ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOSS: HAMLET'S GRIEF

ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LOSS: HAMLET'S GRIEF=

Linda Kraeger

Ab= stract

Shakespeare’s Hamlet repr= esents a case study of an individual who suffers loss while having no contemporary= who can understand the depth of his grief. Emotionally, Hamlet has lost two hom= es. His first home consists of his mother, King Hamlet, and Uncle Claudius. Ham= let, like many contemporary people , must reframe and invent himself while his world changes before his eyes. Because a moral fog envelops his family of origin, so do his duties to them. What duty does he = have to his father? Has Hamlet only imagined the ghost of his father, the King? = If so, has he only imagined the King’s call for dutiful revenge? Hamlet = must invent his conscience or give it new context. He appears driven to call into question his second, his worldview.

In the character Hamlet, Shakespeare created a new kind of consciousness and therefore a new branch of human psychology that has a precursor = in Romans 7.

In Shakespeare’s The Tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, no one in the story se= ems to understand the profound loss that he suffers at multiple levels. He retu= rns from the university at Luther’s Wittenberg to learn that he no longer has a home that resembles the one of his youth. Malicious doubts surround the death of his father, King Hamlet. Uncle Claud= ius seems wholly different from the man Hamlet had earlier known. In many cultu= res, the family considers the uncle at least as important as the father, but what has Uncle Claudius done to the family? The uncle professes to want Hamlet to remain home and take his place as a member of the royal family. But how can Hamlet do so if Claudius has replaced him?

Moreover, the uncle has stripped Prince Hamlet not onl= y of his political identity, but also much of his social identity. Ophelia rejec= ts Hamlet’s gifts and affection, and his two friends from the university prove so treacherous that he must kill them before they bring about his dea= th. The ghost of his father the king leaves Prince Hamlet with the unnerving impression that his mother may lack the innocence he had ascribed to her. Though forbidding Hamlet to take actions against her, the ghost destroys her image. The prince must now face the question of his mother’s role in = her first husband’s death. Did she know that Claudius had plans to murder= his brother, her husband, and take the throne for himself? René Girard notes her silence during the younger Hamlet’s tirade. What can she say, after all? For her, the two brothers seem so alike that she can remain indifferent (171). Whereas the s= on would raise his father to the sun, the mother sees him as a warrior on this planet, a warrior who probably took the throne through violence, a brother = to Claudius, not only by blood but in blood since they equaled each other in treachery, a conclusion that the son finds abhorrent.

The younger Haml= et has lost three kingdoms. He will not succeed his father as King Hamlet, with Ophelia perhaps as his queen. Second, he teeters on losing his mind. Third,= his cosmos, his world-order, his metaphysics, if you will, melts before his very eyes.

Only a few decad= es before Shakespeare completed Hamlet= , Luther’s voice had joined that of Roman Catholic leaders in denouncing Copernicus’s cosmological revolution. Calvinists, Lutherans, Anglican= s, and Catholics had viewed comets as manifestations of divine wrath. Around t= he time of Shakespeare’s writing of Hamlet, Galileo built the first complete astronomical telescope. Luther, still stee= ped in medieval Catholic cosmology, regarded the winds as good or evil spirits.= He believed that God kept several demons captive in a nearby pond (White 126, = 212, 339). As a college intellectual, Prince Hamlet would have had to wrestle wi= th the new cosmology while simultaneously contributing to a new psychology. Ha= rold Bloom claims that Hamlet becomes “a dramatist of the self that surpas= ses St. Augustine, Dante, and even Montaigne; for that is Shakespeare’s greatest invention, the inner self that is not only eve= r‑changing, but also ever‑augmenting.” Bloom approaches saying that through grieving his loss and experiencing its anguish, Hamlet arrived at “the first absolutely inner self, which belonged not to Martin Luther but to Wil= liam Shakespeare” (741).

How should Hamlet interpret the ghost: As a real entity, or a human residue from beyond the grave, or even a hidden residue of the prince himself, a demon in disguise tempting him to explore self‑destruction? If the prince merely imagin= ed the ghost, must he still heed the demand for blood revenge, an expectation = of manhood in the Middle Ages? Many interpret the p= rince as going insane. Yet, what if his behavior only seems bizarre becaus= e he continually rethinks the sanity or insanity of an ancient tradition, the ho= ary duty of blood revenge? Princely duty has grown foggy Denmark. Normality comes into question, as does co= mmon sense. Along with “To be or not to be?” come questions about wh= at in this whirling world has robbed him of a home base? If the planet spins, = does morality spin, too, with no foundation? Should a prince serve to defend his home? But what if the enemy is = his home? What honor comes from filial revenge if one’s mother conspired = in the murderous plot?

