Hamlet (The Madman?)

Hamlet is not a demented, deranged, or mentally disturbed individual as most like to portray him as. Supporters of this view simply look at the acts he commits rather than his reasoning behind them as they explain what is really going on inside his head. It is easy to title a young man as mad if he plots to kill his uncle, but what they fail to realize is that he has motives that make sense to him. They are not random acts of violence done for recreational purposes; they are actions of vengeance for the one man he idolized.

Hamlet is a very self-calculating guy as he spends much time planning out all of his actions. He has a clear idea of what he needs to do and how he is going to be successful. Not only does he think out  what he needs to do, he is also aware of its extremity and the repercussions associated with it. Hamlet is aware that his plans are not morally acceptable, but he also knows that the recipients never contemplated whether or not their actions were principled. A true madman would act on impulse without considering its effects and quite simply, without caring. The only time so far that Hamlet has acted on impulse was when he verbally attacked his mother and killed Polonius. In his defense he thought it was Claudius, who he had planned to kill for a while now, but he immediately felt bad that it was a different person than he envisioned. When he went off on Gertrude he just opened the bottle that contained all of his feelings about his father and her role in his death. In that moment he never thought about physically injuring her based on his impulse like a madman would, he was just getting everything off his chest that had been suffocating him since his father's heart stopped beating.

The death of Hamlet's father affected him more than he could ever imagine. Through his comparisons of his father to gods and his mother to prostitutes, it is safe to say that Hamlet idolized his father very much and was extremely close to him. The fact that this man was now gone forever shocked Hamlet into no return. He was so upset with the whole world and couldn't understand why he was the only one actually grieving over the King's death. Hamlet was in a very fragile and vulnerable state which is why the ghost was visible to him. Hamlet Senior knew that his son couldn't think clearly at the time and that he would be more focused on uncovering his father's mysterious death and getting revenge on the murderer rather than focusing on the fact that a ghost was the source of information. Had Hamlet seen a ghost confessing such scandalous secrets prior to the death of his father, he would convince himself that it was merely a figure of his imagination. Hamlet even warns his friends that he is going to be acting strange and is not in denial that he is not acting completely sane. The death of his father influenced him in such a way that due to the dissolving of his previous reality all he could do was question his new normal. Hamlet is a very intellectual individual and thus all his "madness" was actually a series of calculated moves in his game of revenge.