Troubled and confused is an understatement when considering Hamlet. With everything going wrong in his life, Hamlet loses all sense of control. He’s hurting dreadfully inside, torn between love and hate, loss and gain (his father’s murder, his mother’s unfaithfulness, his true love’s betrayal). There are so many conflicting factors in his life (listening to his dead father or being loyal to his deceitful mother) that Hamlet is stricken with confusion and turmoil. Hamlet must be suffering constantly with that aching, stinging feeling one gets in the back of their throat leading to the pit of their stomach when they are wounded with an excruciating sadness. He covers it up, however, with sarcastic antics and jokes. He’s not crazy, but he accumulates a dark, sinister view on life, and acts on it, hopelessly believing that nothing is important, and that his life is more or less an act, a role that he is simply playing out.

When Ophelia kills herself, he completely loses all sense of meaningfulness. Yet he has not completely lost his mind, because through all of this, we realize that he has control over his thoughts and actions, and maintains a solid goal: revenge. He is motivated to speak revenge by his unyielding hate for the murderer of his father: his uncle.

When around Claudius, he mentally looks down upon him and despises him, often leaving Claudius in the dust of a cleverly sarcastic insult. He must feel a slight fear around Claudius because he knows that Claudius is a mischievously murderous man, yet at the same time he feels protected by his lack of a will to live. Around his mother, Hamlet’s true agony is revealed because he loves her (like a mother) and wants to be a loyal son to her, but knows the truth of what happened to his father and believes she was behind it. As for Ophelia, Hamlet loves her more than he can even express, and she is the only thing in the world that gives him a solid, ground feeling, yet she’s betrayed him and that hurts him more than one can begin to imagine: knowing he’s lost the only thing good in his life.

Above all, Hamlet is lost and confused, torn severely with tragedy and strife. He feels as though life is meaningless, and there is no point for him to take it seriously any longer.

The ghost in the play is a questionable character in this play. The number one reason he is questionable is because Hamlet doesn’t know if the ghost is actually telling the truth or not in the play. He says in the begging of the play that no one else except for Hamlet will be able to see him, but the other guards where able to see him. So Hamlet is questioning if the ghost is the devil or not, and the devil might be trying to make Hamlet go to hell.

Ophelia is an innocent and simple-minded young woman. Her father Polonius and her brother Laertes mold her easily. She is forced to listen to them because she has to rely upon them. With out them she is nothing. When her father questions Hamlets love for Ophelia she is forced to help her father prove to the king why he is crazy. In this Ophelia is used as bait so the king is able to hear Hamlets words. Because of this she ruins her chances of love with Hamlet. After the death of her father she goes insane. While collecting flower in a willow tree and drowns.

Gertrude, also known as the Queen, or Hamlet’s mother. In my opinion she is a little weird. After King Hamlet died, she remarried to her brother in law. In other words Hamlets uncle. Reading this book I got the impression that it’s not that big of a deal to her, but she can’t notice that its tearing her son apart. Gertrude has no real care of how Hamlet feels and his opinion. Throughout this play Gertrude is just kind of there. She is in most of the scenes but isn’t really involved in any kind of action. Unfortunately she was poisoned by her own husband and is the first one to die before Hamlet and Claudius.

Claudius, the evil brother to the former King of Denmark, a devious man. He is one who like you to your face and when you turn around stab you in the back. He had no problem killing his brother and then marrying his wife to become the King of Denmark. He’s a man with a cold heart and cares about only him. In his head he’s the only person in the world that matters. Claudius is only concerned with having a big name for himself. He doesn’t care about his country that he rules, and he doesn’t care about the people that live there. Claudius has basically two concerns in this play: being king, and getting rid of Hamlet. The biggest act of justice in the play is seeing Hamlet kill Claudius.