Psychoanalyzing Hamlet

Can we diagnose Hamlet with a mental disorder? It’s hard to say. A mental illness is characterized by the instability of mood, thought, and behavior. The condition must be considered to be “distressing” to the patient and the behavior/way of thinking must be out of the norm. The condition must also be recognized by American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It’s likely that Hamlet has a mood disorder. Mood disorders, particularly major depression (which also goes by the name of clinical depression or major unipolar depression) are extremely common. Major depression could possibly explain Hamlet’s dark, bleak outlook on life. This mood disorder is characterized by a sad or depressed mood, lack of interest in things that once made the person happy, fatigue/tiredness, guilt without logical reason, difficulty concentrating, and reoccurring thoughts about death. Depression can often be triggered by stressful events such as death. Considering Hamlet’s father died, his mother married his uncle not two months after King Hamlet’s death, and his uncle took the throne in place of himself, the chance that Hamlet has experienced a stressful enough situation to trigger a mood disorder is pretty high. As the reader, it’s also possible for us to reach the conclusion that Hamlet feels immense guilt over his father’s death without reason (after all, he wasn’t the one that killed King Hamlet). Guilt is often a feeling one feels after someone close to them has died. One can argue that King Hamlet’s ghost is a manifestation of Prince Hamlet’s guilt. Prince Hamlet must feel guilty for doing nothing because the ghost of King Hamlet calls him a “fat weed” and implies that he’s being a coward. Hamlet seems to be bothered by his cowardice, his indecisiveness, and passiveness. In one of the earlier soliloquies he tells us that he is not Hercules, that he is not a hero. Some psychologists believe that depression is simply self hatred turned inward towards the patient. If this perspective is true, Hamlet can be suffering from major depression because he hates his cowardice and desperately wants to please his father. From a Freudian, psychodynamic perspective, Hamlet’s abnormal relationship with both his mother and father can be to blame. Hamlet seems to worship his father. He compares him to a Greek God, specifically Hyperion. Hyperion was one of the Titans and the sun to Helios, the sun, Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn. It can be said that Hamlet views his father as the creator of this world, a god. He admires his father and puts him on a pedestal, something that is unusual for normal children to do. The relationship with his mother is also odd and questionable. One can say that he has a bit of an Oedipus complex. He is very concerned with his mother’s private sex life, to the point of obsession. At the end of Act III, he has a whole conversation about the morality of her relationship with his uncle. In their conversation, he finds it appropriate to tell her, “O, throw away the worser part of it, / And live the purer with the other half. / Good night: but go not to mine uncle’s bed;” For the majority of people, giving advice and taking control of one’s mother’s sex life is inappropriate and uncomfortable. But it’s possible that Hamlet feels the need to do this because he is in love with his mother. It’s possible that these repressed feelings of desire simply show up under the disguise of disgust and shame over his mother’s choices rather than his true feelings of jealousy.

Hamlet's Many Faces

Hamlet as the fool.

Hamlet takes on many different archetypes during the course of the play. He plays the moral judge, fool/jester, impulsive fighter, scholar, artist, philosopher, and coward. We see a different side of Hamlet every time he puts on a different mask. The scholar is witty. We see him play the scholar as he shows off his intellectual prowess. This is often seen in his exchanges with Polonius in which he makes Polonius seem ignorant and foolish. He keeps his cool and calm demeanor in these scenes. However, as the fool, Hamlet is at his most honest state (see what I did there?). He is able to speak his mind, though his sincerity is masked by his outlandish humor. It’s the only way he knows how to break out of his silence. In Act I, he speaks about his inability to express his emotions through a soliloquy, in which he says, “But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.” So playing “the fool” is the only way Hamlet knows how to break free of walls that conceal his emotions. With humor, there is truth. By being absurd, rude, and comical, Hamlet is able to get away with saying some pretty sharp comments. In Act III, he insults both his mother, Queen Gertrude, and his exgirlfriend (depending on how you interpreted the scene before), Ophelia, in front of the entire court. He makes some very crude jokes, and even remarks, “That’s a fair thought to lie between maidens’ legs” for the pure purpose of provoking her. Ophelia has no choice but to keep her anger hidden because Hamlet is much higher in rank, since he is the prince of Denmark, and because she is a woman and the time period expected her to take the insults. He also treats his mother in a similar way by bringing up the death of his father, King Hamlet, her disloyalty, and the “incest” that is taking place between the sheets since Gertrude is Claudius’ sister in law (since King Hamlet was Claudius’ brother). Still conversing with Ophelia, he points out his mother, “O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do / but be merry? For, look you, how cheerfully my / mother looks, and my father died within these two hours.” Though his mother waited two months rather than two hours to get married to Claudius, Hamlet purposefully says, “two hours” in order to be humorous and sharp tongued at the same time. Hamlet also takes on the part of “the fool” when he acts mad (or actually is mad, depending on the interpretation). We see this as he speaks with his childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, after the play. He acts slightly crazy, demanding them to play the pipe. Guildenstern refuses to try and play the pipe despite Hamlet’s demands, and Hamlet turns the situation around by revealing that he knows about their spying. While they planned and plotted behind his back, convinced that he was crazy, Hamlet knew exactly what was going on. By pretending to be mad and playing the fool, Hamlet gives himself the upper hand because he is able to feign ignorance. 

