Open Prompt 2 (1/12)

2004. Critic Roland Barthes has said, “Literature is the
question minus the answer.” Choose a novel, or play, and, considering Barthes’ observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to
which it offers answers. Explain how the author’s treatment of this question
affects your understanding of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

Throughout literature, many pieces of work answer their own central question in different ways and with different degrees of clarity. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the central question in the play, “Will Hamlet relinquish control?” is clearly answered.

Throughout Hamlet, Hamlet struggles with his decision to kill Claudius, his uncle, to avenge his father. With this struggle comes Hamlet’s own struggle with morality and religion. He wonders if he should be the one to kill Claudius, knowing that he may go against God’s plan, or providence. Because of the constant pull between religion and filial obligation, Hamlet struggles with his decision to kill his father, and his level of control. Hamlet has many people in the play controlling his actions. In his first appearance, he must ask Claudius, the king, if he can go back to Wittenberg for school. He is quickly shot down. This exchange displays Hamlet’s lack of control within the kingdom. From this point, Hamlet strives to have control over his own decisions and actions, though he does not always achieve control. After meeting his father’s ghost and learning of his uncle’s foul play against his father, he begins to act to avenge his father. His actions are for his father and not himself, causing him to lose control. Shakespeare explores the question with the greatest clarity when Hamlet considers suicide. This happens both before and after Hamlet meets the ghost, but his most serious consideration in his “To be or not to be” soliloquy comes after he meets the ghost. Suicide, though treated with great disgust in the Catholicism of the time, is the greatest control one can take. With hamlet exhibiting this need to take control of his life, he displays his own problem throughout the play. Ophelia also kills herself, showing her own issues with control, after being controlled so closely by her father, Polonius.

With so much need for control, Hamlet even begins to control his image, as many others also do in the play, by pretending to be crazy. By this point, Hamlet is again losing control of himself and those around him, as shown when Rosencrantz and Guildenstern side with Claudius. With Hamlet’s performance so real, the reader is unsure where Hamlet really stands. There is an uncertainty in Hamlet’s control over his mind and his actions by the reader. This creates more tension with the central question, because Hamlet may be giving up control unwillingly. His actions may not be his own, because his mind is not his own. By bringing in other issues with Hamlet as a character, Shakespeare works to make the central question more complicated for the reader, offering the reader a chance to make his or her own conclusion and ask more questions of Hamlet. This questioning nature makes the reader suspicious of all characters true intentions and makes control a much more difficult state to achieve. By act 5, both the reader and Hamlet are unsure of what control will mean for Hamlet. Will it mean his kills Claudius or he spares him? Will it mean he takes action of his own life and kills himself? Will it mean he will leave Elsinore? All these questions are raised in the readers minds.

In the end, Hamlet answers the question of control himself. He tells Horatio, the most trusted  character by the reader and characters, that he will let God have his own plan and he will no longer try to gain control over him. Still, Hamlet letting go of control  does not mean other characters, like Claudius, let go too. In the end, Hamlet does kill Claudius, but only because Claudius kills him and his mother first. Because Hamlet and Claudius die, despite Hamlet’s need to control everything, the deaths seem to act as a cleansing for Elsinore and Denmark. Even with control given up, the corruption Hamlet and his family cause is too great for them to survive the play. Shakespeare’s development of the major question of control allows the reader to see the many issues within Elsinore and Hamlet.