Sunday, October 10, 2010

How is the final solution achieved in the play Hamlet?

"Final solution" is an odd phrase to use in relation to
the deaths in Hamlet, since, in our most common use of the term, it
refers to a premeditated slaughter of many people.  There are many dead bodies by the
end of this play, but they are not the result of one masterminded
slaughter.


The deaths in Hamlet come
about it these ways:


  • Hamlet kills Polonius
    having no idea who he is.  He only knows that there is an eavesdropper, and he kills
    him.  He asks if it is Claudius that he has killed, but there is no evidence in the text
    that he believes he is killing Claudius when he commits the
    murder.

  • Ophelia drowns either intentionally at her own
    hand or by accident.  Whether this is suicide, is also is not made
    clear.

  • Claudius first tries to have Hamlet murdered on
    his way to England, but Hamlet turns the tables and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are
    killed instead.

  • Claudius and Laertes join forces to
    murder Hamlet, either by the poisoned tip of Laertes sword or a poisoned drink that
    Claudius will offer Hamlet.

  • Gertrude, by accident, drinks
    the poison and dies.

  • Laertes is stabbed by Hamlet with
    the envenomed sword-tip.

  • Claudius is stabbed with the
    poisoned sword and made to drink the poison -- both at the hands of
    Hamlet.

  • And Hamlet finally also dies from the wound given
    him by Laertes.

Many deaths, most of them in
the final moments of the play, but not deaths that add up to one masterminded "final
solution."

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