Open Prompt 2 (4/20)

2005. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899), protagonist Edna Pontellier is said to possess “That outward existence which conforms, the inward life that questions.” In a novel or play that you have studied, identify a character who outwardly conforms while questioning inwardly. Then write an essay in which you analyze how this tension between outward conformity and inward questioning contributes to the meaning of the work. Avoid mere plot summary.

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet juggles a personal need to leave the kingdom, honoring his own beliefs, or stay and exact revenge for his father. Through the ghost of his father and the pleas of his mother and uncle, Hamlet is constantly being urged to remain in the Elsinore. Still, his thoughts lie in abandoning his place as the prince and turning to his own beliefs on murder. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the decision to conform to his royal duties and filial piety leads Hamlet down a destruction path towards a lack of identity and immoral acts.

From the moment Hamlet is forced to stay in Elsinore, he wishes to be away from the poison of his family and royalty. His struggle furthers when his father’s ghost asks him to kill his uncle Claudius to avenge his father. Hamlet takes issue with killing anyone. Despite a cultural obligation to his father, Hamlet’s own religious belief is that killing anyone is wrong. From his perspective he should not kill Claudius. Still, by the end of the play, Hamlet manages to do just as his father asks, killing Claudius after Claudius plots to kill him. Hamlet’s even larger struggle is one he grapples with from his first scene. He contemplates suicide multiple times during the play, proposing the question, “To be or not to be” to himself. Hamlet believes that the only way out of his obligations as prince is through death. The only reason Hamlet does not end his life is because the prominent religious beliefs he has been taught promote suicide as a sin, and Hamlet cannot be sure that the afterlife will truly be better than the kingdom he calls a prison. Again, Hamlet conforms to the Catholic beliefs of his family, rather than the Protestant beliefs he developed at school in Wittenberg.

Hamlet’s inward struggle is similar to the other characters in Hamlet in that they are all putting on a performance. The public must see a tailored version of Claudius, one that is not the murderer of his own brother, but a loving king. The differences in the image presented and the truth allows for a lack of understanding in his own identity. No character can easily pin down his/her own true self, and therefore cannot make sound decisions. Both Claudius and Hamlet go down a path of destruction that ends in death. Before death, Claudius and Hamlet make the most immoral decision in killing each other and ruining the royal family. Hamlet’s conformity leads to everyone’s destruction because he fails to understand his own self. If Hamlet had understood and held his own opinions, he would not have gone down the same path, and would have been able to keep the royal family from falling apart. Because Hamlet ignores his true identity and beliefs, his decisions are made without grounds or reasoning, so they only manage to hurt those around him.