Hamlet s and our sense of the increasing emptiness of his world. At the first arrival of Hamlet s good friends he welcomes them to Denmark with warmth and the urgency and openness of his plea for the continuation of their friendship (Bloom 133). I will not sort you with the rest of my servants, (Shakespeare II.ii.270) As soon as Hamlet discovers that his dear friends are unequivocal sponges of the King, he can release his anger against them without any ambivalence (Bloom 133). After this discovery is when Hamlet fully realizes the extent to which, except for Horatio, he is now utterly alone in Denmark with his grief and his task. I have of late, (II.ii.299) he tells his friends revealing his deep sadness for their abandonment of him.

Although seldom and difficult to find him doing, Hamlet does undergo a phase of bargaining. In Death and Dying Kubler-Ross s theory explains that in a state of bargaining the bereaved bargains with god to fulfill his desires. He will make sacrifices to get what he wants (Kubler- Ross 93). We don t see Hamlet bargaining with god as clearly as we see him bargaining with himself. Hamlet questions the validity of the ghost. Hamlet doubts the ghost s legitimacy for if the ghost is really a demon Hamlet will not have to follow through on the avengement. Hamlet undergoes an internal struggle to decide whether to act upon avenging his father s death, if it is in fact his father. Hamlet also bargains with himself with his contemplation of suicide. If Hamlet ends his life he will rid himself of the responsibility of the duty of revenge. This internal bargaining leads Hamlet to suffer and continue through his grief process.

Before Hamlet is able to reach acceptance Hamlet goes through a stage of anger. Alicia Skinner Cook and Kevin Ann Oltjenbruns in Dying and Grieving state that This stage involves feelings of anger, rage, envy, and resentment (Cook 9) Ophelia is one of the main causes of Hamlet s anger. Hamlet demonstrates his rage in Act III when he realizes that in his confrontation with Ophelia she is a decoy and he is being spied on. Hamlet breaks out into uncontrollable hatred and fury. He cries, Go to, I ll no more on t; it hath make me mad (Shakespeare III.i.155). His words at the end of this scene are wild and whirling. He loses control and gives voice to the loathing that is in him, the cynicism that borders on madness (Bloom 87). Hamlet in this scene is cruel to Ophelia: so too he is cruel to his mother later. He tortures both of them, because he once loved them. They agonize him with the remembrance of what they once were to him, of what he himself is now (87). This anger stage is what finally motivates Hamlet to act. We see the results of his anger in the final act when Hamlet avenges his father s death and kills Claudius. The murder of Claudius leads to his acceptance of his destiny.

In agreement to Kubler-Ross s theory, Hamlet s final stage of grief that he goes through is the stage of acceptance. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross characterizes this stage in Death and Dying as a stage in which depression nor anger are seen about his fate . He will have been able to express his previous feelings, his envy, and his anger He will have mourned and he will contemplate his coming end with a certain degree of quiet expectation. This stage is marked by withdrawal and calm (Kubler-Ross 123-124). It seems that what makes Hamlet s acceptance of Providence finally intelligible and credible to us emotionally, what confirms the truth of it to out own experience, is our sense, as well as his, that the great anguish and struggle over his grief is over, and that he has completed the work of mourning (Bloom 135). Hamlet s acceptance comes through his reconciliation with Laertes. Hamlet makes his resolution by declaring, Exchange forgiveness with me [Laertes], noble Hamlet. Mine or my father s death come not upon thee, nor thine on me! (Shakespeare V.ii.333-335). Because of this reconciliation Hamlet is able to free his soul of sin accepting his previous acts of anger. Hamlet speaks to Horatio quietly, almost serenely, with the unexultant calm which characterizes the end of the long, inner struggle of grief. He has looked at the face of death in his father s ghost, he has now endured death and loss in all the human beings he has loved, and he now accepts those losses as an inevitable part of his own condition. He states, The readiness is all suggesting what is perhaps the last and most difficult task of mourning, his own readiness to die (Bloom 135). Hamlet recognizes and accepts his own death.

Hamlet throughout the play lives in a world of mourning. This bereavement route he experiences can be related to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross s theory on this process. The death of Hamlet s spirit can be traced through depression, denial and isolation, bargaining, anger, and acceptance. The natural sorrow and anger of Hamlet s multiple griefs include all human frailty in their protest and sympathy and touch upon the deepest synapses of grief in our own lives, not only for those who have died, but for those, like ourselves, who are still alive. Hamlet s experience of grief, and his recovery from it, is one it which we ourselves respond most deeply.