On Rhymes

I generally like rhymes. They draw attention to work at hand, stress the importance of what the speaker is trying to convey, facilitate memory, provide entertainment and verbal wit, and marks the end of soliloquies (if you’re William Shakespeare). There are many different kinds of rhymes of course, perfect rhymes, eye-rhymes, imperfect rhymes, half rhymes, and head rhymes (better known as alliteration) just to name a few. But for this blog post, I would like to concentrate on the best known, most widely accepted types of rhymes. These are often identical rhymes, eye rhymes, and perfect rhymes. Perfect rhymes can be divided into three subcategories: masculine, feminine, and dactylic. Let’s start with the eye rhyme. The eye rhyme, unlike some of the more traditional rhymes that rely on the “sound” (or pronunciation) of the word, rely on the spelling of the word. For example, while “slaughter” and “laughter” don’t “sound” much alike but they rhyme because of their almost identical spelling. The perfect rhyme can be split up into three categories: masculine, feminine, and dactylic. The first subcategory, masculine rhymes, is characterized by the stress on the final syllable of the word. “Sublime” and “rhyme” are a good example. While “sublime” and “rhyme” are not spelled the same way, they do sound the same, at least the last syllable does. Unlike the eye rhyme, with perfect rhyme does not depend on the spelling of a word. Instead, it relies on pronunciation. The stress is placed on the last syllable, meaning the “-ime” part of the word in “sublime” and “rhyme”. Feminine rhymes are a tad bit trickier than masculine rhymes. Feminine rhymes, like masculine rhymes, still depend on pronunciation over spelling and still uphold the expectation that the last syllable must match in sound. However, in terms of the “stressing” of the words, feminine rhymes differ. Unlike the masculine rhyme that places the stress on the last syllable, the feminine rhyme places the stress somewhere in the middle, usually the second to last syllable. For example, “tricky” and “picky” are both perfect rhymes. However, they are not masculine, they are feminine In both words, the stress is placed on the second to last syllable of the word. That’s the strong “i” in “tricky” and “picky”. If it was a masculine rhyme, the stress would be placed on the “y”. In a dactylic rhyme, the stress is on the third to last syllable. The dactylic rhyme is much more uncommon in comparison to the masculine and feminine rhymes, and that’s because such long words are harder to come across. “Cacophonies” and “Aristophanes” are an example of a dactylic rhyme. The stress is placed on the “o” sound in both words rather than the “fa” sound or “ees” at the end. Identical rhymes are probably the most well-known. These are often the first rhymes we are exposed to as children. An example of an identical rhyme would be “gun” and “begun”. Homonyms or “punning rhymes” would also be considered identical rhymes, such as “bear” and “bare”.

Love Sonnet 18

Love Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

William Shakespeare’s Love Sonnet 18 compares the object of his affection to a summer’s day. Line 2, “Thou art more lovely and more temperate:” expresses how his lover is more mellow and beautiful than a summer day. The word temperate has more than one denotation, making this statement have more than one meaning. Temperate can mean moderate or self-restrained in opinion, not susceptible to extreme passion or emotion, or moderate in temperature or weather. So line 2 can be speaking to both his lover’s personality and temperament as well as their physical beauty, meaning that aesthetically, their features are not harsh. “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May” speaks to the fragility of love and relationships. Rough winds signify the conflicts and difficulties that the couple may face, while the “darling buds of May” represent the romance. The month of May is in spring, and spring is connotated with renewal, rebirth, and love.