Hamlet’s m= anhood is on the line. Or rather, it would be if he could find the line. Should he kill Uncle Claudius? But what if the ghost has practiced malicious deceit a= nd falsely accused Claudius? By murdering Claudius, would Hamlet commit regici= de, the very crime his uncle might have committed? Hamlet’s hesitation has merit. Making his decision seems akin to shooting arrows while everything s= pins round and round.

Literary critic = Harold Bloom says that Hamlet must now invent himself by overhearing himself (4= 209;6 “Introduction”) .But can he do so without simultaneously trying= to reconstruct metaphysics. For self‑invention does not happen ex nihilo<= /i>. Shakespeare seems to have bestowed upon Hamlet his own mantle, his own awes= ome intellect. Hamlet has not so much lost his conscience as experienced a ment= al and emotional earthquake that has torn up the well‑designed highways = on which conscience once traveled smoothly. Conscience must have content as we= ll as form.

Hamlet’s f= eigned derangement represents but a temporary reflection of his deranged world, a world out of joint. And now he faces the cursed task of building a new metaphysic, a new intellectual‑moral‑emotional home. Where will= he start? With himself? I am mad, therefore I am? I= am what? In relation to what? But the relations are not what they seem. Hamlet feels not so much alienated from reality as at a loss as to how = it all connects and relates. If reality were a text, he would ask, “What doe= s it mean?” Is reason merely a pimp for desires? (III= .iv). Is reality whatever one chooses to make of it, l= ike figures in the clouds? A camel now? Later a weasel? A whale? (<= span class=3DSpellE>III.ii).

What does it mea= n when his uncle, perhaps a murderer, tries to cheer him. Such action seems perverse given the atmosphere of murder, thievery, and deception. How does a prince respond to treachery committed by his dearest = kin? How can Hamlet find a perspective when he lacks a home base for gaining perspective?

The questions th= at leap out like sparks from Hamlet lan= d in the drama King Lear and burst i= nto flame. The same metaphysical questions burn there so fiercely that Shakespe= are must cast them in a pagan setting. Still, the questions burn out of control= and invade Christian theology, challenging divine justice, goodness, and purpos= e. The question no longer concerns the happenings in Hamlet’s castle or = in Lear’s castle. Rather, does it concern events Heaven? What are the go= ds up to? If nature with all its fury and impersonal power reflects the gods, = then what can one say of the gods themselves?

Like Hamlet, Lea= r has lost not only his crown, but also his family. Two daughters have proved more treacherous than have his enemies. And, worst of all, Lear became his own w= orst enemy, demanding the verbal trinkets of love while scorning the true devoti= on of his daughter Cordelia.

Where HamletR= 17;s intellect overpowers the stage and reaches out to the globe itself, Lear’s passion rivals the natural elements in all their fury and rage. Whereas Hamlet cannot prove that Claudius has stolen the older Hamlet’s life, crown and bed, Lear knows beyond doubt that he has played the fool and lost more than a kingdom. He k= nows that not even he, a former king, can find a court of appeal against two of = his daughters who behave wretchedly toward him. He has lost, and, like Hamlet, suffers a flood of grief beyond description.

Hamlet finds most disturbing his mother’s apparent lack of grief at the loss of her husband. It is as if husbands were like replaceable carriage wheels. Did her husband, Prince Hamlet’s father, mean nothing to her personally? Wher= e is her grief? Have women no heart? Ironically, before Hamlet’s eyes, his mother, whatever her flaw, cann= ot but grieve as her son distances himself from her. She can almost see his disillusionment turn into dissolution. Even more ironically, Hamlet proves = himself grossly incorrect in having accused Ophelia of= a false heart, too. Like Hamlet, Ophelia, falls victim to grief, her own and Hamlet’s. Her means of burying her grief serve to intensify Prince Ha= mlet’s grief. Yet, who directly caused Ophelia’s grief, but Hamlet himself? = He had given into the call for revenge. In doing so, he accidentally killed Ophelia’s father. The price of revenge went far beyond moral bookkeep= ing. The loss became incalculable and the grief unbearable.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. “I= ntroduction.” Major Literary Characters: Hamlet. = Ed. Harold Bloom.<= /span> <= span style=3D'layout-grid-mode:line;mso-bidi-font-style:italic'>New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990.

- - -. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1998.<= /p>
Girard, René. “Hamlet’s Dull Revenge.” Major Literary Characters: Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990.

White, A. D. A History of the Warfare of Science With Theology<= /i>. Vol. 1. New York: D= over, 1960. 2 vols.<= o:p>