Hamlet: The Conscious Being

Essay retrieved from http://www.antiessays.com/free-essays/29867.html

Hamlet: The Conscious Being

“To be, or not to be, that is the question” (Hamlet 63). The consciousness and awareness of
living is a frightening and puzzling thing. Hamlet, a very conscious being, is not only frightened
of the consciousness of existence, but he is aware of the tragic outcome of his life. Because of
this “awareness”, Hamlet is reluctant to make any seemingly valiant actions in order to slow
down or even to reverse his impending doom. Nevertheless, because Hamlet is completely
conscious of his being and of the world he lives in, deep down he is aware that despite his
attempts to change the world he lives in, his outcome will still be tragic. Hamlet’s “to be or not to
be” speech is less about whether or not he should take his own life, but “Rather it reflects the
growing inner-self, which he sometimes attempts to reject” (Bloom 405) By taking one look at
Hamlet’s “to be or not to be speech”, one could argue that Hamlet is a coward contemplating
suicide. However, instead of than being a coward, in his speech, Hamlet contemplates the
unknown darkness of after death, his heroic obligations, and his growing inner-self. Critic Harold
Bloom in his book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human states,
His (Hamlet) is not primarily a world of social alienation, or of the absence (or presence) of God.
Rather, his world is the growing inner-self, which he sometimes attempts to reject, but which
nevertheless he celebrates almost continuously, though implicitly (Bloom 405).
Hamlet’s world, an isolated world from the social society, is ruled by the consciousness within
darkness. He is constantly pushing the boundary between light and dark; conscious and
unconscious. As a skeptic, Hamlet has no fixed ideas, no beliefs. Everything that motivates him
comes from what he perceives as consciousness. His desire to kill Claudius comes from his
unconscious, the place where all desires and motivations are formed. In Hamlet’s “To be, or not
to be” speech, he contemplates suicide not as an escape from life, but rather as an escape from
his “sullied flesh”(Hamlet 23). This imagery of spoiled flesh reflects the image of the poisoning
and polluting of the kingdom and of Hamlet’s own being. He is aware that the flesh is rotting
away and restricting him from reaching out and embracing the darkness of the unconscious.
Hamlet is indifferent to physical death. His push to leave the light and enter the darkness of the
unconscious drives him to question his own motives.
Hamlet constantly attempts to reject his “growing inner-self” because he himself is unsure of the
unknown. When Hamlet first meets his father’s ghost, he leaves behind the world of reality and
light and enters a world with no reason, reality, and light. He enters the world of unconscious, the
world of darkness. This new world of darkness poses as an unknown that makes Hamlet uneasy
enough to question his sanity. Upon his return to the light, Hamlet becomes conscious that within
the darkness ideal is found and motives are revealed. Inside of the light, he cannot be sure of
what his real motive to kill Claudius is. To Hamlet, the light represents a fixed point, earth, but
the darkness has no fixed points. It exists as a floating world where nothing is certain and ideal is
everywhere. To Hamlet, the darkness represents his inner-self. His growing inner-self is a replica
of this world of darkness and ideals, of no reason and unconsciousness. Because this world holds
no reason, Hamlet is frightened by the unknown and unconscious possibilities of this world that
is growing inside of him. Hamlet’s mind rues his flesh because it wants to push away from the
diseased reality and enter the darkness and embrace rather than reject his growing inner-self.
Hamlet’s contemplation of suicide then becomes a contemplation of letting go of the light and
submersing himself in his inner-world of unconsciousness and darkness. He wonders whether it
is better to leave behind his consciousness that is leading him to the brink of insanity, or to
embrace it.
And by sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.
‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep, to sleep perchance to dream.
(Hamlet, 63)
In his world, Hamlet is completely self-aware. He sees the probable outcomes of his life. His
contemplating of suicide is hardly out of cowardice, it is out of this notion of trying to reject the
growing of his inner-self. Hamlet’s growing inner-self is almost symbolic of the burgeoning
darkness where the edge of reason and the brink of insanity lie. Through his constant attempts to
reject his growing inner-self, Hamlet becomes more and more conscious that it is the
unconscious that drives all desire and motive.
Hamlet’s heroic obligation is to his father. As a seemingly weak character, Hamlet seems less
than heroic with his contemplation of ending his own life before avenging his father’s; however
his contemplation of suicide stems from his own self-consciousness, which has also caused him
to question his own sanity. Because Hamlet is the only one who can see the ghost of his dead
father, he often questions if he is going insane and “seeing spirits”. Through this notion, Hamlet
questions the credibility of the ghost’s plea to be avenged. If Hamlet is really insane, would it
really be necessary to kill Claudius and avenge his father? Did Claudius really kill his father? Is
his desire to be king fueling his own lust to kill the king? Truly, anyone would question their own
sanity and motives in this situation. Even if Hamlet was sane and did in fact see the ghost of his
father, was he really heroic enough to avenge his father? “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to
suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and
by opposing end them.” (Hamlet 63) Hamlet does not possess the attributes of a classic hero. He
is too self-aware and conscious of the world around him to act heroically without analyzing his
own motives and outcomes.
He is a hero who pragmatically can be regarded as a villain: cold, murderous, solipsistic,
nihilistic, manipulative…Consciousness is his salient characteristic; he is the most aware and
knowing figure ever conceived. We have the Illusion that nothing is lost upon this fictive
personage. Hamlet is a Henry James who is also a swordsman, a philosopher in line to become a
king, a prophet of a sensibility still out ahead of us, in an era to come (Bloom 404).
The irony is that Hamlet’s consciousness and self-awareness is his one true heroic quality.
Although being conscious does not allow Hamlet to act in the most traditional of heroic ways, it
does help him to analyze all aspects of his obligations to his father. Hamlet uses his
consciousness paired with timing to his advantage. He waits until his own last breath to take
Claudius’ life and avenge his father.
The thought of leaving the flesh is not what Hamlet fears in death. No, it is the
Dread of something after death, the undiscover’d country , from whose bourne no traveller
returns , puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we
know not of? Thus consciousness does make cowards of us all (Hamlet 63).
This undiscovered country is what keeps Hamlet from being his father’s son. His father is the
ideal that exists outside of death. He is the proof that darkness exists outside of the earth, outside
of time, and outside of all consciousness. It is this concept that makes Hamlet want to reach out
and touch the darkness, but reject it at the same time. Hamlet is hesitant to embrace his inner-self
and this darkness because he is conscious that in doing this he will leave the safety of reality and
confirm his own tragic fate. Throughout the entire play, Hamlet is aware of his tragic fate, but
because he is conscious of this, he attempts to manipulate the outcome. In his book, Shakespeare:
The Invention of the Human, Bloom discuses Hamlet’s knowledge of his fate:
…the triumphal Hamlet is cosmological drama of man’s fate, and only masks its essential drive
as revenge. We can forget Hamlet’s “indecision” and his “duty” to kill the usurping king-uncle
Hamlet himself takes a while to forget all that, but by the start of Act V he no longer needs to
remember : the Ghost is gone, the mental image of the father has no power, and we come to see
that hesitation and consciousness are synonyms in this vast play (Bloom 405).
In Bloom’s passage, we can see that eventually Hamlet realizes that he is no longer acting out of
revenge for his father, but rather he is acting out of his own subconscious motives. In the end
Hamlet chooses to let be and embraces the world of the unknown. He gives up resistance of his
ever growing inner-self and in his last breath, embraces it and kills Claudius. When Hamlet gave
up hesitation, he gave up on pushing away the unconscious world or darkness.
Citations
1. Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York City : Penguin Group
Inc., 1998.
2. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Clayton: Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Classics, 2005.