            “Summer’s lease” in line 4 is the amount of time that this pleasantness will last. “Lease” has the meaning of owning temporary possession. So “summer’s lease” is a way of saying summer’s pleasant weather and romance won’t last forever. It’s limited because the lease will end, which is summed up by “too short a date”.  Line 5’s “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,” explains that sometimes the relationship will be scrutinized by everyone. The “eye of heaven” refers to the sun, and gives the image of a bright, hot spotlight on his lover. The sun, which is a great source of light, reveals small details and flaws in people, allowing scrutiny to occur. As a result, the speaker worries that, “often is his gold complexion dimm’d; / And every fair from fair sometime declines”.  “His gold complexion” can literally be referring to his lover’s skin, but “complexion” can also mean viewpoint or attitude. So while the sun can literally be damaging his lover’s complexion with its harsh rays, in a metaphysical sense, the scrutiny from the people around them is causing his lover to lose his bright attitude. “Fair” is used in a way so that its multiple meanings are being used in one sentence. “Fair” as a noun can mean “woman” or “lover”, free from bias and injustice, pale in color and untainted, straight (as in direction), or an exhibition. So in “And every fair from fair sometimes declines”, the first “fair” takes the meaning of “woman” or “lover” and the second “fair” takes up the meaning, free from injustice, bias, or dishonesty.

            While conflict can come between their love, the speaker goes onto say, “But thy eternal summer shall not fade.” While the season itself may pass, the pleasantness that comes with summer will remain eternal within his lover, making fading impossible. The speaker ends the sonnet by proclaiming his faith in his lover, “When in eternal lines to time thou growest:/ So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this gives life to thee.”

Harlem [Dream Deferred] 

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

- Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes’ poem, “Dream Deferred” reveals that dreams that are deferred end up becoming toxic because of the permanent regret that remains from not fulfilling the dream. His message is made more prominent through his usage of rhetorical questions and vivid imagery.

            He first compares a dream deferred to a dried up raisin in the sun (lines 1-2). Raisins, while still considered “fruits” are a dried up, aged version of grapes. Wrinkled up, losing its vibrant color and juiciness, raisins can be considered less appealing than grapes. Like dreams, grapes are best when they are fresh. By making this comparison, Langston Hughes is advocating that dreams be fulfilled as quickly as possible and not be deferred. By waiting and putting the dream on the backburner, the fresh possibility of the dream fades and the regret takes over. A raisin, which is much like the shell of the grape, robbed of its moisture and freshness of the fruit is like the regret that is left over when the dream is deferred.

            In lines (3-4), the dreams that were put aside are compared to festering sores. “Sore” can refer to a wound or diseased part of one’s body part but it can also refer to “sore” as in causing great suffering, misery, or hardship (dictionary.com) One can also be “sore” as a result of suffering bodily pain from bruises or wounds. When one becomes “sore” it is usually after enduring slight pain over a great deal of time. Langston Hughes makes the argument that dreams work in the same way. If a dream is put aside for a long period of time, the pain and regret builds up, therefore making one “sore”. That regret, remains permanent until the dream is fulfilled.

            He asks the reader, “Does it stink like rotten meat?” in line (5). Like the festering sore in lines (3-4), “rotten” gives off the image of “decomposing” or “tainted” meat. If unattended and uncared for a long enough time, dreams too can decompose and turn rotten, corrupting a person from the inside just as festering sores and rotting meat does. It is through the neglect that the regret and harm arises.

            However, Langston Hughes does not end his views on deferred dreams by saying that they simply rot inside a person. Instead, he chooses to end his poem with a rhetorical question as his last line, “Or does it explode?” It’s as if the regret built itself up to a great pressure and burst out from within the once-dreamer. Dreams that are deferred do not merely sit within a person; instead, they burst out after years of being put aside. No matter what, they find a way out. It’s as if the whole process is necessary for cleansing. Like a festering sore, the infection or the rotting flesh must be terminated or amputated. Deferred dreams, because of how harmful they are, must find a way to escape the body. 

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl

The manic pixie dream girl is a female trope that frequently turns up in popular culture. Appearing in books such as  The Perks of Being a Wallflower, movies such as  500 Days of Summer (or anything Zooey Deshanel is in), and TV shows such as Skins, the manic pixie dream girl often serves as inspiration and an escape for the male lead character. She is characterized by her quirkiness, craziness, childishness, and her carefree attitude on life. Unfortunately despite all her “uniqueness” that sets her apart from the rest of the world, the manic pixie dream girl often falls flat as a character. Too often one dimensional, with no desires, dreams, or conflicts of her own, this trope enters the story in order to move the male lead along. This is most prevalent in romantic comedies/ romance movies where the female lead character meets the grumpy, closed-off male lead. She is childlike, quirky, and full of life, while he is cynical and sullen. The male lead reveals that he has been hurt once and that despite his hard exterior, he has a soft inside. The manic pixie dream girl eventually gets him to open up and love life again, giving the movie a happy ending. 27 Dresses features Jane, who is a more grounded version of the manic pixie dream girl. She is kind to everyone, including her self-centered and whiny younger sister, and has kept all 27 of her bridesmaid dresses. She eventually gets the male lead, a cynical writer who has had his heart stomped on, to open up after drunkenly singing a rendition of “Bennie and the Jets” with him in a bar. Similarly, Leslie (though too young to be a love interest) from Bridge to Terabithia is a manic pixie dream girl trope in the sense that she is solely there to inspire Jesse to live his life to the fullest. Her death, then, becomes far more tragic, and she becomes something of a hero and idol to Jesse.

            The problem with this trope is that once oversimplified, the character becomes flat, one dimensional, and somewhat of a Mary Sue. The manic pixie dream girl trope has been criticized by film critic, Nathan Rabin, as being "that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures". She often has little character development, acting as a Peter Pan-like character that never grows up, existing only to restore youth and happiness to surrounding characters. Thus, looking at this trope through a gender lens, this particular female character trope generally implies that a women’s sole purpose is to act as an angel and muse for men, providing comfort and vitality to those who see the harsher realities of the world. “Unique”, childish, and always aesthetically pleasing and pretty, the manic pixie dream girl is much like a doll. Although she can sometimes be stubborn (but always in a “cute” way that makes the man fall in love), for the most part, this character is passive, sweet, and holds few flaws. 

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

            Ellen Olenska is a captivating woman. Unlike May, she not afraid to speak her mind, and she frequently spends time with people that the high-class New York society might consider to be “less than desirable”. Newland Archer is intrigued by the way her mind works, and he is in love with the womanly courage she possesses. Instead of abiding the rules set for her, Countess Olenska chooses to make her own decisions, such as leaving her husband, the rich Count Olenski, even if it means facing social consequences. Her decision leads to coldness from her own family, whispering, and gossip on her “foreign” behavior. However, Ellen Olenska is not a “beautiful” or “pretty” woman in terms of the traditional standards of aesthetic beauty during that time period. When he is reintroduced to her at the opera after years and years of not seeing each other, Newland Archer views as a run-away wife that has become washed out and old in comparison to the young and vibrant May Welland. He finds her dress to be in bad taste, and the low-cut top to be scandalous. “He hated to think of May Welland's being exposed to the influence of a young women so careless of the dictates of Taste.” (Wharton) But as the story progresses and Archer increasingly gains affection toward this character, Ellen Olenska’s physical description changes. Rather than a critical analysis of her physical flaws, the narrator and Archer begin to concentrate more on her assets and her charm. That charm influences his overall view of her, and he falls in love with everything that she is and represents. Ellen represents everything that will become “new” New York society in the future, and this is reflected through the descriptions of her physical beauty which Archer might consider beautiful but does not abide to the traditional standards. In contrast, May Welland is representative of the “old” New York society. She abides to the invisible rules set for her by her parents and the older generation. She knows how to be sweet and the definition of a “perfect wife”. She is young, pretty, and vibrant. However, as Archer is exposed to Ellen Olenska’s way of looking at the high-class New York society and starts to dislike the conformity that is expected, he starts seeing the flaws in May Welland’s beauty as well. He notices that her eyes are blank, and he becomes increasingly impatient with her lack of curiosity and lack of desire for what he considers to be “freedom” for women. He also realizes that his marriage to May Welland will be nothing more than “a dull association of material and social interests" (Wharton). Therefore, Archer and the narrator’s view of her physical beauty changes as well. He describes her eyes as being "almost pale in their youthful limipidity" and her face as being “"the vacant serenity of a young marble

athlete"(Wharton). Wharton’s sudden yet subtle usage of words like “vacant” and “limpidity” goes far to describe May Welland as simply pretty and empty rather than beautiful like before. And these changing perceptions of beauty reflect Newland Archer’s changing perception of the high-class New York societies.